Writing for a Visual Medium – Precisely Concise

As I read the different reading materials for class, I couldn’t help but journey back to that moment a couple of weeks ago when I was sitting in front of a computer in the Futures Lab, thinking over how I was going to edit my captured video clips. We weren’t supposed to have any words or captions, but probably as everyone else, I was sort of making ‘unseen’ scripts of my own just to get a glimpse of how my short piece of video would turn out.

The most important thing in visual media is obviously its asset to be able to tell a story. Thus, I believe that writing for a visual medium should be able to focus on the story, basically in the same principle as writing on paper as a reporter. However, unlike writing on paper and guiding people through a story with your mighty pen from the very beginning, I think writing for a visual medium has more to do with getting all the pieces of the puzzle together. By puzzle pieces I mean we as convergence reporters have more tools in our hands to actually “plan” the focus or attention emphasis of readers (viewers). To elaborate, think of a reporter who has a camera or a video camera. This reporter, after getting the footage or photo, has to decide how to use and match this media information with whatever he/she is going to write. Now, I guess that’s how we have been working so far as students of a fundamentals class. Get your media first, and then think about how to make it all work together by editing them. However, I think as skilled convergence reporters, I think we will have a better sense of how to tell the story, and with that blueprint be able to handle all our tools of storytelling to make fit the pieces we need. I believe that the writing part will act as one of the vital pieces of the story, the only catch being it must always be as concise as possible.

I have been writing some kind of piece all my life, whether it is a paper for classes, an essay for the school paper, diaries, letters, you name it. But I have always found myself writing a bit longer than I had hoped to (just like in this blog entry). I think my convergence training and experiences will definitely give me a good lesson in not rambling on and on about a story. I think conciseness and precisely getting to the point is very important in writing for a visual medium, since you are trying to ‘aid’ people who can already ‘see’ parts of your puzzle pieces, like I mentioned earlier. That I would definitely like to get better at.