Post 5: It’s hard to write about Final Cut
Final Cut Pro is not really something that can be explained well in this format - a column or blog. It’s easy to write about writing. It’s hard to write about how to use video-editing software.
It’s also hard to learn to use video-editing software. You pretty much have to just listen to someone who understands it as they talk about it for a while and show you a few things, then you begin to learn the lingo, then you sit down and noodle around, make mistakes, get in up to your elbows, play with it, fail a bunch of times, take notes, about it, fail some more and finally start getting it, little-by-little.
Andre Jones has decades of experience as a television professional, so he’s seen a lot of change in film/video reporting.
He spent 10 years with CNN before starting his own company in the Atlanta area, and he also serves as a visiting faculty member at the Poynter Institute.
The man knows his way around timelines, viewers, browsers and canvasses. He knows his way around I, O, P, L, K, J, Q, A, B and the family of Option-plus and Apple-plus commands. He mentions the space bar so often, you would think he was an astronaut.
During an afternoon session at Poynter, seminar students watched on a video screen as Jones showed tips and tricks for editing in FCP, then they dispersed to practice video editing in pairs in the large lab Poynter uses for this sort of hands-on technology workshop.
At the beginning of the session Jones shared a six-page handout with introductory information about starting up an editing project in Final Cut. He emphasized, however, that editing excellence begins long before you sit down with this popular professional editing software. It begins the moment you are aware of the story you are going to start gathering the information to tell.
“Editing begins with the assignment,” he said. “Before you go out the door and start shooting.”
Kenny Irby (http://poynter.org/profile/resume_view.asp?user=1683), Poynter’s visual journalism group leader and director of diversity, spoke earlier in the day about interviewing techniques. He stressed that communicators should:
- Prepare in advance so they are ready to ask good questions.
- Keep the door open to the person being interviewed.
- Understand that content is determined by your questions.
- Discern the power of source over studio.
- Push toward “describe” and “explain.”
- Listen.
- Learn to trust silence and the results it can deliver.
- Develop excellent non-verbal cues to encourage interviewees while not impeding on the recording of audio and/or video.
He said building a trust relationship and practicing good ethics are keys to success when working with news and information sources. “Journalists have to demonstrate genuine concern and compassion when going below the surface,” he points out in one of his handouts.
He spoke about ethical concerns, intrinsic to all media work and certainly one of the key elements that sometimes distinguish the work of the professional journalist from other informants in the digital age. “We give voice to the voiceless, we pursue the truth, we bring context,” he said. “The process and elements are changing, but your interpersonal skills remain as important as your technical abilities.”
He said journalists have to be honest about how they gather information and how it will be used (online, broadcast, in print and where - digital information is copied and goes on and on). He encouraged everyone to be as transparent as possible in the process of gathering and sharing information.
He said journalists have to seek understanding, digging deep, not reacting too soon, asking before jumping to conclusions, giving the benefit of the doubt.
He said journalists have to challenge with passion, working toward developing a “common vocabulary and a shared mission” to serve the common good.
He said journalists have to be willing to change, practicing the “skill of genuinely considering other ways of seeing and doing things,” remaining open to improving craft and resolving conflicts.
He said journalists have to stay in the conversation, keeping the dialogue going and resisting the temptation to quit on it. “It may be the toughest thing to do when things are uncomfortable or new,” he wrote in a handout. “There is no progress without struggle.”
Al Tompkins chimed in with a quick interview tip during the process of the discussion of open-ended questions vs. closed-ended, saying a great way to nudge an elaboration out of an interviewee who didn’t come across with enough is to say, “Is that true?” or “Is that right?”
My video/editing partner, Dave Davies, news director for Texas Public Radio, and I had the opportunity to interview Poynter visiting faculty member Vidisha Priyanka during the day as part of an interviewing and videography assignment that we would later edit in Final Cut.
Priyanka is a news and special-projects producer for Tampa Bay Online, the Media General website tied to the Tampa Tribune and WFLA-TV News Channel 8. She is a native of India and worked as a content writer for the web edition of India Today, the best-selling political magazine in India. She was also a content producer and reporter for the Times of India, New Delhi.
She found her way to Poynter when she pursued a master’s degree in journalism just across the street at the University of South Florida-St. Petersburg. She is a fascinating young online journalist, and I will try to post some of that interview (shot with a Canon G1 HD camera) if she gives her permission for me to use it. She said she will consider it.
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