Media Grunt: Michael Bazeley

Video auto reviews are certainly nothing new. Other newspapers, as well as Edmunds and other auotmotive sites, have been doing them for some time. Nonetheless, I like what we’ve started with our autos editor Matt Nauman. We grab Matt and his vehicle du jour, zip down to the local empty office park, and let Matt riff on what he likes and doesn’t like. We’ve done two so far.
We’ve purposely eschewed the B-roll video available from the auto manufacturers, and I think it makes our pieces more useful and authentic. Best of all, these are proving very easy to produce. It takes about an hour to shoot the video (with a $400 consumer camcorder) and another 30-45 minutes to edit in iMovie. We’ll improve the production quality as we go along (better audio and graphics, and maybe even a tripod(!)). And I’m looking for a better video player so we can present the video on our main site. But it’s a start, and further evidence that video doesn’t need to be hard.