Shooting video

There was a week last month where I shot a couple videos. I'm struggling right now to figure out how video fits into the daily news hole, so last month when there was some flooding going on in the county, Justin suggested I toss the video camera in my bag.

My shift was in the late afternoon and evening, the other photogs had already shot everything needed flood-wise for the paper the next day, so I was basically just cruising for spot news or something especially interesting.



As I shot feature-flood photos, I would shoot a few seconds of video, but wasn't finding any sort of narrative. After finding a red cross shelter in Monroe empty, I was about to call it a night, but then found myself on the highway, pulling a u-turn and heading further out to Sultan to another Red Cross shelter. As I got into town and was looking for the shelter, I saw the fire trucks go by and decided to follow them (yes, I'm turning into an ambulance chaser).

Turned out they were going to the shelter, so this video is the result:

THE VIDEO

Turned into a half spot-news, half public service announcement. The way I look at little videos like this, they serve to just augment the daily coverage already in the paper. It would be pointless to simply repeat what's already written in an article or already shown more concisely in a well-shot news photo.

For the sake of discussion, do y'all have any opinions on how video can, could, or should fit in at a daily newspaper?

Oh, and there are a few photos at the end of the video in an attempt to explain the clicking you hear at one point in the video as the ambulance doors are closing. It's funny, even while shooting video, I just love still photos so much that I can't resist, so I was shooting the video blind with my left hand and shooting my still camera with my right.