As Wes has pointed out so adamantly before, including yourself in your piece is sometimes hard to do without looking like a complete doofus. Eva Sollberger has been doing this Stuck in Vermont series for the local alt-weekly there for about seven years now, and she does a spectacular job of including herself without making it be focused on herself. It adds a nice personable connection to her work and also brings a degree of ease to the people she’s interviewing. It’s really something I’m contemplating doing with my Deadhead Bowling league piece.
Eva films and edits all these pieces herself, and puts out one a week. It’s actually really interesting to watch early episodes and compare them to brand new ones – you can see how easy she now makes it look. The other part that arises from her including herself in each piece is the fact that her viewers become comfortable with her and thus are more apt to watch videos on topics they may otherwise skip over.
The video I’ve included is one that comes at just about a year and a half into her program. It’s got great cuts, solid uses of time-lapse, non-cheesy use of text on screen, and also some great footage on one really cool music nerd in particular.
HA! Adam, you’re a star! I am really interested in the concept of a multimedia producer including themself in a piece because I think it adds an element of authenticity. If she had not included herself in this piece, would it seem like a plug for the record store? Maybe not entirely, but I wonder how real world journalists will compete with the constant onslaught of “fake” accusations about media and stories in general, especially with ad agencies getting ever more clever with their content. This could be a way to clear up who is doing the story and why, without just the credits at the end.