Critique - Week 6

I haven't designed anything new or of note in the past week (at least that I have in digital form — logos to come next week). So I've decided to critique my vidcast on VoxMagazine.com, Talking Pictures.

This is supposed to be a design blog. This is cheating, I know.

I have no training for broadcast. I only know to design, edit and write for magazines (or newspapers — I won't play favorites). As such, when I send in my weekly script to be edited by my producer, Amber, and Vox's online editor, Ileana, I frequently get back edits that my topic is difficult to find b-roll for. This gets back to my lack of broadcast training. As a designer, most of what I do is think visually. As a writer and editor, it's about half of what I do. That said, when I'm writing or editing, I'm concerned that the story is visually compelling, not with the pacing of the visuals within the text. As I write more for video, I have become more and more aware that it is imperative that I constantly consider what the B-roll will be and how long it can last. I might discuss half a dozen or more movies (as I did with my vidcast on romantic comedies), but if the writing does not allow for pacing, the content feels uneven.

In general, I feel my understanding of how to best match moving words to moving images has improved. I won't make the same mistake I made when I decided to complain about Redbox for the duration of the vidcast (we had to use a series of Redbox commercials for the B-roll). That said, I still don't think about the visuals before I decide what my topic of discussion will be (a common problem for beginning department editors), which results in lackluster visuals because the additional cues for video are frequently added in superfluously. In other words, it's not content-driven design. But I'm trying.