Daniel Sato

Over the weekend I created a short intro to put on the front of video pieces at The Telegram. It was my first foray into the world of After Effects and is based on a tutorial found at www.videocopilot.net. I still have to fine tune it a bit, add some music, play with the text and maybe shorten it a few seconds.

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I am no designer, but, like many things at a small newspaper, if you have any interest in something (and sometimes even if you don’t!), you will find yourself involved in it. The Telegram started their newspaper redesign in October 2009, a month before I arrived. However, it was put on hold while they worked to restaff the newsroom. In July, we picked it back up again and pushed it out in the beginning of August. Derek Thompson and I worked on some of the graphic elements while others picked out new fonts, moved elements around and generally tried to rework a product that has been the same for as long as anyone can remember. Though we definitely didn’t do anything groundbreaking, I think it is a step in the right direction.

We put together a new banner to tease web content, as well as new graphics to go inside stories.

Though it’s hard to tell from the above example, I think the most drastic change came in our teasers. We went from three static boxes containing a user contributed photo, sports tease and news tease, to a more dynamic layout that changes based on the content available that day.

Again, nothing that hasn’t been done before, but, for a newsroom that currently has six people with no designer, it works.

Last Wednesday I took part in a chat on Twitter about web journalism. One thing that became clear early on, even within “web journalism” many roles and responsibilities are highly specialized. Answers to questions regarding what a web journalist is, what responsibilities people have, and what titles people hold varied greatly depending on their role in their organization. There were back-end tech people who manage databases and work with code, reporters who were starting to use Twitter and still cameras, editors who help to produce packages and train staff, etc.

This may have been the reality for many of last week’s participants (working in dedicated, albeit small, web/online teams) but it is not mine, and I doubt it is the reality for other Web editors in many small market, rural areas. So what do I do on a typical day at work?

From 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. my day usually involves pagination and copy editing.

Copy editing: The aspect of my work most foreign to me, I will typically read through all of the days stories at some point in the day for content and/or for grammar/spelling.

Pagination: This usually involves paginating two local pages and, at times, two or three wire pages.

After 1 p.m. (we are an afternoon paper) my days usually involves a mix of posting content to the Web, blogging/social media management, training, podcasts, a mix of either shooting stills, creating audio slideshows or video, and the ever-present meeting.

Posting to Web: Fairly straightforward and not much different than any other CMS I’ve used it in the past whether it be College Publisher, WordPress or SaxoTech. The new AP Marketplace does add a slight hiccup to my workflow and, on the off chance that some other Web editor reads this, if you know of a way to publish select content to Marketplace without auto publishing everything, but also without having to enter each field manually, I would love to hear it.

Blogging/Social Media Management: Upkeep of the Telegram’s photo blog (soon to be multimedia blog as soon as I finish this post). Keeping content fresh and interacting with users on Twitter, Facebook and our SWKTalk forums.

Training: Weekly new media training for reporters and photographers. I also maintain www.danielsato.com/gctelegram, where I recap our training sessions and provide links to other tutorials and examples.

Podcasts: I have even gotten in to the podcast world, hosting “Talk of the Town,” where I discuss some topic that is pertinent either to Garden City or southwest Kansas each Wednesday afternoon at our local coffee house.

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Stephanie Cole, of the Kansas Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, discusses the organization’s view on the 895-megawatt coal-fired power plant that is proposed to be built in Holcomb.

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Dave Sjeklocha, Doctor of Veterinary Medicine at the Haskell County Animal Hospital, discusses the use of antibiotics in feed animals.

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USD 457 Board of Education president Mike Utz and board member Gloria Hopkins discuss the recent decision to join Schools for Fair Funding, which is considering the idea of suing the state for funding promised to schools. Schools for Fair Funding has since decided to proceed in its lawsuit with the state.

Photos, slideshows and video: Every now and again, I also get to go and play outside of the office.

The potential upside the amount and variety of work I do: I have experience in 9 of the top ten areas of expertise sought after by online media, and 17 of the 23 skills listed. Mark Shaver, who maintains the blog Depth Reporting, mentioned that his areas of expertise, computer programming and database management, were well down on the list, though I imagine they have gone up in demand since Serena Carpenter’s 2008 study, which the rankings originated from.

This post was written for an internal blog that I have been keeping for my work and was written for reporters with no video experience:

We all know the basics of what goes into a typical tv news piece:

• Interview and/or voice over narration
• Lots and lots of b-roll (footage to lay over interviews/narration)
  • Establishing shot
  • Medium shot
    
  • Detail shots (anything to do with hands, eyes, mouths talking, etc)

Some general rules of thumb for shooting (Again, these are just rules of thumb, and rules are made to be broken once you have a grasp of them):

• Use a tripod. Given the small size of our video camera, camera-shake while hand holding is almost guaranteed. Film your interview, establishing and medium shots and some details with the camera on the tripod. No one wants to feel like they are watching the Blair Witch Project. I can barely watch this video by ESPNwith commentators Michael Wilbon and Jon Barry (Apparently the video was so bad, they took it down)
• Take the camera off of the tripod. I know I just told you to keep it on the tripod. And you should, to gather all of the basic elements of your piece. For a photographer, this is similar to grabbing the shots you know will work in print. For reporters, I imagine it is getting the who, what, where, when and why in a story. Once that is done, you are free to get creative and find that well-composed shot.
• Change your angles. This applies mostly to when you take the camera off of the tripod. Place it up high, down low, frame your subject by shooting through something. Move back, get close. Try and avoid shooting from the same distance at the same height for each clip.
• When interviewing, control is key. As we discussed last week during the audio gathering training, you want to have control over your environment when conducting interviews. In the case of video interviews, whenever possible, you want both good sound and good light. Just as in audio gathering, this means moving your subject to a quiet location. As for light, window light works well indoors, shade outdoors.
• Avoid unnecessary zooming, panning and tilting. The most common culprit is the zoom while filming.
  
• Keep your shots static. Related to the last item, compose your shot as if you were taking a still photograph. Let your subject walk into and out of the frame, rather than following him/her around.
• Storyboard your video ahead of time. Just as you have a list of questions you plan to ask before heading in to an interview, you should have a sense of what shots you want before you start filming. This will be a great help when you are back in the office editing, which is the real time-intensive part of video production. Having to sort through and make clips of five to 10 minutes of footage is far easier than 30 minutes of footage.

Some video examples:

One of my favorite multimedia producers. Katy Newton, and her husband Sean Connelly used to work up in the Bay Area. This ongoing multimedia piece features profiles of people that Katy finds on the Missed Connections area of Craigslist. They also have done a great package for the Oakland Tribune called Not Just a Number, which puts a name, face and, at times, a story, to all of the murders that happen in Oakland and the surrounding area. It is an amazing piece as well.