I'm a hat guy ... used to wear a lot of baseball caps, but over the last year or so I have started mixing it up with different varieties of hats. I don't wear hats on days that I report, but I didn't realize I was going to be turning a package that day so I had the hat on. While most normal people would be able to remove the hat and be good to go, my thinning hair amplifies my "hat head" by about a million times. So it was the hat or really awkward hat head. I was going to leave the stand up out of it, but our producer told me to put it in. I warned them about it, but for some reason I just had to have a stand up.
Thanks for the great story tips ... I'm trying to soak everything up that I can, but I know it will take some time.
Cyndy ... I love the idea of focusing on the family. Unfortunately it was just him at the vineyard, and I rushed myself out of there before I thought to ask about photos.
I asked about putting a font on the file footage (I intended to put the vineyard name and date of the harvest), but was told by our EP that we didn't need to. He has less experience than I do ... which is scary ... but he's the one with the final say on that so I had to let it go.
Latin ... I actually picked up an older text book recently called "News Reporting and Writing," and one of the veterans I work with, Bill Goetz (who is also always willing to work with me on stuff, gave me a book to help with shooting called "Sequences: strategies for shooting news in the real world." I haven't spent as much time in them as I would like with the new little one at home, but I try to keep them with me so I can check them out when I can.
I feel like a lot of the personal aspects of my stories are nixed by producers in favor of just getting the facts and info out. I've tried pushing more info into intros and tags to help give myself more time for characters people can relate to in the story, but I find myself constantly fighting the battle to prevent dry stories. We finally have a new news director (we've been without one for the better part of a year) so I'm hoping things will change a bit on that front. If not, does anyone have any advice on how to push for emotion versus information?