1st Place
Miguel Estrada WFAA
Judges Comments
RC KARE Tolar Letters 7 7 7 8 Cool piece. Reveals were nice. Edits and shots were crisp. One thing when showing letters and having sound under it can be confusing if they're not the same. Maybe cut to some of the drawings, you show me letters I want to read them, and if they're saying something else, you confuse the viewer, and might make me miss an important thing. Stand up could have been a little more creative. NIce job.
CN KARE Tolar Letters 8 7 6 7 Cool subject to get the opprotunity to go out and shoot. I liked the reveal that those were the kids that sent him the letters 11 years ago. I felt the cross dissolves were a little over used but perhaps a style thing for me. A DP once told me, "My eyes don't see cross dissolves in real life." TRUE. But then again, photogs are probably the only people who see sequences when they walk into their parents house for thanksgiving. My point is, use a cross dissolve as an effect, not a saftely net.
JS KARE Tolar Letters 8 7 7 8 Cool story! Liked the natural wipes. You got a lot of shots out of a pile of letters. There were a couple of sudden audio ramps that could've been smoothed out, but it seems like you were doing that with most of the piece. Remember that we're supposed to be submitting our stories with mixed audio on both channels...
2nd Place
Chance Horner WFAA
Judges Comments
RC KARE Mommies in Need 8 8 7 8 Loved the intial reveal. Got right to the heart of it, then showed me something. Good shots, nats, edits and second camera option for the interview. I felt the explanation of the nanny could have gone a little quicker, and the room selected for the woman who had cancer previously made the sound echo and was jarring. Nice piece, and nice writing by your partner on this story.
CN KARE Mommies in Need 7 7 7 7 Very touching piece and a good reveal. The pacing needed to be tightened up. Felt very loose from bite to track to nat.
JS KARE Mommies in Need 8 7 7 8 Nice story. The timing could be tightened on some edits. Natalie's interview was super noisy...I thought it was the shotgun mic at first (or was it?) If the lav was working, that had to have been an incredibly noisy room to make it sound like that.
3rd Place
Andy McKay WQAD
Judges Comments
RC KARE Boys of Summer 6 7 7 8 Cool story. Great movement of the shots, liked seeing you get the high on the roof shot. Nats while playing shoes was good. Some tightening needed in some of the edits, also if you're going to use your shotgun nats, get it in on the sound so I can hear the crispness of the shot or person talking. Watch your axis shift on a couple edits. Fun story, could tell you put a hard days work in on this fun piece.
JS KARE Boys of Summer 6 7 8 8 Awesome shot variety, and commitment to nats. Those nat breaks could've been tightened up a lot, though. The first big nat sequence had two angles on the same sounds...could've combined the shots and had only one occurrence of the nat. The breaks moved too slow to drive the story oon.
CN KARE Boys of Summer 6 7 8 7 Felt like you mixed up your shot variety a lot which I liked, and the nats were mixed up very well. A story like this would have been very easy to fall into nat after nat of the horseshoe hitting the stick. A few of the nats near the top though were a little empty. Over all I liked it, but feel the whole thing could have been tightened up, nat to track felt like it had some space in between.
Honorable Mention
Ben Kroll 12 News, Brooklyn Park
Judges Comments
RC KARE 55 miles for vets 7 8 7 8 Good use of nats, and building to the moments. Would have liked a couple more reaction shots from the vets. Also, watch the couple jump cuts, and your tri pod in the background. Good effort.
JS KARE 55 miles for vets 7 7 6 7 Good shot variety. Although much of the cover is interchangeable, you probably could've used one of the more active shots (or at least an extra shot in the same amount of time) for the "flurry of activity" line than the couple just sitting there. Nothing against you, but the reporter track audio booth could use some acoustic foam or something to kill some of that bounce!
CN KARE 55 miles for vets 7 7 7 6 Good use of natural sound allowed the story to keep a decent pace. I wanted to see more reaction from the vets when the woman arrived. Watch the tripod location when shooting, often anticipation can help you keep the tripod out of the shot but I don't know what you were up against. The only thing that bothered me was in one of the first tracks about the buzz around the home, there was this shot of two people that looked like an interview shot to me and it didn't say hustle and bustle at all, even though you had a decent nat sequence right after that. Nice work.
Judges: KARE