Washington Post Video

Two weeks in politics: The RNC and DNC, side-by-side, by AJ Chavar/The Washington Post

What a long and crazy two weeks it has been! A good chunk of the Washington Post video team (including director of video Andrew Pergam, technical director Meghan Sims,  segment producers Theresa Poulson and Jason Aldag, video editors Jayne Orenstein and Kristen Boghosian, and videojournalist AJ Chavar [hey, that’s me!]) has been on the road for two weeks, first covering the RNC in Tampa, Fl., and then the DNC in Charlotte, N.C.

The video above, though I may biased in being its creator, is one of our “must-watch” videos from the conventions. I spent the in-between moments during both conventions shooting, planning, sequencing and reshooting scenes for video diptych at the top of the post. Planning for the project started almost three full months ago, when we were first formulating our ideas for covering the conventions. I was inspired by a number of things while shooting, but it is no secret to fans of their work that a big influence on this video was the Everynone video “Symmetry:” 

My hope was to expand on their split screen concept and tell more of a direct, linear story about the political conventions, showing how very different, and how very similar they could be. 

Before even arriving in Tampa I had a short shot list, a skeleton file in Final Cut Pro that cut the screen in two and was filled with dummy footage, and some music selected. I felt that I was somewhat underprepared, but this turned out to be a good thing. Every day I pushed myself to find more and shoot more because I was worried about undershooting—there were no second chances!

(shot list, RNC)

Over the weekend, in between Tampa and Charlotte, I took all of my RNC footage and began to edit it down and sync it with the music. This took a few hours spread out over the course of a day, and let me go into the DNC with much more focus—I knew what scenes I had to find compliments to, so I had a checklist. At this time, I also asked Jayne Orenstein to start pulling clips of politicians from both conventions and matching up their hand gestures.

By the last day of the DNC everything was completed and in place except for the final shot of President Obama. It went surprisingly smoothly. I watched the President’s speech from the Washington Post workspace, waiting for him to formally accept the nomination. By the time he had ended his speech, the video was done and on its way to our video CMS.

But of course, we did simply TONS of video from both conventions, and you can find all of it, and new political video reporting daily, on our website. For all the video from the RNC, just click here. Those playlists include a ton of Post-original content, including analysis and takeaways from our top political reporters and bloggers, as well as the footage of all the major speeches, and original reporting by our videojournalists. And don’t forget the same playlists for the DNC, here.

(two weeks worth of press credentials)

You should definitely check out the “Say What” player, spearheaded by Kat Downs. It allows you to watch full speeches with embedded transcripts, and see where both Post reporters and Twitter decided to weigh in. 

Overall, here at Post Video, we’re trying to give you the most complete, and completely unique coverage of politics. You can always let us know how we’re doing by getting in touch with us on twitter.

-AJ Chavar/The Washington Post

Just add water: Becoming an Ocean City lifeguard

May. 25, 2012 - The week before Memorial Day weekend, the Ocean City Beach Patrol veteran Surf Rescue Technicians train the newest batch of lifeguards. Sgt. Tim Uebel has been taking part in this tradition for 29 years. (AJ Chavar/The Washington Post)

I shot this video the other week, and man, it was a ton of fun. For one, I love the outdoors, so I couldn’t complain about a few days at the beach, even if it was threatening to storm the whole time. Plus, I love any assignment that gets a little “extreme.” In this case, it was wading out into the ocean with my DSLR to film lifeguards in training. That didn’t go so well, check out this raw clip:

Yeah, I misjudged the strength of that wave. Thankfully my camera was kept safe in a waterproof bag called a DiCaPac, and the only thing bruised was my ego.

I used the new GoPro Hero 2 camera to get all of the water shots you see in the final piece. Subject Kevin Stang was nice enough to wear one on his head when he did the grueling swim around the pier that you can see condensed in the video, and other lifeguards-to-be wore them when running through training exercises as both victims and first responders.

While cool technology can never substitute for real storytelling and editing skills, sometimes they converge perfectly to help you tell a story in a way you couldn’t before. Keep an eye out for more footage from our new GoPro cameras as we experiment with them as a new tool in our camera bags.

-AJ Chavar, videojournalist/The Washington Post

** NOTE: The Washington Post is not endorsing, nor are we endorsed by the products/companies mentioned/linked to in this post. **

Peeps are kind of a big deal this time of year at the Post newsroom.

That’s right, this year finalists for the ever-popular Peeps Diorama contest were finally announced. The winner, Occupeep DC, is above, and you can see all five finalists here.

I was assigned to shoot the video of the winning dioramas, and two of our video producers, Jayne Orenstein and Kristen Boghosian (who, by the way, are often the voices behind the @postvideo twitter handle) took care of editing the footage into something beautiful. Its always interesting to see how another editor handles your work. My edit probably would have been entirely different! 

I spent about four hours in our video studio filming the different dioramas, and then chose the best clips to hand off to Kristen and Jayne to work from. The nice thing about working in the studio is that I could reshoot each scene as often as I needed… the bad thing was that then I had to edit through all of those takes! But in the end, with a little help from some fancy camera supports I was able to add in some movement to the static details in the dioramas.

All of the finalists put together great scenes using the popular marshmallow peeps, but my favorite remains the winner—Occupeep DC. Maybe its because I spent so much time covering the occupation in Macpherson square myself.

-AJ Chavar

For our Cherry Blossom guide this year I wanted to do something a little different, after all, its been a century now that we’ve had them in DC.

So I teamed up with awesome Washington Post information designer and illustrator Patterson Clark to create an illustrated, animated guide to the science behind the blossoms. 

So often we create infographics via After Effects or Photoshop or Illustrator, I felt the urge to work with Clark to make something tangible. Plus, now we have some sweet art hanging around our cubicles!

Also of note, the beautiful artwork drawn through the video is actually Patterson Clarks’s first attempt at using soft pastels (he normally works digitally, with a Wacom pad and stylus, directly into Photoshop). Of course, he didn’t tell me this until we were done, and if he hadn’t I would have assumed he’d been sketching with pastels for years. Hope you enjoy!

-AJ Chavar

CES 2012 and New Hampshire Primary Timelapses

Post Videojournalists AJ Chavar and Whitney Shefte both chose to use timelapses as a way to tell a story last week. Timelapse photography is a pretty popular trend in current video production, but it is not just a fad. By speeding up our perception of time, the technique actually serves to make the passage of time more tangible.

In the case of Whitney’s video from New Hampshire, it condenses a day at the polls into a one minute vignette about GOP voters in the state, whereas AJ’s longer video drives home the massive scope of the Consumer Electronics show. 

Have you ever done a timelapse video? Share it with us by tweeting @ajchavar.