My own toughest critic: Advancing the National Veterans Wheelchair Games

Last week I found the time and inspiration to produce a new video. The National Veterans Wheelchair Games were coming to Spokane, and I decided I’d find an angle.

Here’s where media relations people are your friends. At the official games site, somebody had helpfully prepared bios of Spokane-area athletes who would be competing.

A lot of these guys – and they were all guys – were competing for the first time. But I noticed one who had been to the games before and seemed to be pretty active in the veterans community. When I called up Brent King, of Cheney, he was happy to work with me.

Check out the almost-finished* product below, then keep reading for why I’m not happy with it.

OK, the production value is pretty good, but there are a number of reasons I’m dissatisfied with this project.

1. It’s dull. There’s not a lot of pop, from beginning to end. Nor snap, nor crackle. The closest thing is, somewhat literally, the sound of the air-rifle pellets hitting the back of the trap.
2. It’s repetitive. I’ll elaborate with something I posted to Twitter last week.
   

   Learning, Part 1: I am mining the B roll on this video for every usable second. And here I thought I’d collected plenty.

   For those learning the jargon, the B roll refers to everything you see that is not a talking head. And I wish I’d found more to work with than target practice.

3. It’s shiny. King told me, in jest, that he hoped I made his bald head look good. My goal is, of course, neither to make subjects look good nor bad. But because I chose an outdoor setting (hello, birdies) to shoot the interview with King, his bald head becomes pretty, um, unnoticeable. Despite the lovely cattails in the background, I wish I’d set up in a shadier spot.
4. It’s got my voice in it. I don’t like to do voiceover. I know it can be done compellingly, like in this recent collaboration between videographer Colin Mulvany and reporter Kevin Graman. But I have yet to find the formula when I’m the one talking. I can’t help but wonder if I’d phrased my questions a little differently I could have elicited responses from King that would have told the story on their own.

You might recall the asterisk above. I say “almost finished” because I’m covering some live events at the games this week, and I plan to stop by King’s first air gun event to get some footage of him in competition. I’ll edit this into my original video to create version 2.0. I credit this idea to my colleague Dan Pelle, who did the same with this much more impressive Bloomsday story. But perhaps with some more B roll, I can give this video a little bit more snap, crackle or pop.

That’s enough self-flagellation for tonight. What do you think?