A Voice of Reason

With housewives posting home movies on YouTube, fourteen year olds mastering laptop editing and newspapers crafting on-line vignettes, the video renaissance is truly underway. It's an exciting time - even to crusty old lenslingers like myself. Never before have so many people embraced visual storytelling - with both stellar and squalid results. As one who's more interested in the written word than the flickering pixel, I'm not particularly threatened by all these newcomers. But I do blanch at the repeated chest-thumping of many of these neophytes. After all, who wants to hear a bunch of camera-handling amateurs proclaim superiority all because they've figured out how to remove the lens cap? You don't hear me screeching about the demise of print journalism all because I've blogged for a few years now. But that's just the kind of thing you'll read on-line: rampant denunciations of lenslinging fundamentals - from the earnest to the evangelist to the inane. Finally though, a voice of reason in the video wilderness, a reasoned treaty on the state of on-line visual storytelling. In The Great Video Gold Rush -- a reality check, Chuck Fadely breaks down what I've been trying to say all along and it's something every newcomer to the form should read. His thesis: Point and shoot cameras are fine for some projects, but newspapers who are serious about video should treat it as seriously as they do still photography - in equipment, training and expectations. Chuck covers lots of ground and if you're still reading this, I implore you to go read that - if for no other reason, do it for his trenchant description of the proper skills to look for:

'Who makes a good videographer? You've probably got a couple on staff. Great story-tellers with the timing of a comedian who are technically savvy, visually literate, and quick learners. Invest in them, they're worth it.'

So where do I send my reel?