Wednesday, March 28, 2007

It's that moment...

Between logging and writing.

That's TV speak for... the brief minute we usually get between looking at video and interviews for a story where we copy down word for word what people say and catch those good moments of "natural sound" from the video... and actually writing the story.

On an average night in TV news, that moment is usually less than a minute long because of the deadline.

This afternoon, I'm making it a big longer.

I'm hoping its giving my story time to "breathe" in my brain... kick up some dust in there and come up with some extra creative lines and ways to bring all of you my faithful viewers (right!) to exactly where I was standing for the story.

The reason I have time today is that I shot this story yesterday, and my photographer got some extra time to really think about what we needed. That's because this story, is great without any reporter getting in to screw it up. So today I just spent an hour logging every second of video, looking for the best moments. And now I have to put those together.

Maybe it's not just a creative break... its a little because in that moment, there's always a little fear that the story won't be as great as you want it to be. That you won't do your subject justice, and it won't be as fascinating to the viewers as you think it is. But that's what we do battle with each and every day... and as I said, most of the time I only get a split second to think about it. Today, I have a little bit longer. But does that mean I fail myself even more if it's not great in the end? We'll have to see.

Moment over... back to work... see you at 10 tonight... let me know what you think.

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