Category: Classwork

Reflections on Video Editing

Video is one of those things that always seems like a good idea… Until you actually have to edit it down and make it all presentable by the deadline. It becomes doubly so as I find that my best video editing happens between the hours of about 2 AM and 6 AM.

Sometimes it has been about preference. During my senior project1 in high school, the editing portion of the project, roughly the last third to last half, was done on a schedule that involved waking up at about noon or 1 PM, going in to school to meet with my adviser and talk to people, and then coming home, eating dinner, and then working at my desk til 6 AM, when the sun came up.

On the other hand, during the process of editing the UMass Model UN conference videos2, I burned the midnight oil out of necessity. I was taking pictures during the day at the conference, and at the social events, and then editing furiously when I got back to my hotel room.

I just finished a project for my Intro to Multimedia Journalism class. I did two short video interviews which I cut down to size to add a little flavor to my feature. The whole thing can be seen here, but in many ways, it is the video work I am most proud of.

Dan Miller is a graduate fellow at the NCSC. He talked about how he became involved with the center, the research he’s doing for weather projections, and the things he likes best about the NCSC.

Some of that pride is due to practice. I have more experience asking people questions and getting them to settle in front of the camera and then working to smooth out the stutters in the story telling, rearrange clips for effect, and build a narrative that pushes toward some overall effect.

I am still learning how to do that with print.

I also can’t ignore the part of film that is more rewarding. There’s a power to the moving image that gets to people. Trying to convince someone to sit down and read your article is an exercise in futility, much of the time. It usually ends in a dispiriting amount of criticism, which one has to accept gracefully and remember to apply in the future.

Cinema makes children of us all. The magic of watching another human being talk and emote, even from a hundred miles away, to hear their voice and know, in that moment, that they’re talking to you… It’s enchanting in a way that is wholly removed from the critical analysis that print inspires.

Incidentally, that very success, the enchantment, the romance of film is what makes me hate TV news. It lends itself so easily to partisanship, making it so easy to pull people along without them even realizing.
I want to find a way to escape the thrall of film. There has to be a way to marry the analysis of print with the emotion and passion of film and image.

I guess that magic is HTML5.

1 Back to Post Memories of the War: I made a short documentary (with the available resources, so please realize that these people are kids who went to private school) about what it’s been like growing up in the shadow of 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was 10 years after the fact, and Osama Bin Laden had just been killed right as I was settling into the project.
2 Back to Post I don’t have the video for this hosted anywhere, as the conference is for high schoolers, and all the video photo work was contained within the conference, and then distributed to the chaperones. It was one of the most hectic, stressful things I’ve ever done, and I’m hoping they invite me back again this year.

UMass, the Press, and the constant need to PARTY.

We have spent much time imagining a more controversial, or at least more critical, publication for the University community.

I came across this article by a UMass Journalism lecturer, through the UMass Journalism Program Facebook page, about the University’s suppression of the name of the girl who fell and later died. I remember when I was reading about it thinking that it was strange that we had heard nothing about it. Furthermore, she suffered her fall on the 16th, died on the 19th, and the Collegian, it seems, couldn’t gather enough information to report on it until the December 3rd. The Daily Hampshire Gazette did not report on it until the 29th, and did not include a name at the time, as I remember (I would go back and review that article, but the Gazette needs money, as evidenced by their paywall, and I have none to give them). Continue reading “UMass, the Press, and the constant need to PARTY.”

Mass murder: is the media to blame?

We can’t make these events into history. Journalism is the first draft of history, so that is where we must start. Twenty dead children are of interest to everyone. Whether they are most important or not, can be debated (and depends, largely, on where they are from. I record here, despite the perhaps now-clichéd nature of the comment, 20 dead white kids are worth more than 20 dead black kids, and you won’t even hear about them if they’re actually from Africa. There were a number of outraged remarks to the tune of “What about Sudan?” And it could be replaced with so many places). Continue reading “Mass murder: is the media to blame?”

I didn’t even know he was ill

Some of the first things that appear when you search “press criticism” are questions about whether it is dead or dying and whether or not Twitter is the culprit. I went looking for press criticism, because it was mentioned in our textbook, and I had no idea what it was. It turns out that press criticism is writing about journalism. When we’re talking about the presentation and content of Fox News or the New York Times, we’re engaging in press (or media) criticism. In fact, much of what we do here on these blogs is media criticism! Continue reading “I didn’t even know he was ill”