This handout provides tips from Detroit Free Press reporters who also shoot smartphone video on how they combine the two activities while on the same assignment. The Free Press' visuals director, Kathy Kieliszewski, compiled it for attendees of Lexington NewsTrain on Jan. 21, 2016, and Halifax NewsTrain on May 6-7, 2016. It accompanies her presentation, "Shooting Effective Video on Your Smartphone." NewsTrain is a training initiative of Associated Press Media Editors (APME). More info: http://bit.ly/NewsTrain

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How to report and shoot smartphone
video while on the same assignment
Kathy Kieliszewski| @kkieliszewski | kkieliszewski@freepress.com
In response to feedback from a reporter who attended a NewsTrain and asked for
help juggling video-shooting while also reporting, I asked Detroit Free Press
reporters who do both for their tips. Here’s what they had to say:
Reporters’ tips
 Delete those videos after a couple days. You never want to be shooting a
video and then have it stop prematurely because you’ve run out of storage
space.
 Use the Gorilla tripod! [http://joby.com/griptight-gorillapod-stand] It
gives more stability and flexibility when having to hold the phone.
 Avoid a bunch of talking heads. Ask questions that don’t relate directly to
the story, but provide some different insight.
 Using 15 or 20 short clips in a two-minute video helps the overall pace.
 Be patient. You might shoot several videos of two or three minutes each to
get five seconds of action that you need.
 Use the phone as your notepad – either by using the voice recorder to
record you or your subject or by taking “visual” notes.
 Just because you shot it, doesn’t mean you should use it. What’s the video
adding to your story?
 Make time for video when you are planning out your interview.
 Know before you go. What is the purpose of the video? What is the video?
 Divide and conquer. Can you shoot the interview and the photographer the
B-roll? It’s important to talk it through so the two match.
 Hand warmers! The cold drains the phone’s battery very quickly. Keeping
it in your pocket with a hand warmer until you need it will save the battery
life and your sanity.

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A couple of first-hand experiences
1. My best video experiences in the past year were shot live on Periscope.
[https://www.periscope.tv/]
Last April, I Periscoped a rally after police shot a young man in a Detroit
neighborhood.
The video, tagged “Detroit rally against police brutality,” went for 1 hour,
34 minutes and drew 4,528 live viewers.
I started by interviewing people holding signs outside the house where the
shooting happened. Then I held my iPhone up among the TV crews’ mics
as the father gave his side of the story. After that, chants started, and the
group marched about half a mile to a high school and back, where they
blocked an intersection and police started threatening arrests.
Meanwhile, another reporter back in the newsroom was watching my feed
and dropping updates into the story as it unfolded.
Story here: http://on.freep.com/1QbQX8I
This was before Periscope started offering horizontal video; at the time,
loading it into Brightcove [the Free Press’ online video platform] took out
large chunks of the picture. If that rally happened tomorrow, we’d be able
to edit and upload the video to the story afterward.
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2. Another useful video came from a trip to the northern Michigan hotel
that a University of Michigan fraternity trashed. This one included images
and interviews, some of them from the hotel and some from the University
of Michigan campus. It was a story that would have follow-up after follow-
up, and people kept watching the video that was embedded repeatedly.
It’s totaled nearly 500,000 views: http://on.freep.com/1SupJ08
Lately, I’ve been fond of taking a quick Instagram video and later
embedding it into a story. Here’s one from a beer-malt house, just to show
people some sights and sounds: http://on.freep.com/1Rb93uH