It’s show time.
After occasionally incorporating video on our website over the years, we are finally at the point where you can catch some significant farm-related action at producer.com.
We’re not perfect yet, but the strides we’ve made in the last two months — ever since we hired Robin Booker to help push the process along — are quite incredible. We have gone from few videos to having a whole bunch of them embedded with stories. We’re pretty excited about it, and it’s only the beginning.
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I’m calling the video team MPR Productions for now. That’s M for Michael Raine, managing editor; P for Paul Yanko, web editor; and R for Robin Booker, web reporter-editor, They deserve most of the credit for getting the digital tape rolling.
Since we didn’t want to use crappy cameras and just fling stuff up in YouTube fashion, there was a process to putting a system in place. First, you have to buy the cameras (and the memory cards, and the tripods, and the batteries, and, and, and …).
Then you have to have people who can actually use the cameras, edit the video and figure out how to get it online. For that, you need software, which also has to be installed, understood, played with and successfully applied.
Thank goodness for MPR. There’s a whole new language to this thing, like ENG and B-roll and other lingo I am not entirely used to, but they seem to be. Everything I know about electronic news gathering I have learned from, well, watching TV and local television reporters. But I’m learning, although not as fast as they are at MPR.
Do check out some of the footage and interviews from Canada’s Farm Progress Show. Most of the videos are in the Crops section on the Producer’s website, along with the print stories.
In the not too distant future, you’ll see more video as our journalists get their cameras and post their efforts from around Western Canada and beyond.
My only real contribution to this whole adventure was to remember to put the equipment in the capital budget — and to be on the team that hired Robin. Ta da! Hey, it’s not much, but that’s my limited skill set.
I’ll leave the brilliance to the staff. They’ve always brought you the best farm news in print and online, and now in video, too.
