Soldiers prepare for Iraq.....

[WPSDPHOTOG]

This is a story I did last week. We rode on a C-130 to to Camp Atterbury, Indiana to spend the day with soldiers leaving for Iraq in the next month. Like I'm sure most stations are they never want to give you alot of time to work on things. My reporter was given 3 hours tops to log and write and I was given "day of air" to edit it. My script was only tracks and soundbites, so I tried to spruce it up as much as I could with different things. Any feedback is appreciated. Thanks.



http://www.whas11.com/community/Sold...125037704.html

[Photojournalgist]

Nice job ... Cool PKG! Not sure I'd be able to do any better if I could even come close, but there were a couple of things I noticed.

The first nat pop kind of threw me off. I was expecting the pace of the story to pick up in that moment, but it went back to the slower feel and didn't pick back up until much later on. I did like the effect though.

Around the 3:20 mark it cuts from Sgt. Perry putting the picture in his pocket to what seemed like wallpaper vid. Sounds like you were on quite the time crunch and may not have had the vid or he may have fumbled with the pocket too much for it to be a smooth visual, but I might have gone with a couple more cutaways of him or the pic. It just seemed like we moved away from that character in the visual department before his story was over.

It took me a couple of times to really figure out the C-130. The first couple of times I watched it, it felt a lot like nothing more than drawn out transparency. Same with the beginning of the piece where the reporter talks about how you first talked about the brigade in the past. Felt kind of like transparency that could have been taken care of with a V.O. intro. Don't get me wrong though ... I liked this method. Much more meaningful than a couple of anchors referencing a past story. My issue is it felt like it took forever to get to the point, and once it did I lost all interest and completely forgot about everything before the 2:20 mark. It was kind of like watching a movie where the main characters are killed off half way through. One of them did pop back up in the end, but I had to put some thought into who he was. There was quite a bit of info and story thrown at me between his first appearance and the end of the package including a completely new character. A lot of that is writing though, and it doesn't help that I've gotten a little more used to not being able to do anything longer than 1:30. So I'm sure a lot of it is just personal preference.

Loved the wide interview angle with the gear in the foreground.

[Latin Lens]

Michael...great story, great approach. You got what you needed to make a good story even better. My only bash would be the C-130 part...great intro...I understand why you would show the plane part but I feel it could have been done quicker...natpop to transition to Indiana...because the people on the plane goint to the training was the hook but it got lost because the track gave it away which I think is/was a mistake. Once you got to the training it was all rock n roll...great pacing, great visuals and sounds. Awesome close. Great work. Just a small flub that could have been uitilized better but it didn't take too much away from the overall piece.