Visual Storytelling
for Television News

Our first pilot project was Spectrum News 1 in Los Angeles. LA had a very saturated news environment, with a dozen other stations offering local news. Yet, within only 18 months, the LA Spectrum station went from start up to the number 1 rated channel on the system. The concept worked so well that we spent the next 7 years building out local 20-4hour news channels for Spectrum across the country.

Instead of using conventional TV news cameras, we worked with smartphones and instead of producing standard local TV news packages, we suggested instead that they should focus on character-driven storytelling.  Character, arc of story and resolution – the storytelling structure that you know from Hollywood films. 

To make this work, using our unique 5 Shot Method® we drove the shooting ratios down to 3:1 – industry standard is 20:1. This saves time in the field and in the editing.  We taught the Multi- Media Journalists to shoot for the cut.  This allows them to work on multiple stories at the same time.  Rather than focusing on written scripts, we focused on pure storytelling, done in the most visually compelling way.