2009 GIFT GRAND PRIZE WINNER

The worse they are, the higher they score. In this learning exercise, students are looking to fail, dramatically, before their peers and in front of the camera. Following a pair of introductory lessons on video reporting and a basic Final Cut Pro tutorial, students with little-to-no video journalism experience are charged with creating a basic broadcast news report. They are asked to first identify the key rules of quality video journalism. And, as the Bard once wrote, therein lies the rub. Students’ final reports are required to overtly break those identified rules, presenting final videos that are truly viral in nature–memorably funny and infectiously bad. Students report in pitch blackness, talk �ber-fast, constantly jump in and out of a shot, have voices drowned out by car horns and stand in front of cameras so shaky they make the visuals in “Blair Witch” seem stationary.

Video is a foreign medium and a scary concept for most journalism students. Even in the mobile journalism age, vlogging, video interviewing and full video reporting represent a skill-set and on-camera presence that too many j-students still fear or feel they will be unable to master. This assignment attempts to shake off their self-consciousness, enabling them to gain exposure to video journalism without the pressure of being perfect their first time on screen. Instead, students literally learn from their (purposeful) mistakes

• Outline the basics of vlogging and video reporting and teach the fundamentals of applicable video editing software.

• Assign student teams of two to complete a basic video news report focused on a campus issue, event or individual.

• Once teamed up in class, ask students to create a list of basic video reporting rules to follow. Ask teams to share rules with the class.
  

• At the close of the discussion, ask them to crumple up the papers on which the lists were made. Explain that for their first foray into video reporting, they will be breaking the rules. Clarify that the reports should not be so chaotic as to be incomprehensible but that the rule-breaking is more than optional for the assignment. It is required.

• Allow teams up to one week to complete their reports. On the due date, share the videos with the class, pushing students to identify the video journalism rules each team broke and to discuss how that rule-breaking impacted the news seen on screen.

• Present students with a follow-up assignment: A video news report on a campus issue, event or individual. Students are encouraged, but not required, to report on the same subject tackled in their first “viral” effort. For this assignment, however, students must abide by the video reporting rules.

IMPACT

A professor-mentor once told me that we are often not able to recognize the importance of something in our life until it is suddenly no longer there. By having students take away specific portions of quality broadcast reporting (such as proper lighting, controlled ambient noise, on-camera presentation poise, smooth scene editing, steady camera work and appropriate B-roll shots), they are able to more dramatically see and understand what happens when they are not there. In the meantime, they warm up to video reporting, being on camera and, most importantly, seeing themselves on camera (something students seem especially shy about) with a public trial run that is pitched as fun but not frivolous.

In respect to morale, the assignment breaks the monotony of a typical semester’s course load, something that a student once said to me “is all about achieving perfection again and again.” Students enjoy making the videos. They bond with their teammates. They appreciate the chance to fail while experimenting with a style of reporting to which most have not been exposed. The class also becomes closer as a whole during the session in which the videos are shown. It is a session normally filled with laughter, spirited critiques, stories from the field, and a level of interaction that is unparalleled the remainder of the term.

Most interesting to me, many students comment upon completion of both the bad and good reports (dubbed the “before” and “after”) that they felt it was actually tougher to purposefully break the rules than attempt to follow them, imparting a wonderful self-taught lesson: It is often easiest to simply do things right the first time around.