A month ago I explored a New York Times’ documentary series titled Op-Docs. One of my favorite pieces was A Conversation With My Black Son. The piece was simple but effective in delivering its message. In the end that specific Op-Doc was the example for my project.
It took a while for me to land on a project due to time constraints and the availability of important interview subjects. In the end I picked the timely topic of fraternity life. The brothers who spoke with me were eager to have their voices heard. They explained that they feel misrepresented in the media. This type of project was a perfect way to hear their side of so many recent stories. We covered topics that you rarely hear about in the news like what fraternities do for the common good, what it's like to be behind the doors of a frat house and how the brothers feel about all the recent media coverage. It was interesting to get inside an organization under fire and see how people interpret the world around them. It's always interesting to find out how the judged judge. The interview process was smooth but the harder part came in editing. What was the best way to tell this story? How could I allow their voices to be heard while also presenting the problem in a clear and concise way? Getting my nearly 60 minutes of interviews down to just a five minute video was challenging. It was a difficult decision but in the end I did not use any supplemental footage. This required me to be more deliberate with my cuts and trimming in the editing process. In order to keep the video interesting with such simple visuals I had to make quick cuts and keep the quotes moving along. One difficulty in this process was that many of the quotes I used started with “um” or “and” which was not ideal. It took precise editing to fix the problem. It was challenging to find a flow for this story because there were so many talking points but each quote had to be shorter than eight or so seconds. My goal was to keep each quote around five seconds or less but some were too poignant to cut short. In the end the story came together nicely and I'm pleased with the way the final product looks. This is a story that I will continue to work on in my time here at Marquette. The end goal is to have a member of every fraternity on campus in the video. Check back for that sometime this summer.
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AboutOn this page you can find blog posts about my adventures in journalism, ponderings about projects, experiences with storytelling tools and updates on what I'm working on. Archives
February 2017
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