The Seven Deadly Sins of Video Production

Projects marred by any of these serious problems will drop a whole letter grade per instance.

1. Bad sound quality. If you always use a voice recorder and headphones, you should be able to avoid this Deadly Sin. Make sure that your audio levels match; that interviews/VOs/nats are audible and nothing else is; and that the voice recorder isn’t making horrible scratching/popping/malfunctioning sounds. Pace your voiceover carefully and speak clearly; rapidly mumbled VO is unacceptable.
2. Bad editing. No duplicate shots. No flash frames. No jump cuts. No shots too long or too short.
3. Bad shooting. Never, ever use shaky video in your story. This is why we have tripods available. Don’t shoot interviews in front of a row of lockers or in front of a major light source. Shoot on location whenever possible. Interview people in relevant locations.
4. Bad formatting. Always shoot in widescreen and always export your files in H264 NTSC DV widescreen. I will not accept files with black frames around the edges.
5. Bad reporting. A story is more than just a stand-up and closing tied together with a bunch of interviews; there should be actual reporting by YOU in the story. Quotes help to illustrate a story and they depict the people involved; they do NOT replace good reporting. Also, remember the 9 principles & 7 yardsticks: you shouldn’t be including your opinion; you SHOULD be including ALL sides of a story; you should be double-checking the facts and not reporting rumors; and so on.
6. Bad quotes. Some random person stating her opinion on camera is the worst possible type of quote. The viewer wants to know about the story/situation and not what the interview subject thinks about it. Don’t include interviews from ignorant, inarticulate people. Don’t let an informed, articulate person go on and on, either – feel free to paraphrase their long quote in your own (fewer) words and just put the most important or memorable portion of the quote into the story.
7. Plagiarism or copyright violation. Always unacceptable. Don’t rip off other news reporters’ stories. Don’t use B-roll ripped from YouTube. Don’t use Google image search to illustrate stories. EVER.