I've finally been able to break my online silence about my success with the Associated Press's Generational Video Challenge now that it has been publicised on journalism.co.uk. You can follow the link below to see my winning video and an accompanying article by Rachel Bartlett:
bit.ly/1lA6QsG
The Generational Video challenge was a competition for students in journalism to make a video that would appeal to young people between the ages of 16 and 25 and edited together for an online audience. The AP gave each of us access to their latest video content from across the globe. The breadth and diversity of the material was overwhelming, there are so many stories out there!
I chose to do a video about American schoolchildren being taught to use social media in class primarily because the story was about people who were of a similar age to the target audience. With (a lot of) help from my girlfriend Sally, I chose a backing track that helped underscore the storyline in a way that wasn't too distracting but acted as ear-pleasing filler when there was no interesting audio from the footage itself. I chose to use text rather than my own voice to provide narrative to the story in the manner that can be seen in the successful online video series Alltime10s who give their lists flow by using some atmospheric background music and brief sentences to give viewers the juicy bits of the story. I believe people engage more with information if they read it, the written word only becomes boring if it goes on too long, so brief sentences shouldn't be a problem.
My experience with the AP has put my head above the clouds, now I hope I can pull the rest of me up and get somewhere with this journalism lark!
