How To Tell An Alzheimer's Story for Local News

Posted November 21, 2019

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Molly Martinez, an MMJ with Spectrum1 in Columbus, Ohio, recently completed our 4-day intensive Storyteller's VIdeo Bootcamp.

All of her work is done on an iPhone, which is interesting, but frankly of less singnficance than what she was able to produce with it.

Working alone, as an MMJ or VJ or MoJo or whatever you want to call it gives you the chance to do local news in a very different way.

It allows a kind of intmacy in filmmaking -and I purposely use the term filmmaking because that is what we are striving for for local news.

No one really wants to watch a reporter stand up, a few talking heads, some predictable b-roll and some shots of yellow police tape.  Every story done that way starts to look like every other story.

The same people watching your local news are also watching Game of Thrones or The Crown. There is an inherent expectation that your local news stories will be as compelling as The Crown. 

Let's be honest - they aren't.

They are boring and predictable.

But they don't have to be.

Take a look at this story, reported, shot, edited and produced by MMJ Molly Martinez from Spectrum1 in Columbus, Ohio. 

It's reads like a movie.

You feel like you are with the characters.  You relate to them. You feel for them, and through them, you get a far better understanding of what it is like to live with a loved one with Alzheimers. 

This works.

It still has all the journalism.

But is also has emotion, intimacy. and power.

What it doesn't have is the reporter stand up

Or the talking heads

Or the b-roll

and, it was all made in one day

On a phone.