If you are Canadian, you might have noticed that over the past week there has been a bit of a stink going on over what the “governing configuration” of the House of Commons is. For those who are not Canadian, there are a number of sites that you can use to inform yourselves, but this one might be one of the better ones.
But this post is only using the flap in Ottawa as a jumping point for storyboarding. You see, last week, there was a bit of a “media/message” moment as Dion, the leader of the Liberal Party and the coalition gave a video taped explanation to the country after Harper (the current PM… and I loath to even type that) gave his FUD. But compared to anything that an elementary student, shooting 5 minutes before the assignment was due, it was a disaster.
When it comes to storyboarding, something like a talking head is pretty straight forward to frame – or is it? Well in the video you can see how close the crop is to the face, and the “Hot Air” book on the shelf really makes it hard to pay any serious attention to the message. If the communications people had take time to put together a storyboard to at least get the framing right – I’m sure that they could have used someone cell phone to take pictures if they didn’t want to doodle – they would have caught these missteps and been able to deliver a much more powerful presentation.
It is also mentioned that part of the delay on the video was because (perhaps) editing issues. Granted, this can happen and Murphy certainly pays a visit to those who invite him, but storyboarding could have helped this as well. It isn’t the solution for all editing woes, but it does give the editor a framework to use when putting shots together – saving time, marks, embarrassment… also an equipment check doesn’t hurt either.
Leave a Reply