Just me and my thoughts.
I noticed not a folks have responded to this one. It might be because they don't want to be harsh. Neither do I...so I'll use little smilies to make sure you know I'm just giving you friendly tough love while respecting you and your abilities.
OK...It probably bothers some...but I don't mind that you shot a lot of this package handheld. Nice mix of shots, shaky, but nice.
Then...a strange set up shot of your interview subject standing in front of a window...very wide. To me...odd. Then boring, predictable set up video using a cutaway of the reporter! Why? With all due respect, the reporter, if she's going to appear in the story as she did, needs to look better. You didn't do her any favors. Better set up for that interview...since you were staging it anyway...would have her working, doing something, anything, other than standing in front of a big window, framed wide, looking at a less than attractive shot of your reporter writing in her notebook.
The stand up was pure NPPA. That's not a good thing in my book. You had this overworked hand sequence going. It did nothing to advance the story. You used it to get the reporter into the car from outside. Why didn't you just start with her in the car and save the time? It screamed...to me...of someone so into sequences that they lost sight of what the story was about. You didn't do as imaginative sequence with texting? Why? You used only one phone to visualize all the track about texting. Why?
Your cop interview headshot...floats left to right. Like you weren't looking through the viewfinder and the camera drifted so you tried to get it back into position smoothly. Sorry, it just looked like a screw up from my end as a viewer. None of the other interviews had this move so...that's why I thought it was an attempted recovery from a mistake by an inattentive shooter during an interview.
You used a lot of what I call generic traffic shots to cover this story. Kind of boring. Especially with how often you did it. I saw so many of them...then you use just that kind of shot as a close shot? Why? Why not some fingers texting or something? Not very imaginative at all. Like you lost enthusiasm for the story.
That was a three minute long story. You obviously were not crashing it to get on the air. You had time to set up lights on one key interview...but not on others like the guy at the cell phone store.
You need to be more consistent throughout a story. Not just hit or miss with the level of quality. An after thought on the cell phone store interview. You obviously didn't set up a light. You should have had him facing the window more. The harsh, half light on his face made him look evil. He's not. He's a shopkeeper. One who graciously granted an interview for the story and you didn't do him any favors. A simple change of screen direction, having the reporter on your left instead of right during the interview, would have solved the problem. You didn't need to move your camera at all to have made that better.
Listen, I could nit pick some more but...I want this to be positive for you.
Quick points.
Get more consistent.
Don't get caught up in doing useless sequences that waste time. The story was three minutes long and could have had better impact and still be shorter. What you added to the story didn't help. In fact it ate up time you might have used for nat sound breaks that you admit you had to drop due to time concerns.
You should have shot lots more fingers texting on cell phones. You had no video of anyone texting in a car. None! That was the story and yet you didn't have a frame of video to illustrate the key element of your story other than part of the reporter stand up. That didn't stop you from going three minutes though!
(note smiley and it's reason for being here to indicate I'm giving you a friendly, respectful tweak of the cheek for something you should know better to do than you did.)
You seemed to have time to put this story together. It wasn't done in a couple of hours...was it?
Use more imagination...make that...direct your imagination in the right direction. To visualize the story you are covering and not cover supposed bases like nat pops and sequencing that are today's formula for good. They are important but do them to help the story, not just to do them with visual elements that don't advance the story telling of the subject at hand.
Texting!
Look back at that story and count how many times you showed fingers texting during that three minutes.
I think you'll learn something by doing that alone.
Best to you!
