Awesome interview responses

I asked my students to come up with five tips for awesome interviews. I received some great responses. Here are some of their tips with a link to their blog post:

Isabel Lauby: It is important to determine the location of the interview that is pertinent to the story line.  For example, when I did my package over boys on the drill team, I interviewed their coach while the band and drill team was practicing, providing a relevant background.  If you capture your interview in an interesting setting it will make your package better.

http://queenofconvergence.blogspot.com/2014/11/5-tips-to-great-interview.html

Pedro Von Simson: Use your first questions to make the subject feel comfortable. Incorporate easier questions about subjects such as their background that do not make the interviewee defensive. If you immediately start off with your tougher questions, your interviewee with be less likely to feel comfortable and therefore provide worse answers.

Tougher questions should close out the interview. These are the "meat" of the package where you get the important and controversial answers that lead to the soundbites that you will most likely incorporate into your package. The first questions are more important to develop background information about your subject for your voice over instead of being used as sound bites.

http://kansaskonvergence.blogspot.com/2014/11/five-tips-to-successful-journalism.html

Quen Barkyoumb:  Prepare everything that you'll need to conduct an interview. Make sure your camera angle is on point, audio is at the right level, your computer is charged, the lights are in the right spots, and every setting is at its correct degree. This will give your interviewee a sense of importance because you're all ready to proceed without any distractions. If you're messing around with your technology during the interview, then your respondent is likely to be annoyed.

http://pickmybrainquenbarkyoumb.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-interview-process.html

Challenge: Interviewing Tips & Tricks

1. Watch this video from Digital Juice about Interviewing Tips.

2. Your challenge: Create a video tutorial about five interview tips similar to the one in the link above.

3. Write a script and storyboard before you begin shooting.

4. Use examples and non-examples. This should be a video that teaches future students how to set-up, film and conduct an interview.

5. Think about the different phases of an interview: pre-interview, interview, post-interview (editing phase).

6. Post your video to your YouTube channel and blog. Include the tips with a short explanation on your blog under your video.

Cool video: Electrathon car

I wanted to share this cool video that a couple of my students produced:


Two things really stood out to me in this video:

1. Storytelling. This video has a clear beginning, middle and end. The video starts with an unassembled car. Throughout the video we see students working on and building the car. The final shot is the finished car driving away out of frame. Story. It is so simple, but something that is so hard to do.
2. Shot composition. We have worked hard on the six-shot system and sequencing. This video is textbook in my opinion. We see a student turn the steering wheel, and the next shot is the actual wheel turning. Another sequence has the student being interviewed while we see a shot sequence of him: close-up of his hands and face, a medium shot and wide shot. There are more sequences throughout, but this does an excellent job.

Here is the blog post by the editor, Sean McPartland, who does a really nice job reflecting on the project.

Analyze: Web vs. TV stories

Check out these three videos about the same subject: a soccer freestylist. Two were produced for the web (ESPN), and one was produced for a local TV station.

Web

Web #2

TV (This may take some time to load, even though it says it isn't working)

On your blog (in complete paragraphs):

• Which was your favorite version of the story? Explain why
• Discuss three elements that the videos have in common.
• Discuss three elements that are different.
• If you were to summarize it, what is the difference between web videos and TV?
• What elements can you emulate in your own work?

Challenge: Raven Props

For this challenge, you will talk to a person nominated for Raven Props and have them tell you the story they were nominated for.

When you edit, use the crop tool to cut the video into quick sections, one sentence per angle.

The story should be about a minute long, but still contain the same narrative arc we have discussed in class. You must find a good storyteller.

Supplement it with creative B-Roll.

Here are examples:

ICU: You missed another birthday

ICU: I'm not interested in missed connections

September top stories

My convergence journalism students have been producing some great work for ONW...NOW! this semester. Here are some of the top news packages from recent weeks:

Tyler Soetaert and Quen Barkyoumb:




Tiajah Holt, Joe Kolega, Rachel Brookhart:




Samantha McCue and Rachel Brookhart

Challenge #2: Top examples

Challenge #2 dealt with cutting carrots, or sequencing. We saw many great examples of what it takes to do sequencing using the 6-shot system. We also learned that you can never have enough B-Roll to build your sequencing. Shoot, shoot, shoot.

Here are a couple of the top examples:

Tiajah and Sean:



Samantha and Savannah: