I am so glad to hear from you again.

B roll and cutaways are indeed the terms we use here too.

Just always remember that any video of the people in your story doing just about any activity can be used effectively. People working, playing, eating, talking sitting around doing nothing, whatever activity you can videotape can work as visuals for your video.

I personally am extremely interested in how African farmers work and deal with issues like climate change. But then again, no doubt overall, the audience for that would be less than videos of people splitting their pants, which is sad really but let’s not dwell on that!

To get a better audience for your videos, or to try and sell or distribute your videos, I suggest contacting other groups concerned with those issues. Such as:
Charity groups working to help feed people.
Academic institutions that deal with agriculture or international issues.
Agricultural Associations that help unite and educate farmers
Climate change advocacy groups.
Any group working to help the continent of Africa.
Environmental groups.
Tourism agencies.

Contact all of these groups and tell them what you have to offer. Even if they can not help you or are not interested, always ask, “Do you know anyone else I might contact?” If you ask everyone you speak with to recommend someone else, you will son have long lists of people who are interested.

Good luck Clifford. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Why don’t you post some links to your videos here? I would like to see them.
Thanks!
Lorraine Grula

Good to hear from you, i think what you said was very crucial and took my time to visualise in it, i always do the B roll shots or cutaways as we call them here and have some of my works in U tube, i am working on many more, i get sleepless nights i will say. Could you be having an idea on anyone who could be interested in agricultural innovations & more in africa. How farmers are coping with effects of climate change, how some food crops fix nitrogen, adaptive ways of keeping poultry, transfer of genetic resources. I would kindly appreciate any suggestions

Here’s a tip. Take a little bit of video of everyone you interview. Ask them what activities they normally would be doing if you were not there. Decide which is the most visually interesting and videotape that. Get lots of variety of angles of their activity. Then you can write your script in such a way that the video is explained a bit so it makes sense for the viewer that is what they are seeing.

Once you get the hang of it, coming up with ideas for video to illustrate your story gets easier. Taking video of people doing activities that are related to the subject matter of your story is a safe bet and always works.

You say you interview scientists. Scientific laboratories are actually extremely visual. Test tubes, beakers and bottles of chemicals make some interesting shots. I always asked what equipment they have that moves or makes noise. Moving noisy things do well on video. That usually got me the centrifuge.

If there is absolutely no other video to shoot, take video of the person you interview walking down the hallway or down a sidewalk.

I hope that helps you. Good luck. Thanks for visiting!

Lorraine

Lorraine Grulas last blog post..Online Video Storage and Hosting-Amazon S3

When we talk with a friend, we do talk in short sentences, parts of sentences and few of us would know how to punctuate the communication if it were written down.

I just might have been guilty of writing script that sounds a bit stuffy…well, I admit it, I certainly have done that.

I feel so much better now that I got that off my chest. I won’t do it again…