A news blog that was incredibly resourceful when creating this post….

If CNN produced the same terrible piece, then that’s no reason to give a guy praise. With your video, you’ve just proven with a little bit of thought, and creative input, you can make something watchable.

I feel some of the videos have missed that key element. The reason why the story is important, and why it’s important to tell people about it. We know the Dslr can produce fantastic quality pictures, but without anything else it’s just not happening.

I love the technical and practical side as much as the next guy.
I feel every time I’ve voiced out about not liking the editorial side, I’ve instantly hurt someones feelings. I’ve made positive comments on great work, Danfung’s especially. His work was an outstanding contribution to the site. I feel if other work isn’t up to standard, I want to make a constructive criticism/opinion about it, in the same way I’m giving positive feedback. Reason I said no one cares, is because it seems not many people care for the editorial side and it’s more about the nice depth of field and camera rigs used.

The comment about having a voice-over to explain it all… well that’s like having an incredibly poor still image, with an amazing caption, a caption that shows more than what the image is showing.

I can understand that there are difficulties discussing certain editorial issues but surely that doesn’t stop people discussing their own filming and editing? Gear is certainly an important part of film making but not as important as..well…the actual film making!

I dunno its ok talking toys but i personally want to be inspired by good work and learn from people with more experience at this. Which i’m not going to get from talking about the latest nik nak.

Anyway i’ve got some editing to do. Sadly i won’t be able to share it due to clients permissions etc. But maybe in the future i’d like to contribute something.

I think its a little unfair to say no-one cares about the story. If that were the case I’m sure Janek wouldn’t have posted it here in the first place. I also think that the quality of what Janek has produced is not so very different from the report for CNN, both rely heavily on the voice over to tell the viewer what is going on. I’m sure if you watch the report in Polish it makes perfect sense, otherwise Polsat wouldn’t have run it. What is significant is that what Janek did on his own with a $1800 camera was produce something not far off what CNN did with a crew of three and an expensive broadcast camera.

Apologies also that you feel this site is too technical and not enough editorial, for now that is the balance I have chosen to adopt because most contributors here have an employer that would probably not like editorial matters discussed by their staff off of their own websites (or at all). Most of us are quite free to discuss technical stuff but I would hate anyone contributing to run into problems with their bosses for posting here. This may change as the site evolves but for now that’s how it is for many of us. I would always welcome contributions from others who want to discuss the more practical and editorial side of DSLR video production, please chime in.

Dan

ps – I actually did the same story as a preview piece for the Guardian the week before the event. You can see it here http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/10/china-gay-pageant
please feel free to crit that also.