Video provides material for the radio star!

As many of you will be aware, being a one-man-band reporter, shooter, producer, editor, graphics designer and so on, is no easy task.

Well, for some of us, it doesn't end there. In the current economy, many multi-skillers are attempting to produce material for more and more clients. Rather than produce different pieces for different clients, one pretty good model is to resell material to multiple clients (if it is contractually legitimate to do so), and that often means not just television networks... it means multiple media types, and multiple platforms.

More or less every story I do for a TV outlet is turned into a radio story for various stations and networks, and a text story for broadcasters' websites. I have been doing this for many years. In fact, radio is my background.

It's important to distinguish between a media and a platform. When I talk about multi-platform, I am talking about producing, say, a video which can be shown on multiple platforms such as TV and the internet. When I talk about multi-media, I am talking about producing a project of multiple forms of media, such as radio, television, text and so on.

I remember when multi-media really started becoming a buzzword in newsrooms. Back in the early 1990s, the BBC began turning most of its newsrooms into multi-media centers, and its reporters were required to produce their stories for radio and television. It's a good model and, for a freelance one-man-band video journalist, allows you to make additional revenue from your existing work.

But it's not quite as straight forward as you may think, from my experience. I have compiled a couple of tips for successfully converting your existing television stories into radio stories, and doing it quickly. It really is a very fast process, IF you take a few important things into account at the start of the process. You can make life difficult for yourself if you don't:

1) When you are scripting and editing your television story, bare in mind that it will be turned into radio. To avoid a wholesale sound remix when it comes to converting your TV project into radio, make sure you use natural sound in your TV version that will make sense for radio. Think about whether the sound you are using will require explanation for a radio audience that does not have the pictures to help them.

2) Avoid visual references in your script. In television, it is easy to write things like "on the left" or "in the background" and so on. When you are writing your TV piece, think about what will work for radio. Also, avoid things like "here a man hammers a nail". This will work for TV, but for radio you might want to use a sound-up of a hammer and nail, and say something like "A man hammers a nail". The word "here" doesn't really work for radio.

3) In your TV script, use set-up to introduce your soundbites. This is obviously not so easy when you face time constraints. But it will help you significantly when you come to exporting the sound for radio. If you don't introduce your speakers, the radio audience will not know who the speakers are. When you're filming, be sure to gather establishing material for each of your interviewees so you have pictures you can use to introduce them.

4) If you follow the tips above, you should simply be able to export the sound from your TV story and you'll have a radio piece. Once you've cut your television story and exported it from your editing program, go through the sequence and take out the sound that will not make sense for radio. For a radio story, chunks of dry voicetrack is fine. That is better than having natural sound that will confuse the listener. You may want to be more diligent in using fades and tidying up the audio when cutting a radio story. Afterall, the audio is all the audience has, so imperfections in the audio will be much more noticeable than on the television.

When you have fine-tuned the piece, simply export the audio, mixed down to mono with the natsound track and the voicetrack.

5) If you use Final Cut, you will probably export a .wav file. To convert this to other format, I recommend a piece of Mac software called Switch. It can convert from pretty much any audio format to any audio format. Here is a link to that software.

The ability to produce radio is a useful tool in the freelancer's arsenal. Radio is nowhere near as lucrative as television. But if you are producing something for a television client anyway, and want to make some additional money from the same material, you can sometimes make up to $500 from a radio story of a few minutes in duration. If you're a one-man-band, it might just be another instrument worth adding to your one-man orchestra.

Robert Gibbs attacks the British press - fair?

I was somewhat taken aback by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs' harsh criticism of the British press in his daily briefing today.

Here is a link to the Politico story on his comments.

"I want to speak generally about some reports I've witnessed over the past few years in the British media," Gibbs said. "In some ways, I'm surprised it filtered down."

"Let's just say if I wanted to look up, if I wanted to read a write-up of how Manchester United fared last night in the Champions League Cup, I might open up a British newspaper," he continued. "If I was looking for something that bordered on truthful news, I'm not entirely sure it'd be the first pack of clips I'd pick up."

I think that for those of us who have worked in the British news media, this is a little jarring. I find that the U.K. has some pretty fine newspapers - The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, The Financial Times, The Times, The Evening Standard, and many others.

On the broadcast side, the BBC provides comprehensive international news coverage as do other domestic outlets. In fact, under British law, broadcasters are held to a higher standard of reporting accuracy than are their American counterparts. There is a fairness doctrine in the U.K. and stiff penalties exist, usually too stiff, for reporting that is proven libelous in court.

There have been many cases where editors and journalists have lost their jobs for shoddy reporting, yet most papers and broadcasters do not hold back on critical analysis and satirical treatment of the government. One example that springs to mind is the case of Piers Morgan, the former editor of the Daily Mirror, who lost his job over the publication of faked abuse photos from Iraq. Here is the story from 2004

To broadly claim that British press reporting is inaccurate is a bit sweeping.

British newspapers, of late, have done quite a bit of enterprise reporting on U.S. politics and policy, especially since the war in Iraq began in 2003. It seems this reporting compares favorably to the reporting of U.S outlets, especially when so many media organizations in the United States are alleged to have political agendas of their own.

To be fair to Robert Gibbs, there have been cases where the British press has not excelled. The newspaper business in the U.K. has a rather unsavory tradition of checkbook journalism where editors, mostly from the tabloids, often pay large amounts of money for exclusive stories. These stories are mostly kiss-and-tell fluff. But that mentality has trickled down throughout the business. As a broadcaster, I would often be asked by potential interviewees whether they would get paid for their time. Clearly, when cash is introduced into the equation, accuracy or candor may take a back seat. As most of you will know, Richard Nixon was paid for his series of interviews with David Frost.

There is also a certain uneasiness that I find when consuming British news content, because often facts or claims are often not sourced. American newspapers are generally much better at giving at least an indication of where their information may have come from. This is not to say that the British press reports in question do not have reputable sources. There is just not much disclosure.

In addition, the British press has an unfortunate habit of rewarding rather dubious behavior by reporters. Reporter Gerri Peev of the Scotsman was given an award for her "scoop" in this story

Sadly, the comments that formed the basis of the story were given off the record. But that didn't stop the article being recognize at the Scottish Press Awards.

I'm interested to your opinions on this subject. I believe the British press has its problems. But I'm not sure they are more numerous than those of the American press.

Making broadcast quality lower 3rds

For the most part when I produce lower 3rds I prefer to use a combination of applications. For the most part I use Photoshop to generate my lower 3rd background graphic bar, and Livetype to create my animated text. If I'm not using animation in my text then I just use the lower 3rd function in Final Cut.

1) Open Photoshop, go to the File menu and select New. From the resulting preset drop down menu, select the video format you are using. If you are using a format that is not listed you can create a custom setting.

2) Create a new layer and select it so your checkerboard layer is now on top. Delete the original plain white background.

3) Select the shape tool from the toolbar (shortcut U). I prefer to use the rounded rectangle. Use the tool to draw the shape of your lower 3rd background graphic and position it where you want it using the move tool.

4) You can fill the bar with color using the foreground color function in the tool bar. If you would like to use an image, animation or video for the bar, open the file in Photoshop. It will appear as a background under the layers tab. Select it and drag it into your checkerboard layer. You can manipulate the size of the image if you wish. Then position it with the move tool so that it covers the lower 3rd bar you drew. Go to layer menu at the top of the screen and select "create clipping mask". You can use your image to fill all or part of the bar.

5) You can now add lots of cool effects to your bar such as bevel and emboss, drop shadows, satin, color overlay, blend an image with the bar color and so on. Play with it until you get the look you want. You can add other shapes within the bar using the shape tool as we did in step 3. You can also add logos to your bar and then change their size to fit, using free transform (ctrl T). In my finished product below you will see that I used the FSN logo and blended it with the lower 3rd bar.



6) We're now ready to add a gradient opacity. Add a layer mask to your bar, make sure black is selected as the background color, white in the foreground, select your gradient tool and draw the gradient you want on your bar from left to right. You can play with this until you have the fade you want.

7) Save your completed bar as a .tif file. Make sure you check the transparency box when you save in order to keep the opacity properties when we come to import into Final Cut. Select 'NONE' for compression.

8) Import into Final Cut and position in the right place as we did in the simple method in the previous post. If you used the correct preset at the start of the process in Photoshop, you should not need to do much positioning.

9) Now we're going to open LiveType to create our animated text. Type the text you need in the box at the top of the screen. You don't need to bother making the text the exact size you need right now, or putting the text in the lower third of the screen.

10) Apply the font, animation, color, size, tracking, texture, glow, shadow that you want and save the resulting file to your hard-drive. I have gone with a fairly basic white font with a small drop shadow.

11) Import the file into Final Cut, bring into the sequence, and use 'Image and Wireframe' to size the text and move it to the right place on the lower 3rd bar. As usual, have the text file that you're manipulating open in the viewer and the finished result in the canvas.



As you can see, the result is fairly professional. There are many other things that you can do using this combination of software. For example, you can add animation to the bar if you have an animated logo you want to incorporate.

This is the method I most often use to achieve results for my lower 3rds. There are, of course, many other ways to create lower 3rds. If anyone has any good recommendations, I'd love to hear about them.

Roxana Saberi returns home, wins prize

I'm a few days late in posting this, but I wanted to mention my relief that my former FSN colleague Roxana Saberi, the Iranian-American journalist, has returned to the United States. Saberi spent about 100 days in Evin prison in Iran before being released following an appeal.

Immediately upon her arrival, there was good news for Roxana. A film co-scripted by her won a prize in one of the Cannes Film Festival competitions on Saturday.

Here is a link to that story.

Captioning brought to you by ... a one man band!

There are certainly many good ways to create professional looking lower 3rd graphics for your video. Many news video editors are not responsible for their lower 3rds which are often inserted by the graphics department of the network they work for, such as the graphic seen here from a story I put together for AFP TV. Below, I will create a different lower 3rd for this same picture.


The need for a one-man-band to create lower thirds comes when you're in the game of making finished pieces for clients. Sometimes, the built-in lower 3rd, or text creator in Final Cut can do the trick, but that is very limited in its potential for creating a broadcast quality lower 3rd. Firstly, you generally want more than text - you want a graphic background for your caption too.

In my next post, I will show you how I create my own lower 3rds. It's not necessarily the best way, but it's the way I prefer, and its relatively simple.

But first I want to show you a real easy method I used to use in Final Cut which produces acceptable looking lower 3rds:

1) Find an image or block of color you want to use for your lower 3rd graphic background. Import that image into Final Cut. I prefer to use some sort of texture, or something I have created.

2) Find the place in the timeline you want your lower 3rd to be, and drag the image into the video channel above your current video - the same as using the superimpose function.

3) Position the cursor over the image in the timeline. You'll see the image appear in the center of the canvas, superimposed over the top of your video. Now double click on the image in the timeline to bring it up in the viewer.

4) Select 'Image and Wireframe' and position the graphic in the lower 3rd of the screen, in the place you would like it to go. You may need to manipulate the image at this stage to make it fit. As you postion the image in the viewer, you will see how it looks over the video in the canvas.

5) Once you've positioned your image, which will be the background for your lower 3rd caption, you can add some attributes. In this simple lower 3rd creation method, I usually create some opacity. Select the motion tab in the viewer and check 'opacity'. Pull the slider until you reach the desired level of opacity. (You will notice the opacity is constant. In the second method, I will show you how to create a gradient opacity so your lower 3rd bar gradually fades out.) You can also add a drop shadow.

6) We're now ready to add some text. In this simple example, we are going to use Final Cut's built in lower third text generator. If you want to do more with your lower 3rds, you can install a free FCP plug in by Alex 4D.

For the moment, select lower 3rd in the text menu in the viewer. In 'controls', customize your text and give it the font, color and whatever other attributes you want. Just for fun, I will add a bar from the background menu in the control panel.

7) Drag your text to the video channel above the channel that contains your background image. You are now using 3 video channels. Use 'Image and Wireframe' again to alter the size of your text and position it over the top of your graphic. Make sure the cursor remains over the relevant section of the timeline so you can see the results of what you're doing in the canvas.

8) Once you are happy with the results, render the timeline. Here is the result of the lower 3rd I just created. You will see my image was a kind of blue metal texture. I added some opacity to the image and drop shadows to the text and background bar:


You can add disolves or any other video transitions your wish to your image background or text so that the lower 3rd fades in and out, or wipes in and out, for example. The regular FCP lower 3rd function allows you to create plain color backgrounds, a bar between the lines of text like I inserted, or no background at all. The Alex 4D plugin gives you more flexibility.

In my next post, I will show you how I create more professional looking lower 3rds using a combination of Final Cut, Photoshop and Livetype.

Compression depression

I've had several emails recently from readers who are struggling to find a good method to compress their video files for transmission.

A lot of us multi-skilled VJs are sending our footage back to base from laptops with broadband cards, or plugging into the internet in hotel rooms etc. Sending material over the internet makes a huge amount of financial sense, and it's gotten a lot easier. I used to lug around a Telestream Clipmail where you had to dub material in real time so the box could convert your package into a relatively poor quality MPEG-2 before sending. The good thing about it though was that it would convert from NTSC to PAL on the fly if necessary.

Nowadays, all you need is a piece of free, or at least inexpensive, software to produce pretty high-quality compressed files of a size that can be sent over a broadband connection in a timely manner.

Now, I am absolutely not an expert on this, but I have experimented quite a bit with different pieces of software and compressions. TV stations will clearly want their footage compressed as little as possible to avoid a poor quality picture on a large screen. For the web, you can get a little more creative with your compressions but you still want a good quality picture.

I am very open to suggestions if people think they have a better way of doing things than I'm about to suggest. Many videographers swear by DV, AVI, WMV or DivX files. My suggestions below are based on what I already do for various TV networks. These compressions also work well for web, but you can often get away with much more compression for that medium.

I mostly use MPEG Streamclip. I find it is fast and efficient for compression, and also does a pretty good down'n'dirty standards conversion when you're in a hurry. But there are other pieces of software you can use such as JES Deinterlacer, Visual Hub, MPEG-2 Works, Apple Compressor (Final Cut), Quicktime Player Pro and numerous others.

All my examples below are compressions designed to give the best results in SD. Sending HDV footage via FTP is generally a nightmare, although the H264 compression is probably the way to go there.

My method:

1) The first thing you want to do is SHOOT in HDV regardless of whether you want the final product to be in HDV or SD. As I explained in a previous post, HDV footage down-converted to SD during digitization carries a higher quality than footage shot in DVCAM SD or DV SP (see the next point).

2) There are many ways to convert from HDV to SD footage once you have edited in HDV. But I prefer to down-convert during digitization (edge crop for 4:3, letterbox, or squeeze for anamorphic 16:9). If you down-convert from HDV 16:9 to standard DV wide 16:9, you can create a 4:3 movie later using these MPEG Streamclip export settings: Zoom - 133.3%, X/Y - 1.333.

3) When you have cut your movie, export a completely uncompressed file using the settings with which you edited. In Final Cut, this will be an uncompressed Quicktime Movie (Apple DV/DVCPRO - NTSC or PAL). Compressing during the Final Cut export process is slow, in my experience. It also does not yield the best results. I find compressing in Final Cut often results in picture degradation. Exporting an uncompressed movie means you will not be compressing twice by putting the file through MPEG Streamclip. To export an uncompressed movie from Final Cut, go to Export in the File menu, and select "Quicktime Movie", NOT "as Quicktime Conversion". Use current settings.

4) Take the resulting file and begin the compression process. These are methods I use for different clients.

MP4 FILES:



For many of the clients I shoot for, I need to perform an NTSC to PAL conversion, but the compression can be carried out on the same way if there is no standards conversion involved. I usually produce MP4 files. MP4 allows you to create small file sizes but with a superior quality to MP2. I need to make the file of a size that I can quickly transmit using FTP.

I plug the uncompressed file from Final Cut into MPEG Streamclip and use the settings on the left.

If your movie does not contain a lot of movement, you do not need to check the Multipass option. This simply helps with quality when there is action in your shots. For a straight interview or something similar, you can do a single pass.

As you can see, I have used the H264 compression codec for this MP4 file. I have manually set a data rate. Usually, anything over 2000 kbps is fine for a news item. Even if you were sending the piece via satellite, you would get some reduction in quality. For a 90 - 120 second story, I usually go about 4000 kbps. The story in the case about was about 2:30. As you can see, the resulting file size is just 124MB which is good.

Upper field first dominance should be used with H264, and I always deinterlace the video with MPEG Streamclip.

As you can see, I have selected PAL settings (25 fps, 720x576). If you are not converting to PAL, just leave the frame rate box blank, and select DV-NTSC from the list on the left. Frame blending and better downscaling can also be deselected. Frame blending simply helps smooth things over when changing the frame rate.

QUICKTIME FILES:



For one particular NTSC client, I actually use Final Cut to export. In the export menu, select "as Quicktime conversion". Use the settings on the right.

Always deselect "Prepare for internet streaming". 424x318 is the default dimensions for exporting in H264. The video will appear in standard DV-NTSC 720x480. When I create PAL MP4 H264 movie files, I usually deinterlace the video. Over time, I have found there can be field problems associated with interlaced video when converting to PAL with the dominance on the upper field first, required for codecs other than DV.

However, in the Quicktime example, I have been asked by the client to keep the video interlaced, and it does not cause these problems, However, it doesn't cause any issues to deinterlace. There is a nice explainer on interlaced vs progressive video here, and why interlacing is bad when resizing video like you would be in an NTSC to PAL conversion.

There are, of course, many satisfactory ways to compress video so it remains broadcast quality but of a size that can be realistically sent over a wireless broadband connection. The smaller the better, especially given that at a lot of events, many journalists are sharing the same wifi connection.

If anyone has any good compression suggestions, or good ideas as to hardware for sending material, please post them up.

Judges hear Saberi appeal

There are some very hopeful signs for my former colleague Roxana Saberi who is in jail in Iran. She is a journalist based in Tehran who was jailed for spying for the United States.

Her appeal is currently being considered by a panel of judges:

TEHRAN (Reuters) – An Iranian court heard the appeal of U.S.-born journalist Roxana Saberi against her eight-year jail sentence for espionage on Sunday and her lawyer said he was optimistic it would be fundamentally changed.

Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders has said Saberi's conviction was a warning to foreign journalists working in Iran ahead of its presidential election in June.

Full article here - also at Bloomberg

The future of television explored in Forbes

As I've written about before, all of us who work in TV and video should be interested in the way our industry is going, especially as one-man-band reporters are often seen as THE future of television and online video content.

Sramana Mitra at Forbes writes an interesting piece about the implosion of old media, and how TV news is becoming unwatchable.

Initiative to tackle a "crisis in journalism"

Berkeley, CA—The Center for Investigative Reporting is launching a new statewide reporting initiative to produce in-depth multimedia journalism specific to California and to engage the public on issues of critical importance to the state.

It will launch with a grant of $1.2 million over three years from The James Irvine Foundation. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation also has awarded a grant of $1.2 million for the same time period, primarily for reporting on education, which is in part a challenge grant to encourage other funders to support this new initiative.

The full article is here. It looks like CIR is going to be hiring for this soon.

More video for online newspaper sites?

For many years now, news organizations have broadly made content free to online readers and viewers. It's one of the reasons that the traditional newspaper business has run into so much trouble over recent years. Now that more people than ever consume their news online, the dead-tree version is becoming less relevant. Also, a newspaper is going to be make much less money showing a banner ad on a website than it is from displaying a full page ad in a paper.

However, one media mogul seems set on changing the current dynamic. According to a report in today's New York Post (a Murdoch paper), Rupert Murdoch's News Corp is examining ways to charge internet readers for content:

"In one of the most ambitious online undertakings by a media outfit, News Corp. has assembled a team of executives to devise a system to charge for content on the Web.

The team is said to be looking at creating a user-friendly device akin to Amazon's Kindle to deliver content from such News Corp. newspapers as The Wall Street Journal, The Times of London and The New York Post, as well as content from the company's television and movie units."

You can read the full article here

The upside to all the newspaper industry woes is that it means traditional publications are on the hunt for ways to make their website content stand out from the rest. Some leading newspaper conglomerates have already starting including multi-media content on their sites - good news for the kinds of multi-skilled journalists who read this blog; bad news for scribes who just write and are now sadly losing their jobs.

In the News Corp example, clearly a media group of that size already has TV resources that can be tapped to provide content to online platforms - and it's going to need to harness those resources if it's going to be able to charge for content. A fee site needs some serious added value to successfully attract people away from free sources of online news.

But for smaller newspaper groups, or ones that are not already in the television and video business, they are going to need to compete here. If Murdoch is right, and pricing for online news content is the future, then online news content is going to have to catch up with the present first. And that means more video - a lot more.

Ooops - that looks crap! Thank goodness for Final Cut

OK, so we've all made a real hash of something on a shoot. At the risk of making myself appear to be a bumbling fool, I've listed a few things that I have screwed up, and some ways I have found to correct the problem later.

Being able to fix problems in post-production is an important part of being a one-man-band reporter. If you are gathering large amounts of material in a hurry, mistakes happen.

For example, on a shoot for The Newshour, I managed to smash the XLR sockets from the side of my Z1U, rendering all external audio devices useless. Unfortunately, this was at the beginning of a day's shooting. In order not to have to call it a day, I rigged up a laptop next to each interviewee and recorded the sound from their lav into a piece of audio editing software. I then later married up the picture and sound in Final Cut, reducing noise where necessary. It was time consuming but meant the day was not a bust. It's a good example of having to think outside the box when things go wrong.

Here are some less dramatic problems that you might only notice when you get into the edit suite:

1) Wonky picture.

Here is an example of an interview I did where I was simply not careful enough to make sure the tripod was straight. You can see the result in the shot below. It's a very basic mistake.

The solution here is to use Final Cut's wireframe function to straighten the shot. Pull the picture clockwise or anti-clockwise to correct the unwanted tilt. 

In this case I lined up the edge of the blinds with the side of the screen, making sure they were exactly parallel.

You may need to zoom in on the shot just a little if you have had to make a large correction and part of the frame is now black.  On the right is the result.

A small zoom shouldn't impact your image quality too much. If it does, you can try to sharpen the picture a little. Don't overdo it because it will look grainy.

2) Shot washed out.

Here is an example of a standup shot for PBS' Judy Woodruff in Miami. It was one of those classic Florida days where the sky was gray and everything looked flat. 

In the original shot on the left, the colors were washed out and the backdrop looked a little too white.

The solution here is pretty easy. I simply used Final Cut's 3-way color correction function in Video Filters. It is my favorite color correction tool in Final Cut. I simply boosted the saturation slightly to bring out the colors, and reduced the whites to give the background a slightly less burnt-out look. Here are the before and after shots:

If you face a problem where a reporter or an interviewee has their back to a very washed out, white background, it is far better to shoot so the subject is too dark and the background isn't too blown out. This is far easier to correct then when the subject looks fine but the background is too hot.

3) No depth.

Here is an interview I shot with a University of South Florida professor in Tampa. 

The room was very small and there was no room to give the interview good depth. The solution - fake it. 

I created two layers (one layer is the backdrop shot without the interviewee in front of it) and used Final Cut's Gaussian blur function to blur it and create the effect of a shallower depth of field. The result is below.

You can't fake a depth of field with only one layer. It's not possible as far as I can see.

4) Mic hiss.

So you accidently used the auto levels function on your camera and the sound came out too low. You boost up the sound in Final Cut but you hear a hiss. Yuck. Now, I really dislike Final Cut's noise reduction functions. So I export the sound to my PC and reduce the noise using Adobe Audition. I then export an .aiff file and reimport into Final Cut. If anyone knows of an Mac application that can do this as well as Adobe Audition, I would love to hear about it.

These are just a couple of things that can go wrong - believe me there are many more. If you have any disasters you want to share, and ways you fixed them in post-production, please share.

Do people take one-man-band reporters seriously?

I had an interesting discussion the other day with an acquaintance who runs a video production house in Orlando. We were discussing the sort of gear I had verses the gear he had.

One of the most interesting points he made was that he deploys larger cameras for no other reason than to keep clients happy when his crew turns up on a shoot. The perception seems to be that the more equipment you have, and the bulkier it is, the more of a real professional you are.

This got me thinking about whether the appearance of a small camera may make a videographer look like less of a professional and more of a hobbyist.

I know from my years of experience covering news events, that TV shooters tend to look at videographers with small camcorders as a pesky waste of riser space - sort of irritating amateurs getting in the way of the shot they have expertly framed using their gigantic betacams. Indeed, many of the small cameras I have seen in use at events are the same models I have seen tourists using at Disney World. This may give the impression that they are unable to take broadcast quality shots.

But the small camera is absolutely critical to solo TV reporters. One of the local news channels in my area sends its reporters out on their own with very big, old-school cameras. This is just daft. By the time you come to shoot your standup, you're hot and sweaty from carrying the massive thing. How are you supposed to run around gathering a story while lugging such a weight around? Small, lightweight cameras are a critical part of being able to work as a one-man-band successfully.

A resource for multi-platform journalists

I'm very pleased with the feedback I have had from this site.

So I'm thinking it might be a great idea to expand the site to include the writing of others who are in the same line of work, and are involved in multiple aspects of TV production across different platforms.

Basically, I think it would be great to make THE ONE MAN BAND REPORTER a resource for solo TV reporters to share their thoughts and tips. Whether you're involved in news or corporate video, your insights would be invaluable and appreciated.

Delegates at this year's Radio-Television News Directors Association convention in Las Vegas discussed the move toward multi-platform reporting at length. It's becoming a vital part of the way modern newsrooms operate, and I think a site dedicated to sharing the experiences and improving the performance of one-man-band reporters is essential. Reporters - whether TV, radio, print or online - are increasingly having to learn new tricks.

I have been a broadcaster for the last 14 years. For the past six, I've been a one-man-band - first in New York and now in Florida. I have worked for many major world broadcasters, both as a videographer and an on-air reporter. But I don't have a monopoly on knowledge. Too often, those of us that do it all could do well to learn more about the new skill-sets we have acquired.

Please contact me if you're interested in participating and blogging here.

Get real - know your limitations

This week I was involved in producing video for The Week magazine of its annual Opinion Awards in Washington.

This was slightly different from the sort of work I'm used to doing these days, simply because I was operating as part of a team. In that respect, it was very nice to have support in the field. It also highlighted the limitations of being a one-man-band - reminding me what you can achieve when you are not working solo.

I was needed to use two of my skills as a journalist and videographer, just not simultaneously.

One of my roles was to film cutaways from the dinner, awards ceremony and panel discussion - taking IFB direction. But it was my role interviewing members of the political and media set as they arrived on the Red Carpet that really required more than a one-man-band.

For this I had a shooter and a producer. The producer was able to locate interviewees of importance and from a diverse range of opinions - not necessarily something that someone who is not a regular on the Washington social scene could do easily. Having a shooter allowed me to focus on the questions I needed to ask of each person based on their position, rather than simply trying to manage the shot.



The point here being that if you are a one-man-band, there are certain things you simply cannot do. If you are a freelancer and are considering whether to take a job, think about whether you can realistically do it - not just logistically - but with the knowledge you have as a journalist.