By Sarah Beth Guevara
For 59 consecutive years, industry professionals became students again at the University of Oklahoma for the News Video Workshop (NVW). Though the faces changed over the years, the videography giants taught the same basic principles:
⧫ Shoot and move
⧫ Action/reaction
⧫ Enter frame, enter frame, enter frame
⧫ Find the moments
⧫ Not one extra word
These are mantras that students have taken home over the ages.
In the fall of 2019, that’s what the NVW teachers and participants craved: learning for the sake of furthering the craft.
Then a pandemic halted the world in its tracks at a time when journalists were needed most.
Remote interviews and Zoom meetings became commonplace. Managers and videographers were left to question how visual storytelling fits into a socially distant world.
If you ask the NVW workshop faculty — especially Joe Little — they will say it matters now more than ever.
“It was kind of a deja vu,” NVW Chair Julie Jones said. “It was encouraging after so much struggle after the last two years to see us finally back on the footing and sending people out the door to shoot the exercises that we have that we know work, and work for us, and have worked for 60 years.”
NVW Co-Chair Adam Vance said the NVW revitalizes his passion for visual storytelling and how y60 felt different in a world that increasingly normalizes Zoom interviews.
“Y60 was supposed to be a celebration of 60 years, but in light of the pandemic, it was almost like a rebirth for us to come back better and stronger,” Vance said.
NVW Co-Chair Stan Heist said it was inspiring to watch journalism change through the pandemic and stress of the last two years.
“As journalists, we’ve been through changes in technology, we’ve been through changes in the economy, and journalism has persevered, and storytelling has persevered,” Heist said.
This year, more digital journalists joined the faculty and spoke to the changing journalism landscape, emphasizing the legacy of the traditional NPPA style.
“You continue to have storytellers emerge on different platforms. It gives us confidence that what we do matters, and it traverses types of media,” said Heist.
Workshop participants take the tools they learned back home to their stations and communities.
“I'm really trying to focus on character-driven stories now. Like really trying to find people to talk to to make this story more impactful and more human so people can understand it,” participant Chris Costello said.
He said the workshop made him more focused on becoming a better storyteller.
NVW participant Alison Hickey said she’s become more frustrated with herself since returning home to shoot — but in the best way possible.
“A little bit of frustration is what is sort of pushing me to become better. Because now I have a little bit more of a standard that I’ve set for myself,” Hickey said.
Ultimately, the NVW is about connections among participants, faculty insight, and taking techniques home to help communities. Hickey said her most vivid memory was a critique meeting on the third day of the workshop.
“As a whole group I feel like all of us improved tenfold, and that was when I felt like all of us really were like helping each other out,” Hickey said. “That was when the idea of NPPA family started to solidify in my mind.”
Like Darrell Barton and the other greats of NPPA past, the point of the workshop is to ensure longevity: throughout a pandemic, unprecedented times and any unforeseeable future.
“Y60 means an obligation to make sure that we make it to y70, y80, y90,” Jones said. “I’m not going to be around for those years, but other people will be, and we have to pass it forward.”
Sarah Beth Guevara is a freelance journalist working with ABC News in Washington, D.C. You can find her at all the socials at @SarahBethNews. She has been a member of NPPA for half a year as a professional journalist.
