Editing video news stories

News Videographer has several interesting posts on editing video and the construction of news stories.

Here's part of one post:

"Deborah Potter writes this week about washingtonpost.com’s idea that web video can come in different levels of storytelling sophistication.

• Tier 1 - a short, single shot interview or video of a scene that stands alone. It’s typically no longer than two minutes long and if it’s not embedded with a story, you need to surround it with text to explain what’s going on. Rhodes pointed to a video on the site titled, Meet Britain’s Baby Penguin, as an example that generated an amazing number of hits.
• Tier 2 - what Rhodes calls a vignette, this includes two-to-four b-roll shots and an interview and generally runs no longer than three minutes. This is similar to a television news package.
• Tier 3 - these are longer narratives produced in explanatory or documentary style. Rhodes says these look just like TV documentaires with the same high quality video and production values. Good examples can be found in the work of Travis Fox such as his piece A Fragile Renaissance about the changes occuring in Medellin, Columbia.

Another reference from News Videographer is The Edit Foundry, a new NPPA blog by Shawn Montano, which has an interesting series of posts:

• Editing Under Deadline with Limited Video
• Keeping it Simple. Editing A General Assignment Story
• Movement in your Edits
• Match Action
• Emotion and Pacing

Also, The New York Times has setting the bar for the transition happening for newspapers. Check out this summary video of the presidential election which includes motion graphics, interactivity, photos, and archival footage from the past two years: “2008 Election - Choosing a President.”

Apparently some print executives are still coming around. At a recent Society of Editors conference ‘Video Visionary’ Michael Rosenblum told senior-management/executives what they should do (via Andy Dickinson).


Michael Rosenblum @ Society of Editors 08 from Paul Bradshaw on Vimeo.