Adob Digital Video Curriculum Guide

Keep It Simple—and Short
Module 1 11
ADOBE PRODUCTION STUDIO CURRICULUM GUIDE
As a coda to Dotson's advice, you need to remind your students: This is only TV. You
need some mighty compelling or entertaining material to keep viewers glued to the tube
for more than a few minutes.
Think about whatever message you're trying to get across in your video project, and
consider what images, sound, and graphics will convey that message in the briefest,
most effective manner. Then shoot with brevity in mind.
That's not to say that you don't grab unplanned video that looks great. Or that you cut
interviews short even if you haven't heard some compelling sound bites. Videotape is
expendable. Feel free to shoot plenty. Although it's true that you might have to wade
through a lot to find the best shots, the advantage of DV is that once these shots are
located, you can simply capture them to your hard drive and they become immediately
accessible.
Writing in the Active Voice
Getting your students to write in the active voice will dramatically improve the quality
of their productions.
The tireless proponent of writing in the active voice is Mackie Morris. The former
chairman of the Broadcast News Department at the University of Missouri School
of Journalism and vice president of a major media consulting firm, Morris regularly
instructs television writers on his active-voice approach to writing.
For instance, instead of this passive-voice example:
A bill was passed by the Senate.
Use this active voice version instead:
The Senate passed a bill.
Putting the receiver of the verb's action after the verb changes passive-voice writing into
active-voice.
Instead of the passively voiced, “John Doe was arrested by police” (Doe is the receiver of
the action and is ahead of the verb). Change that to “Police arrested John Doe.”
Morris emphasizes that passive voice deadens, complicates, and lengthens writing. It's
not ungrammatical, but it's more suitable for print than television copy. You use passive
voice sparingly in everyday conversation, and you should use it sparingly in video