After watching the fourth installment of Ian Reeves’ vlog, I’m beginning to suspect I’ve been asking myself the wrong question.
I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around this: What is newspaper video? As Ian’s latest look at what newspapers are doing with video, it’s becoming clearer to me is that there’s no single answer and that what I need to be getting my head into is what makes for good video storytelling.
What’s being done out there incorporates the full range of video influences: TV news, the talk show, reporter as authority, documentary filmmaking, cinéma vérité, music videos and more. Not all of it is good, but what is good perfectly matches form(s) to story. Newspaper video makers, freed from the time and format constraints their TV brethren face and from the constraints that would come from a single definition to “What makes good newspaper video?”, are exploring and making use of a full, rich range of technical and aesthetic tools.
The bad news is that it’s not going to be as simple as learning a “newspaper video format.” The good news is there are plenty of folk out there exploring the possibilities and producing pieces — good and not-so-much — I can all learn from.
TAGS: NEWSPAPERS, VIDEO, ONLINE, MULTIMEDIA
