Making friends with raw video

As a photographer, I like things to be pretty.

Clean backgrounds. Sharp focus. Artful composition. Everything under control.

So when I started shooting video in college, I paid attention to detail. I always used a tripod, white-balanced, manual-focused -- you name it. If a shot wasn't technically perfect, it went to the digital cutting-room floor. The editing took so long that I ended up hating what I was left with. I edited the heart and soul out of every story I shot.

So when Val Hoeppner, manager of multimedia education with the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute, started her multimedia lecture today, I was surprised to hear her extol the virtues of what I thought was the devil of all Web sites: raw video.

To me, the thought of shaky-handed interviews with fuzzy audio was just unprofessional and distracted from the subject. But when she showed the powerful videos from the Hovey Street murders series she and her staff worked on, I was blown away. They weren't technically perfect, but they were emotional and timely, which made them even more sincere.

Most impressive, though, was the confession the paper received once the suspects viewed the videos on the paper’s Web site. It was a perfect display of how technology and interactivity can breed results beyond any we can imagine.

Today taught me to not edit out the passion of the moment or withhold it because it isn't technically perfect. Capturing the moment is 100 times more important, and that sincerity beats out a tripod any day.