The ten video commandments

One key aspect of journalism that is becoming more and more of a staple of any successful newspaper or web site is multimedia.

Today at the Poynter Institute, we heard two lectures from Al Tompkins. In his first lecture, he spoke about new programs that can help make our careers in journalism easier and more successful.

The one lecture I found the most interesting was Tompkins’ last one on shooting videos. The lecture was titled “10 video commandments,” and taught us ten tips for producing great videos and photographs.

The first commandment was “thou shalt not pan or zoom,” which Tompkins told us was a sure way people could tell the video was done by an amateur. He said that constantly panning or zooming in makes the video look more like a home movie rather than a professional multimedia project from a media outlet.

Other commandments that focused on making videos look professional were “thou shalt hold thy shot for at least 10 seconds,” “thou shalt shoot cutaways and sequences,” “thou shalt honor great lighting,” “thou shalt keep thy camera on the shadow side of the interview,” “thou shalt always wear thy headphones” and “thou shalt seek great natural sounds.”

The other commandments dealt with what content need to be in the video to make it informative and entertainment. These commandments were “thou shalt seek subjective soundbites,” “thou shalt focus thy story into three words” and “thou shalt seek a strong ending.”

As intimidating as it may seem to produce a great video, Mr. Tompkins’ lecture and advice will aid us all on our way to becoming an all-around good journalist.