Really?

[Rad]

I put this out there because of some of the comments I got Friday at work...

Help me put those comments in to perspective.

(shot, written and edited by me)

http://www.wral.com/lifestyles/outdoors/video/9869605/#/vid9869605

 

[cyndygreen1]

Ouch...you have some great elements that may not have mixed well together. I can kind of see what you were trying to do, but am not sure it worked.

First - you had the teens with the camera and it looked as if we were going to see some strange funny teen stuff.
Second - The older gentleman and what appeared to be grandkids and bears.
Third - The rangers and outdoor education and...wolves???
It took a stretch to bring them together and it didn't quite work. Any of these three elements might have been strong by itself. As you hopped around I almost got lost and was wondering what the point was.

The teen segment showed promise...good idea. Get a point of view and follow it. Would have loved to see more of what the girls were seeing and thinking.
The older man/kids was most complete but the bear video was extremely shaky. That might have made a nice stand-alone if you had enough.
The ranger segment was my favorite...but it seemed to lose its punch when you added in the other elements.

Your strengths - great imagination and strong writing. You have good shooting and editing skills. I loved the howling sequence at the end...nice segue into that.

And face it - we all learn by doing (and I will NOT share my embarrassing moment, but trust me, they were far worse. Why there was the time I set a horse race to calliope music....)

What were the comments at work?

 

[Rad]

Cindy, those are very much my own thoughts!
I didn’t feel good about this story, it was a last minute shoot and the editing was rushed so I could be sent to uplink a shot 2 hours away.

After it aired, I got quite a few “Great Story”’s from anchors and producers. I think the "not-so-camera-shy cousin" stole the attention, but wasn't part of the actually story.

This story turned out different than I thought it would. It was sort of a mush of ideas, none seemed to work like I thought.

I knew it would be an almost full moon that night, with the full moon two days later when the story aired. So I was thinking a Full Moon Story…. But it turned out cloudy, and that one shot of the moon was about all I got!

I also was told we would be out there in the dark, so the original thought with giving someone the camera (it has night vision) was to do a sort of Blair Witch thing.. but we ended up being out there with too much light.

The bit with the bears I shot on a whim, the original idea was this piece would be just about the Wolves… but the trip into the woods to hear them howl was very short, and just didn’t seem to carry the story.

So I sort of put them in a bowl, mixed, add an audio track and it’s sort of a story casserole. I thought it was a good save, but a mediocre story.

 

[cyndygreen1]

Keep moving or die (creatively). I think it's great that you experimented. Take the lessons and move on to your next story, but keep those ideas flowing. And listen to your own voice. Or the voices of those you respect.