What are feature stories? Well, a feature story could be a lot of things. It could be a story about how someone who was disabled completed 24k run or a teacher who left a lasting affect on their students. Did those capture your attention? That's the first part of a feature story, creating a concept that can grab an audience by the heartstrings. Strong concepts are what drives a video, but that's only the beginning of a video. There's so much more that you must do that can make a good feature story.
What else must you do you may ask? well there are many things but let's start with the basics.
Visuals
Visuals cover a wide variety of subjects in your video, including the rule of this and the six shot system. Don't be like me and get the two confused with each other. They may seem like the same thing but they only work if you use them in harmony. The six shot system ranges from the extreme wide shot to the even more extreme close-up. Wide shots can give you an environment and an idea of where you are. Medium shots can show off people and other objects in that environment that you've established. Close-ups can show your main topic and the focus of your person, place, or thing. The rule of thirds changes the way people pay attention keeping some one or something in the middle of the screen is boring and won't keep people interested. Keeping them more to the left or right of the screen can keep your audience engaged. With both of these kept in mind you can keep an audience engaged and interested in your video.
Audio
Having a good, clean sound is the next important piece in the puzzle of a video. When your interviewing some one you have to have natural sound in the background that is like the bass to your favorite song. You don't really notice it until you really listen but it's what can enhance and keep you engaged in the song. The same goes for your video. But when your listening to a song theres something else besides the guitars and the drums. There are the vocals. When you're interviewing someone you have to keep their voice in mind. If it's something their passionate about then they should have emotion and passion in their voice.
I recently did a feature story over a student known as Blake Weidenmeyer. He has an interesting hobby that involves the pixels that we see everyday on technology. Blake takes these pixels and turns them into all kinds of art. When I was writing the script for the interview I had a narrative lead that introduced the art that Blake makes and just a brief summary of what pixels really are. I think that changed how the video went overall because that's just what the interview was all about. I didn't just interview Blake though. I also brought in a friend of his, Alec Hite. They complimented each other by talking about how they both liked Blakes art and how it has really come along after all this time.
Creating my script became a problem as soon as I saw that what I was doing was the wrong thing. I had to re-write my script and improvise some parts for the interview. The voiceover wasn't a problem and I felt comftorable speaking through it. It stopped working after awhile bu that didn't slow it down too much. My experience shooting the video was not very good as it was my 4th backup plan for the project. There were many things that went wrong such as equipment issues and people backing out on me. I even had to use a junior level camera for some parts.
The thing that I liked about my video most was that I was actually surprised on how it turned out. It was a good quality video for being such last minute and I actually enjoyed watching it with the rest of the class to my surprise.
It was fun shooting the video but that wasn't the last time that I would be working on it. I had to go back and translate the video down onto paper. I had to write a narrative lead and rewrite the most of the interview. I included quotes from those I interviewed but luckily not their whole answer.
Overall it was cool writing the future since writing is one of my strong suits, however I liked filming the video and asking the questions my self better. The feature story felt like it didn't take a long time and I didn't have to put any effort into it. Shooting the video allows to create a better story and image in my eyes.
Blakes Interview
Written feature story
Pixels, they’re something that we see everyday on all of our devices. We see them in different colors producing an image that we couldn’t imagine 50 years ago. They’re the small squares that make every color, every word, and every image on your screen. Anything that’s displayed is because the pixels are allowing us to see it. Without these pixels we wouldn’t be able to see the art that they convey on our screens.
Some people don’t consider pixels art, but that’s only some people. Blake Weidenmeyer sees pixels as a way of expressing art. He’s a student from Olathe Northwest High School that possesses the special talent of creating art from the simple pixels that we see everyday. He got into this pixel art because of the old video game sprites that they used in video games. They were so interesting that he just had to make art like that.
Blake Weidenmeyer has being doing this for a very long time and has quite a bit of experience with it. “I just hit 200.” Weidenmeyer said. However that was only in his Marvel series. “I’ve done all kinds of stuff so I’ve definitely made more than 200.” he said.
He has a popular Instagram page where you can find all of the pixel art that he done. “On Instagram, i’m at @Kirbyzilla.” Weidenmeyer said.
Alec is one of Weidenmeyers friends and shared with us what he thought of Weidenmeyers art. “He’s going along pretty good” Alec said “It’s really helping him progress in different forms.”
Blake Weidenmeyer has done so much pixel art that it’s hard for him to keep count, and he’s not going to stop anytime soon. It’s a way for him to see his favorite characters to come to life through his favorite form of art. Blake has a passion for a simple form of art, which makes it so much more larger than what it is.
