This one is for my reporter friends out there. You one-man-bands and multimedia journalists who hear stories from senior anchors about the days when there was a photog for every reporter in the field (wow!). My friends, I have a message for you: your standup doesn’t have to suck.
How many times have you been setting up sticks at a street corner where something happened four hours ago? Or sitting at your desk while a coworker shoots you gesturing at a photocopy of the case du jour? How many times have you been walking from nowhere to nowhere to give your standup motion and wondered, “do I even need a standup? And if I do, does it have to be like this?”
Well first off, yes, you need a standup. But second, no, it doesn’t have to be pointless. An easy way to shoot a dynamic, interactive and interesting standup is to use SND On Air. And yes, I’m biased toward this…but think about it! Instead of standing in front of a now-empty intersection, how about standing in front of a scrolling display of Tweets and Facebook posts from witnesses. These pictures can add life to an otherwise outdated standup.
And it’s super simple. Just call up the posts at your desk and drop them into an On Air playlist. Send the feed to a monitor or the weather wall and call the control room. They can crank up the studio cams, start the automation, and there you have it: it’s you standing next to compelling visuals that help to tell the story. And best of all, it gets your viewers’ contributions on air and makes them part of the story. Your viewers will love it and will, in turn, give you more pictures and posts.
And consider this: Instead of sitting at your desk with court documents, what if you called up pictures of the accused from his or her own Facebook page and used SND On Air to create an interactive standup opportunity. Or you could even create a playlist of posts from people talking about the trial on social media and then read through a few of them as they scrolled on a monitor or weather wall behind you.
SND On Air is here to help you be outstanding in the field instead of just out standing in a field. Want to know more? Talk to your digital and social media managers in your newsroom, or contact us.