First Bootcamp Stories- Spectrum News 1 Texas

Posted May 30, 2020

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A lot of news organizations look at the MMJ or MoJo or VJ as a way to cut costs.

After all, you get rid of the camera person, the sound person, the talent and the editor/

That's a lot of cost cutting.

And a lot of news organizations use the MMJ model to do just that - to keep m making the same kind of predictable, and to my mind unwatchable, TV news storeis that they have been making since 1968:

Lots of talking head interviews

Lots of b-roll to cover the track and the soundbites

A reporter stand up

A few Man On The Street soundbites

And we're done.

That's why pretty much all TV news packages look the same. 

And that's also why the ratings for TV news are dropping all the time. Because the stories are boring - cookie cutter - plug and play.

The same viewers who are watching your newscast are also watching Netflix and HBO and Hulu. There is an inherent expectation on their part that when they come to news, they are going to get the same kinds of stories - personal, character driven, arc of story.

So that's what we are doing with Spectrum News 1

In the bootcamps we teach the MMJs to tell their own stories - to have a voice- to have a sense of authorship

And to do it all with an iPhone - and all in 1-day turns.

You can do this when you drive the shooting ratio down to 3:1 or lower.

Envision the story BEFORE you shoot it.

Then shoot for the cut.

It works.

Here's a lovely story done this week in our Bootcamp.  First story for Spectrum News 1 Texas MMJ Reena Diamante.  Done in a few hours.

On her phone.

And this is only the beginning.

Pretty good for the first time.