EmailThis past week we ran one of our boot camps for Spectrum News. This one was not for the journalists but rather a two-day taster course for other people who work at the company to learn what the content creators are learning to do. Most of these people had never picked up a phone to make a video before — aside from short clips of their dogs or kids. Once again, the process showed us how anyone can truly learn these skills and make great videos without prior experience.
One of the participants in the course was Samantha Yon, who works in the Corporate Department of Product & Technology. Needless to say, this is not a content creation position. While others this week work in newsrooms around the country, Samantha works in the office of emerging technology. As Samantha described she works on long-term projects with things like AI, VR, and the like.
Samantha wasn’t daunted by the week and neither were we. As we always say truly anyone can make a great compelling video with no prior experience needed — often it’s those who have experience who take the most time to grasp our way of working.
On the first day, Samantha went out and shot her footage and it was excellent. She followed all the rules. If you’ve taken our course on The Michael Rosenblum 5-Shot Method you’ll know all about those rules. As Samantha had never shot any video before the course she was quite pleased with the results — and so were we.
The next day we taught Samantha how to craft it into a story and how to use iMovie for iOS. The results were great. Considering Samantha had never shot or edited a video before what she was able to accomplish was remarkable.
Check out her story:
For a first-time out ever it's pretty good. Plenty to improve upon but considering that Samantha had never done this before it's a great effort.
It truly goes to show you that really anyone can do this. You don't have to be worried that you've never worked in video before, or never even opened the camera app on your phone. With some simple instructions and the tools from TheVJ.com, you can start making great videos.
A two-day boot camp with us is all it takes to get started, but you can do it at your own pace here.
Featured Courses
Recent Posts
The Future of News is NOT TikTok, It’s Netflix
December 18, 2024
Character-driven journalism is not new to newspapers, though it once was. It was once called The New Journalism in the 1960s — see Truman Capote or Tom Wolfe. Today it is industry standard. Why not take the Sopranos or Breaking Bad formula and marry it to TV journalism? (How many interviews have you seen in The Sopranos? How many Man on the Street soundbites have you seen in Breaking Bad?)
Good News is actually Good News
October 14, 2024
In a recent study by The Reuters Institute, 40% of Americans no longer watch or read the news at all. They find it too depressing. All doom and gloom.
The Future of News: TikTok or Netflix
September 09, 2024
There is a great deal of concern, well placed, that few people under the age of 30 watch TV news. Viewership of TV news in general has fallen off, so naturally, TV executives across the boards are searching for a solution. How to appeal to a demographic that spends most of their time on social media?