I along with Reporter editor in chief Bronson Pettitt and photographer Ray Starin went up to the Minnesota Newspaper Association awards yesterday. We attended two workshops, one on writing better leads and one on photography and video. The latter workshop was conducted by John Gaps III, a senior photographer at the Des Moines Register and a former Associated Press photographer.
I'm mentioning this particular workshop because much of the material Gaps spoke about and demonstrated seemed to fit right in with the theme of this JournalistU class. Gaps and (others at the Des Moines Register) have become literally one-man film production crews for the paper, which has started posting short videos on its web site. (If the site is any indication, the Register is leading the charge into the citizen journalist world.)
Gaps showed us several of the short videos (usually around 90 seconds) that he has done for the Register, including this one, about a farmer feeding cattle in the bitter cold. Gaps is able to put together these videos in about three hours, which includes the time he spends filming footage and then editing it on iMovie. Gaps is usually also responsible for getting photographs of whatever event he is filming. He spoke at length about the challenges involved in making sure he got both the photographs and the footage, and how to prepare for and meet those challenges. It was pretty interesting stuff. He also talked some about photography in general and what to look for when taking photographs.
The other nice opportunity we had was to see an immense variety of Minnesota newspapers -- both daily and weekly -- and what those papers have done. Some of the layout work and stories were tremendous, even from relatively small weekly and daily newspapers. It's always nice to see what others in your field have been able to do and it provides inspiration and motivation for someone like myself to try to do better.
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3 comments:
So Gaps does all the filming and editing himself, which is pretty impressive. Did he show you the steps it takes to edit and where did you find out about the meeting you went to? You should let Ellen know if there is going to be any other speakers like Gaps around. I think it would be an interesting process to watch.
I agree with you both. The work Gaps does is far beyond what a traditional print reporter would have been asked to do before..and he can shoot and edit the video in 3 hours? Impressive. Maybe we should show this in class as an example of online journalism (and what citizen journalists could submit). Thanks, Derek and Trent.
Hi Trent -- he didn't have time to go into detail on everything he did, but he did explain what he used (iMovie), how he went about shooting the footage and the pictures, and how he was able to complete everything in around three hours. He didn't get too much into the editing process itself, though.
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