Feature stories are three-to-five-minute videos that generally  focus on one person (or event) and that usually have more than one interview.  While this is a generalization, a good feature story will have a good STORY at its center.

A feature story is different from a news story, in that a news story tells about an event that has happened very recently, (a football game, a visitor to the school, a student winning an award, etc.) while a feature story may or may not be as timely. Of course, a feature story CAN be tied to a recent event (an outstanding freshman who plays on the varsity team when it won the state championship) but generally it is a story that has a specific person who has a unique story to tell. There are some important elements to every feature story that you should understand before beginning yours.

Focus Statement
One of the best ways to begin your feature story is to develop a strong focus statement.  A focus statement is a short, 4-6 word statement that tells your audience what the story is all about. You may not actually USE the focus statement in the video. The focus statement will help guide you as you do the pre-production work for your story.

Research
A second important element in a good feature story is doing research before you write your questions for the interview. This could be as simple as talking to someone who knows the person you are going to interview, or going to the internet to do research on a topic.  For instance, if you were doing the story about the young man who died from using illicit drugs, you would want to do some research on “spice” and its use among teens.  By doing so, you can develop stronger questions for the interview.

Writing Questions
In order to have a successful interview, it’s important to go to the interview with a set of questions that will help you learn more than the who, what, when, where and why of the story. The best way to dig into a story is to develop a good set of open-ended questions.

Open-ended questions are questions that allow the interviewee to give you more than a simple yes or no, or one or two word answer.  You want to allow the person you’re interviewing a chance to tell you their story. For example, if you were interviewing a student who has been participating in theater since he was five and recently won a role in a commercial, you wouldn’t ask him, “do you like being on stage?”  First of all, it’s a “yes or no” question that has a pretty obvious answer.  After all, if he’s been acting since he was five, he probably likes being on stage! A better question would be, “Can you tell me about one of your best performances?”  Another possible question would be,  “What are some of the bigger challenges you’ve faced as a performer?”

Natural Sound
Natural Sound (commonly referred to as “Nat Sound”) is an incredibly important part of both news and feature stories. The key phrase to remember here is “see it, Hear it”.  Simply put, if you show b-roll footage of a marching band, then we should hear that marching band. Therefore, you should rarely turn the b-roll audio off, or use b-roll where there is no audio present. (The exception to this would be if your B-roll shows a poster on the wall or some other scene where there rally is no sound) Nat sound can often tell the story in a far more illustrative way than a simple narration. For  example, if we are watching a story about a carnival, we should hear and see the sights and sounds of kids on rides, performers on a stage, and people hawking their food and wares.  a sound “pop” is a much more effective and interesting way to open a news or feature story, far more so than a reporter staring into the camera telling us about what we will soon see for ourselves.

Voice-Over Narration
The narration of your story is the thread that holds the story together.  You should write your narration AFTER you have selected the sound bites from your interview.  Your narration is meant to extend and explain the comments of your interviewees.  It is NOT meant to simply say “here’s what this person is about to say”.  You should write out the ENTIRE script before you record the narration, and have a partner or your producer read the script to check and see if it is actually telling a story, and not just stringing together interviews. Be sure you include all of what is said by the interviewees, as well as your narration.

Stand Up
Unlike a news story, we generally WON’T see the reporter doing a stand up in a feature story, unless there is a reason for it. 

Gold Coins
Gold Coins are something that you “scatter” through the story to keep the viewer’s attention and guide them through the story. These can be something small or something that “flips” the story and takes it in a new direction. Examples of a gold coin are when your interviewee says something unexpected, or something that gives a greater insight into who they are or what they do. You’ll often discover these as you are editing your final video, and you should carefully decide where to include them in the story.

Interviews
Since a feature story will run almost twice as long as a news story, you will need to have more questions for your subjects and you will need to have more people to interview. You should probably have 3-5 people who you will interview for the story.

Photography
For this assignment you should be sure to shoot plenty of B-roll.  You should shoot at least 10 minutes of B-roll for a 3 minute feature story.  Keep in mind that the video should illustrate the story as well as help tell the story. Be sure you get a variety of shots (wide, medium, tight, super tight) and that you shoot footage relevant to the story. REMEMBER WALLDO! (Wide-Angled-Low-Linking-Depth-Opposite)

The Assignment
For this assignment  you can choose to work by yourself or with ONE other person. you are to produce a 3 minute feature story that centers around a person or interesting event.  This could be someone who has an unusual hobby, participates in a unique sport, has overcome a difficult situation or is dealing with something most people don’t have to deal with.  Before you start the story you will have to write out a brief outline of the story, and include a focus statement about the topic. This should be turned in to me for approval, as well as for a grade.