Boxing story

[WHODEYinKC]

This one is from the last November book...so its a little old, but I think its decent. Would love to know your thoughts. It was actually a "sweeps piece" if you will, so its longer than normal.

Boxing Story

 

[Latin Lens]

Hey Andy...overall a pretty nice job with this. My thing is just the total approach to how this was put together. I don't know why but I feel with long-format stories there's a more creative license for the reporter to really, really get in there...and had that been explored with this one just a little I think this would have come out even better. I say that because you can use your artistic skill to paint a picture of the rough part of town and the reporter their words to really draw us in and it didn't hit me until the wide ext shot at 1:30...nice shot...but buried...and then it got me thinking about everything else and why is it missing. There needed to more setup to get to why we should care about these kids...instead we just get right into it...when you have time explore...describe...paint the picture of these kids lives to set up the meaning of the story...I guess there needs to be a interview with the main guy but I think this story really would have been better said through the mouths of the youth that are there....I know we heard from one kid but I think there should have been more. Its their lives, its their struggle...I wanna hear that from them. Nice piece...good flow...would like to have seen more than just the standard interview compositions just because in the boxing gym you can get more creative. And that's the beauty of this...everyone will see and tell a story like this in different ways...but its the journey through it and the collaboration that I think make it worthwhile.

 

[optic]

Like Latin Lens said, It would have more powerful to focus on one child for your character and it would have made it easier to sequence out. Does your station have rules against showing the whole graffiti tags or were they vulgar because I would have liked to see a wide of a covered wall or something don't get me wrong I Like the tights too but without variation it lost impact. Since this is a Sweeps piece you get to really develop your story so....
This is one it could have been cool to start out side of the gym in the streets with a line like "these streets have been plagued with violence for years and children struggle with it every day....... and show the gang tags on walls maybe shoes hanging from power lines, boarded windows, beer bottles anything that indicates the type of neighborhood it is. Then a quick byte from the kid outside walking to the gym THEN reveal the gym and the hope it provides and how it helps this kid specifically. End with kid packing up and leaving the gym to goes into the streets again.
Over all strong shooting it just didn't have that "little extra".