Putting Video First

When we started putting content online, we made one of our top goals to be getting new content on the website every day.  For the most part, we did that pretty well.  We had smaller stories, a couple of decent photos, but there was one thing missing:  video.

Considering my video background, it bothered me a great deal. The problem was a logistical one. It was fairly easy to do a write up of an event, edit some photos and get the story up within a day…2 days at the most. With video, however, there’s a lot more involved. You have to import it, trim the clips, put it together logically, write the voiceovers, and export it. And that, of course, is assuming that all of your equipment is running without a hitch. Oh yeah, and your reporters have other classes to go to as well (gasp!)

What we had was a 2 day story that, if we included video, would sit in the “draft” folder until the video was done. To say the least, it was not ideal for the goals we had set out for ourselves.

After about a year of this, it occurred to me: why is video chasing the rest of the story? Why isn’t it the other way around?

Too many times, we think, “Oh, that’d be great video to go along with our story.” Instead, we sometimes need to think, “We have a great video package on this, what can we do to highlight that?” I’m guilty of that kind of thinking and I’ve been teaching video production for quite awhile now.

So what comes first at your school? Is video a nice “add-on” to your story or is it the other way around?