So in class, we talked about photography and how people use photoshop to make things look better even though it’s not a good thing. You know, ethics and all that jazz.
We didn’t talk about video and how easy it is to make someone look bad, beautiful, hateful, and all the things that people can be at a click of a button, but I’m sure it remains.
Yet, do journalists follow this kind of thought process when it comes to video?
Let’s change the color on this shot to make him/her look healthier. Let’s only cut this sound bite because we only have so much time. Take out the uhms and shutters (which isn’t hard to do), but what does that mean? Is that ethical?
Probably not. I can understand why to take out the uhms and the shuttering, but what can we do at this point? We only have so much time on the air.
Even CNN saturates colors, I think to make certain things standout. Or at least, I think they do. I’m not an expert. It’s easy and it can make a certain color or a certain object standout.
I play around with editing a lot, but what are my morals? Where will I stand at?
And I have officially entered uncomfortable thoughts. I want to make things look sharp and beautiful, but I can’t always do that. And there are some things, a lot of things, that can’t be made beautiful and shouldn’t.
I could be wrong though. I could be over thinking it.
Learning to be a Visual Storyteller 