Angela Grant, who taught the video workshops for us in March, has a great post that outlines some of the key concepts of starting to shoot video for a newspaper. I agree with most everything she mentions (I’ll mention the caveat in a moment). Go read her post: Start with video now, figure it out along the way.

What drew me to the post was the original query from a college media adviser at the State News at Michigan State.

So how would you recommend starting with video at a newspaper? What would you suggest for workflow or how would you structure the jobs of people who were going to produce video? What would be some trouble areas in a start-up operation? What would be the ideal assignment system.

Angela has some great suggestions. The biggest problem is going to be workflow - who shoots and who assigns and who edits. I’ll say this: if someone in your photo department isn’t already shooting video, they need to get with the program. Give those shooters some decent video cameras and editing software and turn them loose. Designate one or two as the “multimedia” shooters. Direct them to Angela’s blog and MultimediaShooter.com.

Beyond that, more reporters should be thinking about shooting video. As I mentioned last month at the Collegiate Times at Va. Tech, it would be ideal if you could give senior reporters a “mojo kit” with a digital audio recorder and consumer video/still digital camera and encourage them to use those items to gather source material. Empower your reporters to take their own photos and video. If your photo department has a monopoly on photos, now’s the time to start thinking about breaking that monopoly.

If you can get reporters to start shooting, you’re well on your way.

The real workflow pain is going to be in the editing process. This is where I disagree somewhat with Angela. She said:

But I think it’s asking for trouble if you expect them to edit their own video. They’re already loaded down with the responsibilities of making pictures, or reporting and writing. Video editing is a difficult skill to learn, and it’s a time-consuming task. I think it’s smart to find a video editor who can be responsible for editing all the reporter-shot video.

I don’t think video editing is that difficult to learn - at least the basics. If you’re on a Mac system, iMovie is absurdly easy to learn and to use. There’s also JumpCut, an online video editing software that will output files to Flash video. I’ve heard that Windows’ MovieMaker is easy to use as well, but I can’t say that from first-hand experience. If you’re talking about simple 30-second or so video to go along with a full story, editing isn’t that time consuming (assuming you haven’t shot 30 minutes of video to condense down to 30 seconds).

Time is the real concern. Video editing does take time that a reporter could be spending on something else. I also think it’s smart to find a video editor who can edit the reporter-shot video. But if you don’t have an extra person hanging around, train your student reporters to do the editing themselves. They may not find it that pleasant. If they really don’t want to be bothered, then don’t push it.

But remember, the student newspaper isn’t just the place to put out stories. It’s also the place to learn about the business of journalism and better your skills. Part of that mandate - the educational one - is to help people explore different possibilities. One of my biggest regrets in college was that I “only wanted to be a writer,” so I didn’t learn anything about photography (other than how to crop and layout photos on a page). Everything I’ve learned about multimedia has been OJT (on or off).

It may happen that a reporter finds a real knack for editing video, or shooting video. Lose a print reporter, gain a multimedia whiz. That might be a better tradeoff than you think.

And one final caveat: We’re all still trying to figure this out. As Angela says, figure it out along the way. Get started. Do something with video, even if it’s just buying a camera and learning the tools first. Shoot a few tapes and edit them. Produce a promotional video for your newspaper. That’ll give you a way to learn and serve the paper’s best interests at the same time.

This is advice you’ll hear a lot around here, and it applies to most every form of online storytelling: everything is in flux. Some are doing it better, but everyone’s trying to figure it out.

And if you figure out a good way to make video work, drop us an e-mail and share your experience.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 1st, 2007 at 11:08 am and is filed under Learn, Multimedia views, blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.