A Travis Fox fan

Last week at Washington Post, Chet Rhodes spoke highly about one of their video producers, Travis Fox. We have seen his work in class and his story-telling technique is very compelling. It’s no surprise that he is an Emmy award winner.

First time I saw Fox’s work, was a seven-minute video titled A Fragile Renaissance. Fox works with simple wide, medium and close up shots. He focuses on building characters through his documentaries. In the Renaissance video he travels all through Medellin showing the life of the city. But the local people in the video help make a connection with the viewer.

For our final class project this semester we struggled a lot with locating sources, finding the right people to talk to and making videos worth watching. Journalists of Fox's caliber have their research in place from the first day and though a small word research demands a lot of work. But in the the long run saves time.

For the election season Fox has been doing a Hard Times series, again talking to people from different states and the issues most important to them. More so he presents complex interwoven subjects into simple humane association.

In class there is constant discussion on good videos, proper camera angles and artful editing. As we go along doing our visual and online journalism assignments we get better but the crossover from print to video (for me) just seems impossible. But before we learn film making and photography the art of reporting, writing and storytelling needs to be strongly rooted.