How to create the illusion of a large variety of shots

Because some readers come to this blog for tips and techniques, I thought it might be helpful if I occasionally posted some news videos that I have produced for TV outlets. So from now on when I complete a story that merits talking about, I will post it here.

Today I'll talk about a piece I produced just this week for Voice of America. It's on US immigration benefits available to rich foreign investors. You can read the text story and download the video here at the VOA website.

This story is my favorite kind to do because it was pretty much, what I call, a one-shot deal. Those are the stories you can put together in one location at one time - no need to keep going back, no need to travel to multiple locations to shoot interviews or gather b-roll. I did do one additional interview in a different place, but very nearby. When you're a one-man-band who makes money according to how much you produce, these are the best kinds of stories to knock out because they're quick.

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In this story, the bulk of the b-roll was of a resort - and not particularly visually compelling. So against my instincts, I opened the piece with an edited-down sequence from a promotional video made by the resort. I chose to do this because the upsound really said what I wanted to say right at the top.

There are interviews with two spokesmen for the resort. I did not need to interview both as they both said the same things, but using clips of two different people to make separate points can really keep the pace going on a short to medium length piece.

The interview locations were fairly challenging. In the first soundbite, you will notice that the speaker is inside. In the second, outside. This is just to keep up the variety. For the inside interview I simply used a fairly plain kitchen backdrop with a short depth of field to blur it. For the outside interview it was a very sunny day and the subject was in the shade. To remedy this I used a powerful light on his face, and boosted the mid-range spectrum in post production to bring out the subject without burning-out the background. In my experience, it's better to focus on keeping the background under control during the shoot, and lightening the face in post-production, rather than trying to darken a background in post-production while keeping the face illuminated.

To set-up the third soundbite (the lawyer), I use a lot of establishing shots in his office. Generally, I dislike boring office set-up. In this case, I didn't have many pictures from elsewhere, so I made sure I had a variety of set-up shots and cutaways to chose from.

Because the resort itself was not televisually that interesting, I was forced to use some file to cover part of the piece; generic GVs of Shanghai and Beijing, and fairly recent b-roll of immigration lines at Houston international airport. I prefer not to use library shots, but in this case there simply wasn't enough original AND interesting b-roll to sustain a 2:30 piece, even though I shot well over an hour of material.