RTV3511: Video Storytelling

Course Description

RTV3511 Video Storytelling teaches the craft of telling a story with a camera — planning it, shooting it, and cutting it together so that it works.

The statewide inventory records the course at Florida International University, the University of Central Florida, the University of Florida and the University of West Florida.

What the course is really teaching, beneath the equipment. ⚠ Video production courses look like technology courses and are not. The technology changes every few years; the grammar does not. Shot sizes, screen direction, the 180-degree rule, matching action, motivated camera movement and continuity are a visual language audiences have been trained in for a century — and a technically perfect sequence that breaks the grammar reads as wrong to viewers who could not say why.

The four craft areas UWF names, in the order they bite.

• ⚠⚠ Audio, and it is listed first for a reason. Audiences forgive imperfect pictures and will not tolerate bad sound. The single most common failure in student work is relying on the camera's on-board microphone — and the fix is cheap: a lavalier or shotgun mic close to the subject. Room tone, levels, monitoring on headphones, and recording clean audio you can actually cut.
• Lighting — three-point lighting as the foundation, then quality, direction, contrast ratio and colour temperature. ⚠ Mixing daylight and tungsten sources without correcting produces the orange-and-blue look that marks amateur work.
• Composition and camera — framing, headroom, lead room, the rule of thirds and when to break it, depth of field, exposure, focus, and the fact that ⚠ a locked-off shot is almost always better than a badly executed moving one.
• Continuity and editing — ⚠ the discipline that separates workable footage from unusable footage, and it is decided at the shoot, not in the edit. Shooting coverage — wide, medium, close, cutaways, and enough handles on each shot — is what gives the editor options. Every experienced producer's advice is the same: shoot more cutaways than you think you need.

And the story, which is the part the title names. ⚠ Structure, pacing, the sequence as the unit of construction rather than the shot, and the discipline of showing rather than narrating. Pre-production is where a good project is decided: treatment, script or outline, shot list, storyboard, location scout, permissions, schedule. Students who skip pre-production discover on location that they are missing a shot they cannot go back for.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Explain the stages of pre-production, production and post-production and what belongs in each.
• Develop a concept, treatment and script or outline for a short video project.
• Produce a shot list and storyboard from a script.
• Plan a production schedule and identify locations, permissions and logistics.
• Operate a video camera with manual control of exposure, focus, white balance and frame rate.
• Apply the principles of composition — shot sizes, framing, headroom, lead room, angle.
• Explain and apply depth of field as a storytelling tool.
• Set up three-point lighting and adapt it to available conditions.
• Explain colour temperature and correct mixed lighting.
• ⚠ Record clean, usable audio using appropriate microphones, placement, levels and monitoring.
• Record room tone and explain why it is needed.
• Apply the 180-degree rule and maintain screen direction.
• Shoot adequate coverage — including cutaways and shot handles — to allow the sequence to be cut.
• Match action across cuts and maintain continuity of props, wardrobe and eyeline.
• Organise, back up and manage media files through a project.
• Edit a sequence in non-linear editing software, applying cut, pacing and transition decisions with reasons.
• Mix audio in post — levels, music, effects — and deliver at appropriate loudness.
• Apply basic colour correction.
• Create titles and graphics appropriate to the piece.
• Export to appropriate delivery formats for the intended platform.
• Give and receive critique on video work.
• Explain legal and ethical obligations — releases, copyright, music licensing, and honest representation.

Outcomes emphasised in the studio variant

• Operate television studio equipment — studio cameras, switcher, audio board, lighting grid, prompter.
• Perform the crew roles of a studio production — director, technical director, floor manager, camera operator, audio, graphics.
• Direct a live multi-camera production, calling shots from the control room.
• Produce a newscast, interview programme or commercial in a studio setting.
• Explain the differences between live, live-to-tape and post-produced workflows.

Optional Outcomes

• Shoot and edit a documentary or interview piece.
• Operate a gimbal, slider or drone and use motion purposefully.
• Apply advanced colour grading.
• Apply motion graphics and compositing.
• Explain codecs, bit rates and delivery specifications in depth.
• Produce for vertical and social platforms specifically.
• Explain accessibility — captioning, audio description, contrast.
• Work in a defined crew role on a larger production.
• Build a professional reel.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Visual storytelling and structure.
• Pre-production — treatment, script, shot list, storyboard, scheduling.
• Camera operation and exposure control.
• Composition and shot grammar.
• Lenses and depth of field.
• Lighting.
• Audio recording in the field.
• Continuity and the 180-degree rule.
• Coverage and shooting for the edit.
• Media management and workflow.
• Non-linear editing and pacing.
• Audio post and mixing.
• Colour correction, titles and graphics.
• Export and delivery.
• Critique.
• Legal and ethical practice — releases, copyright, music.

Optional Topics

• Studio and multi-camera production (central in the studio variant).
• Documentary and interview technique.
• Camera movement and stabilisation; drones.
• Colour grading.
• Motion graphics.
• Codecs and technical delivery.
• Social and vertical formats.
• Accessibility.
• Reel and portfolio.

Resources & Tools

• Textbooks: Zettl, Television Production Handbook — ⚠ the standard reference, and the one that covers studio production properly; Zettl, Sight Sound Motion for the aesthetics; Bowen, Grammar of the Shot and Grammar of the Edit — ⚠⚠ short, practical, heavily illustrated, and the best value in the field for a first production course.
• On editing as craft: Murch, In the Blink of an Eye — ⚠ brief, and the best thing written about why a cut works; read it even if it is not assigned. Dancyger, The Technique of Film and Video Editing.
• Editing software: Adobe Premiere Pro — ⚠ the most common in university programmes and in Florida newsrooms and agencies; DaVinci Resolve — ⚠⚠ free in a fully capable version, industry-standard for colour grading, and the best option for a student with no budget; Final Cut Pro; CapCut for social formats. Learn one properly rather than three badly — the concepts transfer, the shortcuts do not.
• Audio: Adobe Audition or Audacity (free); ⚠ a basic microphone kit is the highest-return purchase a student can make — a wired lavalier costs very little and improves student work more than any camera upgrade.
• Equipment: departmental cameras and kits, tripods, LED panels, field recorders, and the university's checkout system. ⚠ Learn the checkout rules in week one — gear is limited, projects cluster at deadlines, and students who book late do not shoot.
• Free learning resources: Blackmagic's own Resolve training (free, thorough, official); Adobe's tutorials; LinkedIn Learning, free through most Florida institution libraries; No Film School and Film Riot.
• ⚠⚠ Music and footage licensing, and this matters legally: YouTube Audio Library, Free Music Archive, Incompetech and Pixabay for licensed-free music; Creative Commons material with attribution. Popular commercial music is not usable, in coursework or after it, and "it's for a class project" is not a fair use analysis. Also required: talent and location releases — get them signed at the shoot, not afterwards.
• Florida context: ⚠ the state has an active production sector — Miami (Spanish-language networks including Telemundo and Univision, commercial and music video production), Orlando (theme park media, simulation, and Full Sail's ecosystem), Tampa and Jacksonville (broadcast and corporate). Local news stations across the state hire entry-level shooter-editors, and that is the job this course prepares you for.

Career Pathways

• Film and video editors (SOC 27-4032) and camera operators (SOC 27-4031) — ⚠ the direct destinations.
• Broadcast news videographers and multimedia journalists (SOC 27-4031, 27-3023) — ⚠⚠ the "MMJ" role — shoot, write and edit your own package — is now standard at local stations, and it is precisely the single-camera field skill set this course teaches.
• Producers and directors (SOC 27-2012).
• Corporate and internal communications video (SOC 27-4032, 27-3031) — ⚠ a large, stable and underrated employer: healthcare systems, universities, utilities and government agencies all produce video continuously.
• Social media and content producers (SOC 27-3031, 27-4032).
• Marketing and advertising production (SOC 27-4032, 13-1161).
• Broadcast technicians and studio operators (SOC 27-4012) — ⚠ the studio variant's destination.
• Sports production (SOC 27-4031, 27-2012) — ⚠ Florida's professional teams, college athletics and the ESPN Wide World of Sports complex in Orlando.
• Theme park and attraction media (SOC 27-2012, 27-4032) — Disney and Universal produce and maintain enormous quantities of media.
• Documentary and independent production (SOC 27-2012) — usually freelance.
• Education and training media (SOC 25-9031, 27-4032) — ⚠ overlaps with instructional design.

⚠⚠ The credential in this field is the reel, not the transcript. Employers watch ninety seconds of your work and decide. Treat every project in this course as a reel candidate, shoot something you would show someone, and keep the project files.

Special Information

⚠⚠ Check the format and the entry requirements

• Ask what you will actually operate — a field kit or a studio control room. The catalog title will not always tell you; the equipment list will.
• ⚠ UWF requires RTV 3533 as a prerequisite — an earlier production course, so this one builds on established basics.
• ⚠⚠ FIU requires five prerequisite courses and a 2.85 cumulative GPA. Competitive-entry production sequences are common and the GPA condition catches students out, because it is checked at registration rather than flagged in advance. Check your own programme's sequence early — production courses are frequently gated and offered on a fixed rotation, so missing one delays a degree by a year, not a term.
• ⚠ The unlisted prerequisite is having shot something. Students who have made videos — for a club, a job, a hobby, a family event — start well ahead. If you have not, shoot something with a phone before the term starts.

Course format and workload

3 credits. ⚠ UWF's listing carries no C suffix, so the catalog records 45 contact hours — but the description is explicitly hands-on ("hands-on exercises, projects and assignments"), and production courses are laboratory courses in everything but the number. Where a section is scheduled with lab hours, expect around 60.

⚠⚠ Budget 10–15 hours per week, and expect it to be lumpy. This is one of the most time-consuming 3-credit courses in a communication degree, and the reason is structural: shooting requires locations, people and equipment to coincide, and editing expands to fill whatever time is left. A five-minute piece can absorb thirty hours.

Assessment is overwhelmingly project-based — exercises building to one or two substantial pieces — with critique sessions, a technical examination, and frequently a written treatment or production book.

⚠ Where students struggle, and the fixes are specific

• ⚠⚠ Audio. Every time. Use an external microphone, get it close to the subject, wear headphones while recording, and record thirty seconds of room tone at every location. Nothing else on this list improves student work as much.
• ⚠⚠ Insufficient coverage. The edit reveals what the shoot missed, and by then the location is gone. Shoot the wide, the medium, the close and more cutaways than seem necessary, and hold every shot several seconds longer than you think.
• Underestimating time. Scheduling, travel, setup, resets and re-shoots consume the day. Whatever you plan, it will take longer.
• Media management. ⚠ Lost or unbacked-up footage is the catastrophic failure in this course, and it happens every term. Back up to two places immediately after every shoot. A card is not a backup.
• Editing to the footage instead of to the story. A well-shot sequence that does not advance anything is still cut.
• Taking critique personally. ⚠ Critique is the method of the discipline and it is about the work. Students who defend rather than listen improve slowly.
• Gear obsession. ⚠ The camera is rarely the limiting factor in student work — lighting, sound and story are.

⚠ Safety, ethics and law

• Releases. ⚠ Get signed talent releases from anyone identifiable, and location permission where required. Obtain them at the shoot; chasing them afterwards fails.
• Copyright. ⚠⚠ Music is the most common violation in student work. Use licensed or Creative Commons material — and note that a piece you cannot show publicly is useless as a reel item, which is the practical reason as well as the legal one.
• Public shooting in Florida. ⚠ Florida is an all-party consent state for the recording of private conversations under Chapter 934, Florida Statutes. Filming in public places is generally permissible, but recording audio of a conversation where participants have a reasonable expectation of privacy is not. Many locations — malls, schools, hospitals, theme parks, and most private property — require permission regardless. Ask; do not assume.
• Physical safety — electrical loads on lighting, cable runs and trip hazards, ladders and rigging, working near water or roads, and ⚠ heat, which in Florida is an actual risk on a summer exterior shoot.
• Drones require an FAA Part 107 Remote Pilot Certificate for any non-recreational flight, and airspace restrictions apply. ⚠ Florida has extensive controlled and restricted airspace around its airports and the Space Coast.
• Representational ethics — ⚠ an edit can make someone appear to say something they did not. In journalism this is a firing offence; in any context it is a decision you are responsible for.

Articulation and transfer

⚠⚠ The subject divergence is the transfer risk and it is a genuine one. A student arriving with the single-camera field course, entering a programme whose RTV3511 is the studio course, has not covered the studio material a subsequent course assumes — and vice versa. ⚠ Compounding it, production courses are usually sequenced and gated, so a mismatch is discovered at the next course rather than at evaluation. Keep the syllabus, and keep your work.

Prefix note. RTV is radio-television; FIL film; DIG digital media; MMC mass media communication; JOU journalism; GRA graphic arts; ART studio art. ⚠ Video production is taught under RTV, FIL and DIG at different Florida institutions, and the prefix signals the tradition — RTV leans broadcast, FIL leans cinema, DIG leans multimedia. Search by subject rather than prefix.

⚠ Florida College System institutions teach production widely at the lower division, and those courses transfer; this upper-division course sits inside a gated sequence, so plan it with an advisor rather than course by course.

AI Integration

⚠⚠ Video production is among the fields most directly and rapidly affected by generative AI, and a current course should say so plainly rather than pretending otherwise.

What is already in normal professional use:

• Automatic transcription and text-based editing — ⚠ Premiere's text-based edit and Descript have genuinely changed how interview and documentary material is cut; you edit the transcript and the timeline follows.
• Automatic captioning, which is also an accessibility requirement.
• Rotoscoping, masking and object removal — tasks that consumed hours now take minutes.
• Audio repair — noise reduction, dialogue isolation, ⚠ and this is worth knowing: modern tools can rescue audio that would previously have been unusable. They are not a substitute for recording it properly, and the results are audible.
• Colour matching across shots; reframing and auto-tracking for vertical delivery.
• Generative fill and extension in post.
• Synthetic voice and avatars, used substantially in corporate and training video.
• Text-to-video generation, improving quickly, currently strongest for short shots and B-roll.

⚠⚠ The honest career read, which students deserve:

• Routine assembly work is being compressed — stock-footage montages, simple corporate explainers, basic social cutdowns. That work was a common entry point, and there is less of it.
• ⚠ What is not compressed: being physically present with a camera and a person. An interview with a real person in a real place, shot and lit and recorded well, cannot be generated — and news, documentary, events, sports and most corporate and institutional video are exactly that.
• Judgement about what to shoot and what a cut should do is the durable skill, and it is what this course's critique sessions build.
• ⚠ Practical advice: learn the tools, and build a reel of work that required you to be somewhere.

⚠⚠ The ethical territory, which this course is the right place to meet:

• Synthetic media and consent. ⚠ Generating a person's likeness or voice without permission is a serious wrong and increasingly a legal one; Florida has enacted law addressing certain uses of altered media, including in elections and in sexually explicit depictions. Check current law before doing anything clever with someone's face.
• Disclosure. In journalism and documentary, undisclosed synthetic material is a fabrication, full stop.
• Training data and consent — an active dispute involving the industry's own unions and studios.
• Labour. ⚠ The 2023 industry strikes were substantially about AI use in production, and the resulting agreements are the field's current baseline. Students entering it should know what was negotiated.

Where AI helps a student here: transcription for a paper edit, captioning, generating shot-list ideas, and debugging a technical problem. ⚠ Where it does not: it cannot hold a microphone, light a face, or notice that your subject just said something better than anything on your list.

Academic integrity. Follow the course policy, which in production courses is normally specific about what may be generated and what must be shot. ⚠ Submitting generated footage as your own production work violates every Florida institution's policy — and it produces a reel item you cannot answer questions about, which is the practical penalty.