McNerthney went over some basic tips about video from his personal experience. It is worthy to note that he does not have any fancy equipment and all of the software he shared is free. In this realization lies the value of his training: You don’t need expensive equipment. Anyone can do this.

His equipment/tools:

• Canon Powershot
• Windows Movie Maker (WMM tutorials on YouTube, or iMovie)
• A computer for editing, nothing too fancy

Most importantly is the attitude he brings to every story. McNerthney said he bought his Powershot about a year ago. Since then he appears to interview most, if not all, of his subjects with his Powershot running. His reason for videoing everything: “Sometimes daily stories turn into something big.”

(Note: I record audio of almost every interview I conduct. Not only does it help me keep quotes straight, I also have the option of using the audio later for a multimedia project. Obtaining audio in this way requires no extra effort on my part and I can only imagine if I had a small video camera with me all of the time, it would be just as easy.)

He shared one particular example of video he shot recently, about a crane operator who helped police nab a fleeing fugitive:

McNerthney talked about what shots you need to get if you’re going to record your interviews. Check out the crane video. It only takes a few seconds to get b-roll (the flavor shots of the crane in the middle of the story).

A few other tips he shared:

• Pay attention to lighting and don’t be afraid to move your subject to a more favorable location.
• If it is breezy outside, try to shield the camera’s microphone from the wind with your hand. You can also try to aim the microphone at the subject to get better sound quality.
• Everyone has a couple of seconds to talk to you. The man in the orange shirt said he didn’t have time, and yet McNerthney still got a great interview out of him.
• Evaluate who will care and why. If the video does not generate hits, then editors will be reluctant to approve projects in the future. Examples of videos many people will watch include technology, events with lots of participants and breaking news.
• Some people are not used to media exposure and shy away from the camera. Try to keep examples of your work on the camera you carry to convince them to consent to an on-camera interview.

How does he shoot video and write the story? He practiced with his friends by holding the camera and notepad at the same time, at about lower-chest height. Then he would watch the resulting video and adjust the camera angle accordingly. Now that’s multitasking!

For me the most valuable item out of the training was a free Web site he shared: Media Convert, which converts dozens of file types. This site saved my bacon a few times when editing audio for a SoundSlides last week. He also shared, Picnik is a photo-editing Web site with the functionality of PhotoShop.

A final note. McNerthney said there is a time and a place for quality multimedia. He frequently called his video “crappy,” and from a quality standpoint, I suppose it is. But his videos are interesting and, most importantly he said, they keep people on the site for a few minutes longer than they otherwise would have. Video is another layer to the reader experience.

Skagit County has been swarming with state and national media since the attacks. Our paper, the Skagit Valley Herald, has been packed with stories since the day after the attacks.

Nothing like this has ever happened here. People are in shock. It is times like these when communities need their newspapers most. As gruesome as the details are, people want to know why this happened. People need to be able to process the tragedy.

Yesterday as I walked into a church that held an open prayer service, someone told me that they appreciated the newspaper and what we are doing. Before that, a barista at a coffee shop said the same thing when we were making small talk. People are also visiting our forums to talk about the tragedy and what the community has lost. This is why quality journalism will never die.

Information is part of the grieving process, too.

Since Tuesday, I’ve produced two videos (here and here), helped other reporters uncover hard-to-find sources, shot still photos, ran to court to get essential documents, made copies, written or contributed to three or four stories and helped other reporters produce audio and video. It’s been a wild and heartbreaking week.

Yesterday I wrote my first education story since Tuesday. It felt comfortable to write about something other than the killing spree that drew the nation’s eye to Skagit County.

A couple of weeks ago I took a dam tour of the Seattle City Lights hydroelectric project with two friends. I wanted to give my Canon HV30 a test drive and see how it did. I was impressed with the sound quality of the on-board mic, but it does need a wind screen.

It seems I list to the left when shooting and I’m not sure why. I should also use a tripod, however since I was there for recreation and I didn’t want to carry a bunch of stuff with me, I left the tripod at home.

If this would have been for work, I would’ve brought a tripod and not talked during the video. All in all, the video is an accurate representation of the trip and not bad for the first try. Suggestions are definitely welcome by the way.

Yes, it really was that green. The color is caused by the glacial flour of Skagit gneiss, made up of mica, feldspar (the reddish color on the rock faces) and quartz. The day was amazing. Even though it was 100+ degrees out the 36-degree water kept the trip relatively cool.

I took some video with my new camera and some stills (see eight pics I took on my Flickr photostream). Until I know how Vegas works, though, I’m not going to be doing much else other than learning how to edit. I didn’t have my tripod during the trip so it’s a little shaky, but I’ll try to post something from the trip in a week or two.

Watch Kirk Mastin’s test of a $3,300 Canon XH A1 camcorder vs. a $120 Flip Camcorder (he also used a an iPod nano with a mic to record audio for the Flip video). Mastin is in the University of Washington’s masters program for digital media. Compare the footage between the two cameras. (He syncs Flip video and iPod audio with a hand clap in front of the camera and then match the audio spike in a video editing program.)

Mastin’s comparison has been making the rounds as of late, even though it was posted back in February. (There’s also a three-part Mexican Wrestling video shot with a Canon Powershot SD800 by Max Morse of ESPN.)

Also, lots of people are posting training tips lately:

• David Nolan at Multimedia Evangelist has posted several reports from a $2,000 training he’s attending on how to shoot video. Quick tips: shots are at least 10 seconds with no pans or zooms, get lots of b-roll and shoot many angles of the subject to help compress time for the viewer. (Thanks to NewsVideographer for the heads up.)
• Video for newspapers, by Mindy McAdams. This is an incredibly useful list of links, including shooting video for editing, what makes a good video and examples of video you have to see (like the Spokesman Review’s video of a paraplegic dog).
• 17 video tips, by Sue Robinson, guest blogger on Mindy’s Teaching Online Journalism.

One of my editors asked for a volunteer to go to the fair and “find a story.” I love the fair, and I like open-ended assignments like this. The first thing I did was grab a video camera and checked the charge on it. Another editor flagged me down as I was walking out the door. My video assignment: I was to use only the newsroom’s computer to edit and produce the video.

Let me explain. All of the video we’ve run on the site so far has been produced on home computers, usually by our interns or one of our editors. The reason they’ve done so is because our work computers aren’t as great. They have iMovie on them, which I learned is not a terrible program. Like anything else there is a learning curve to using it. I’ll admit my total ignorance here and say I’ve never in my life edited video, but I have read about best practices in producing video.

This video was fun to produce, but I shot way too little B-roll for it. I groan when I watch this, but I think the girls (and the adorable calf) make up for it. If I would’ve spent even five minutes getting better B-roll it would have been 100 times better.

We ran into some snags in the production process. I didn’t know it would take 20 minutes to import a five-minute clip into iMovie (most of my clips were in the 10 second to 3 minute range). The computer will not recognize the camera, so we have to remove the SD card from the camera and use a reader to get the video, and we cannot capture portions of the video from the card, so it has to render it whole-hog.

I’m not sure if that’s normal, but I think next time I’ll set the computer up to render video while I’m writing. Even if it takes an hour, I can at least work on other things while the video is rendering.

At least we know our setup is doable, but why is this an issue?

I’m sure you can guess. Like almost every paper in the country we are strapped for cash. We have a $1,000 equipment budget this year, and the only reason we have that is because we won a company-wide contest. So one of our editors wants to buy a dv-tape camera and a Macbook with that money, because we desperately need both. If we are going to get both then we have to make iMovie work. I think it can work, we just have to stick with it and focus on the good things the program can do.

That will soon change. Friday my Canon HV30 will arrive in the mail (including a UV light filter to protect the lens). I probably spent at least eight hours last weekend researching which camera I should get and which store I should buy it from. I’ve been lurking a lot on the Canon HV20/HV30 user forums, too.

The hardest part is finding an editing program that works for me. I’ve never used video editing programs. Currently my laptop is Linux based, so I installed Cinelerra. But I hear Cinelerra doesn’t process HD video well. I think my best option is to reinstall Vista on the laptop and get a copy of Sony Vegas (at least platinum). Any suggestions for other programs to consider are very welcome.

I have a list of links a mile long on how to shoot video. As for editing it, I’ll probably search YouTube for tutorials on whichever program I end up using.

My plan to learn video is to just do it. Shoot lots of video. Try to edit at least one clip a week. The subject doesn’t matter, as long as I practice at becoming faster and more efficient with each try. The good clips will end up here.

Now to wait until Friday.

His project, entitled “No Snitching,” is about the culture of a neighborhood in east Newport News, Va. This is a great project with lots of content. His project has a poignant beginning with tasteful music interspersed with snapshots of the 30 people who died in Newport News in the past year.

In Al’s interview, Wilson says he never picked up a camera or knew much about Web design until he attended the fellowship.

The technology in our field has always changed, he tells Al: “The skills you have as a journalist are what matters. The ability to put people at ease and have them talk with you. The ability to find and tell a compelling story.”

Wilson does have advice for the rest of us who can’t take a 24-week break from our jobs for a fellowship:

My advice to anyone who wants to learn multimedia skills is to start doing it. Make a small, one-minute movie a day. Figure out how to see in video. Watch lots of documentaries and see how a story is told visually. Check out all the Web sites that post multimedia stories. Find a class that will teach you video editing or Flash; there are lots of them online. But most of all don’t be afraid and get started.

That’s great advice!

For reporters, that includes video. To not study video journalism as a reporter is a death knell to your career. So where do we start?

(This video is Cyndy Green’s rebuttal to Andy Dickenson’s Quality and Quantity shorts)

Reporters cannot afford to wait for someone else to train us. No need to reinvent the wheel, there are plenty of training resources if you look in the right places.

Web sites to read about video practices:

• News Videographer
• Mastering Multimedia
• Teaching Online Journalism (video catagory)

Software tutorials:

• Final cut pro or iMovie on YouTube
• Audacity or GarageBand on YouTube
• Soundslides Plus tutorial from the now dead Multimedia Shooter site.

Various training sites:

• National Newspaper Association development and growth guide includes tutorials and discussion on just about everything online from start to finish, including advertising.
• The BBC has an online training site with instructions for specific gear and editing programs. The good shooting guide is a fine place to start.
• NewsU.org has a few courses on multimedia storytelling.
• Knight Digital Media Center

Also, read choosing a new or used camera by Cindy Green and other various gear recommendations she’s made.

Reporters were handed a four-page outline of how we can incorporate the Web into our daily reporting.

Here’s a brief outline of the new Web strategy. If you want to read the entire four-page handout (culled to three pages with my excellent paper-folding-and-taping skills), read the PDF here (includes bonus doodles).

• Editors will select which stories have the best potential for multimedia during their weekly editors meeting. At least two stories per week will be assigned for “multi-platform” presentation.
• Editors are responsible for coordinating the production and editing of the multimedia.
• Photographers must “think video” for breaking news.
• Photographers are a “first priority” to train in video production and editing. Editors and interested reporters come after the photogs are trained. Training will come from in-house or online sources.
• Reporters are responsible for audio recording and editing, including narration and interviews with subjects.

Reporters seemed skeptical and skittish because of the layoffs around the country. Even our own newsroom is not immune from this recent trend. Our business reporter position is frozen. Someone mumbled “do more with less,” which earned a funny statement from Don Nelson:

“I hate the phrase ‘More with less.’ It’s a despicable lie,” Don said. “I prefer ‘Different and better.’”

(For the record, I hate “more with less” with a passion, and Don’s comment has to be the most awesome comeback to it that I’ve ever heard. Cynical journalists are free to disagree, but I still love my job.)

To bring you all up to speed on the history of the SVH, the Web has been secondary to the dead-tree edition for some time now. Last July, the SVH rolled out its new Web site, www.goskagit.com. Before that, the Web site hosted only one story per day, and had a two-sentence description of other stories that were in the paper. If you wanted to view the other stories, you had to buy a paper or subscribe online. We still don’t publish every story online. The reasoning is “why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?”

I really love our new Web plan, which states that reporters should write for the Web before the paper if it is breaking news (see examples on page 3 in the PDF). One editor said “it doesn’t matter if it starts online or in the paper anymore.”

If a reporter finds herself swamped, she is to go to her editor and ask for a triage of duties. If a story doesn’t get covered, the reporter should try not to worry about it (though the ones who care about their beats do anyway). Editors also stressed that reporters would be trained on company time and that it would happen fairly soon.

The only barrier to our strategy is our Web site, which is currently unable to display SoundSlides presentations. I’ve been creating audio for some time now, and there are some unpublished SoundSlides in a folder just waiting for the Web site to be ready. A minor hitch, I’m sure, but if anyone has suggestions I’m happy to forward them to an editor.

I’ll post updates on this transition whenever I’m allowed.