Don’t Make This Mistake

Viewers call it out of focus video — a technical problem. Fortunately, many photojournalists are no longer taking this approach.
You probably know the idea: Protect the identify of the people you’re shooting. The old way of thinking was: “We need video, can’t show faces, so let’s shoot backs of heads, legs, and feet — or show faces out of focus.”
Even when I spoke to photojournalists, sharing viewer insights, at the NPPA workshops several years ago, the approach didn’t make sense to them. It was a waste of their ability to tell a story. And they were right.
Even though you’ll see it on the air, it’s a waste of your time, viewers’ time, and makes for bad television.
In this under two-minute learning Learning Video starting with part of a story by WNBC-TV’s Gabe Pressman, you’ll learn how get around this problem.
This entry was posted on Sunday, April 26th, 2009 at 4:28 pm and is filed under Multimedia Journalism, Power Tools for TV Journalists. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.