can't avoid the obvious

This Tuesday I was assigned to cover the 2009 Spring Fitness Expo at the Activity Recreation Center (ARC) in Columbia. This was a soft story, had no problem having people to talk to me or getting the B-roll. The producer wanted me to do a mini package, which is about 50 secs only, so it wasn't hard at all. It was actually quite fun, there were African dance lessons, free snacks, and lots of other freebies. People were having a good time and it shows in the video I shot.

One problem that I encountered though, in an event like this, it's pretty obvious what's going on. It's a little hard to come up with some creative questions other asking the organizers what the goal of the event is, are there any statistics to back up your point that you've decided to hold this event, what the feedbacks from the community are, and if they will plan on having another one next year. I mean, I also threw some questions about the event preparation but at that point I figured the information isn't relevant to our audience. Or at least, not newsworthy enough.

Same thing with the attendees, my questions were really limited to how they enjoyed the event, which booths they visited, what benefits they got from the event and if the city should hold another one. I mean, those are the only things that matter to the audience right? Not that I have enough time to put all the sound bites in anyways.

So I was trying to avoid the obvious but I think that was right thing to do at that time for my mini package. I ended up putting all the three sound bites in (the shortest versions of them) and cut the last half of my stand up just so that I could make it into 50 secs.

Oh, and there were also some editing glitches that I didn't have time to fix nor I know on top of my head the quickest way to fix them.