MULTIMEDIA AND BROADCAST
Throughout my journey as a journalist, I’ve encountered the familiar feeling of the keys beneath my fingertips, clicking and clacking as I typed away. However, when I added elements of video and audio, suddenly, I entered an entirely new landscape. It was both daunting and exhilarating, discovering that storytelling was a dynamic experience that wasn’t just limited to words on a page. Sound and movement could bring a story to life and deliver an experience like no other—and that is exactly what I was lucky enough to explore.
At the Medill Cherubs summer journalism program, I had the special opportunity to work with Carlin McCarthy, an NBC producer who has worked at ABC and has taught for six years and counting at the Medill Northwestern Journalism Institute. Her enthusiasm in the world of multimedia inspired my own, and her patience and guidance helped me to hone my own skills in creating a shot list, finding various angles, creating a storyline, and editing.
Boston Protest News-feature Recap:
March For Our Lives Rally, Harvard
Following the devastating Marjory Stoneman Douglas mass shooting on February 14, 2018, March For Our Lives quickly grew to a national youth-led organization to protest gun violence and lobby for better gun control. Founding member David Hogg continued to lead this effort at the time this video was made as a senior at Harvard College. Here, the sources are key to a quality story. I interviewed David Hogg, MFOL organizer and Harvard Kennedy School student Rachel Jacoby and Boston University Prison Outreach Initiative officer Abbie Garretson—all youth organizers for this specific rally—to create this powerful story.
Protest Broadcast: News-feature
March for Reproductive Rights (Women’s March)
Photo by Ellen Austin
Recording a voiceover
I realized that my audio would add additional context to the video.
In doing video work in the past, I’ve never integrated my own narration into my work. I originally tried audio recording on my phone using earbuds, but the quality sounded scratchy and awkward with the natural white noise and clearer audio of the speakers in the video.
So when my adviser introduced various Blue Yeti microphones for the staff to use, I jumped at the opportunity to re-record, resulting in a much smoother and clearer voiceover. The many tries taught me that marrying audio with the video can truly change the quality of the story.
Reporting on site
Communication with my advisers to ensure my safety is one of the most important aspects of on-the-ground reporting.
After driving past the protest in San Jose City Hall, I knew I needed to capture this historic moment, both in photos and videos.
For more, see Reporting.
part 1
part 2
part 3
When reporting, I always make sure to have my press pass on to identify myself as press and not as part of the protest.
For more, see Law and Ethics.
Video Profile Features
My lao lao (grandmother) and home cooking
The story pitch: At the Medill Cherubs summer program, students were tasked with creating a video around 45 seconds that implemented all the skills we had learned throughout the week on broadcast journalism. My grandmother is a talented home cook, and given the luxury to spend more time with her during shelter-in-place, I decided to try my hand at telling her story: one through cooking.
Finding the right questions, creating the shot list: Working with video as a journalist in no way meant foregoing the importance of asking the right questions. In this case, the conversation took near 30 minutes, despite the video being less one. I learned her childhood story, an origin narrative that I wanted to include in the video as an A-roll to have more impact. For the transition in the video into her cooking timeline of today, I wanted to implement more B-roll elements that showcased the ingredients she commonly worked with and the people she spent her time with.
See it, hear it: This technique, which I learned from Carlin at Medill, is one of my favorite techniques to implement in video journalism. Not only does it create emphasis and clarity, but it’s a satisfying pairing with the spoken audio. In this video, when my grandmother says “Oftentimes, I will research recipes,” and the zooms in to her face smiling at Youtube recipe that she was watching earlier during the day.
Editing: Oftentimes, as journalists, we need to shoot much more than what we present the final product as in order to include a video with as diverse of a shot list as possible. Because the video needed to remain around 45 seconds long, the editing process was tough. I had to cut plenty of A-roll that I felt added depth to the piece. Still, the remaining audio was what I deemed most important to tell her story: cooking even in her old age because it brings her happiness to find family and love through providing after a childhood so different from her present. I also made sure to pair an audio piece that fit with the movement of the video: I cut the beginning shorter so that it fit into the more melancholy first eight seconds of the video before it transitioned to a more upbeat rhythm that matched my grandmother’s mood as she transitioned to talking about her present happiness.
A screenshot of Carlin’s edits and thoughts on the video.
A football player’s story
Finding the story: This feature piece is part of an enterprise project I initiated at the beginning of the school year in an effort to increase multimedia elements on our site. Our sports section already had a popular repeater—“Apex”—that featured our upper school athletes in a written feature profile. I wanted to take it a step further: install at least one 1-2 minute video profile on the athlete per semester. Working with my photo editor, who originally pitched the profile as a written piece, I pitched it back to her—as a video—and she agreed. Thus, we began the first video feature of the school year.
Creating the shot list: Utilizing the multimedia guide (see Editing) I had created over the summer, I reviewed an array of possible shots for the video with my photo editor.
A text conversation I had with my photo editor prior to beginning the video.
A-roll
interview, question list
B-roll
locker room after a game (putting away gear, removing jersey and padding)
entering the field as a team
cheering with the team
practice sessions after school
Editing: We spent hours after school going through the editing process on Premiere, color correcting and standardizing different shots in different lighting, minimizing distracting background white noise, figuring out which areas we needed to go back to re-shoot. It was a learning curve to teach someone else, but also an incredibly rewarding experience to not only take part in the multimedia growth of another journalist, but also see the smiles of warmth and gratitude from the football team, the athlete’s family and teachers and peers when the video was finally showcased to the entire school during a school meeting.
More Video Multimedia
Spirit Week 2021
Creating a multimedia element for Spirit Week felt both natural and necessary, especially since this was the first major event that welcomed the entire upper school back on campus post-pandemic.
Soufflé Pancake Recipe Feature
Although it initially started as a fun project during quarantine, I decided to use my gorilla tripod to capture various angles. I needed to shoot the entire process twice in order to get two different angles. Then, I interspersed the various clips.
#StopAsianHate Video Interview
Speaking with the San Jose #StopAsianHate rally organizer Eric J. Chang required quick thinking, both in securing a live interview and asking insightful questions. In the future, I believe that assembling a team of reporters to cover larger protests such as this one would create more comprehensive coverage and represent our program better.
