Writing the package
If there’s one thing that I feel that never fails to help in producing a video package is pre-planning and pre-writing. Having visited Lander’s farm so many times I had become familiar with what was going on – and what was going to happen. This allowed to me to target the kind of shots I wanted. I’m aware that I’m not going to always have this kind of opportunity to be familiar with the sequence of events especially when working at a real TV/video news outlet. While I did not do any actual pre-writing, I did think it through the script in my head. I was struck with this quote in the reading “Writing the package”:
“Prewriting is an easy way to laziness,” said WCVB’s Martha Bradless. “Skill in reporting comes from the ability to organize your story once you’ve arrived and had time to digest what is happening.”
Once I gathered all my shots, I knew I needed to sit down and write the script. I came to realize how that made assembling the piece together so much easier. It was a matter of fixing the pieces together. It saved a ton of time as well. If there’s one thing I still struggle with is over-writing. I had to shorten many of the soundbites and eventually remove an entire segment for the final video. I guess only through experience will I know how much writing to do for a certain duration.
