3. Subject Matter Expert Reviews
The importance of this step cannot be over-stressed. Unfortunately one of the things I’ve seen happen in every park I’ve worked (Everglades, Cape Hatteras, Cape Cod, Cuyahoga Valley, and Yellowstone) is interpreters passing incorrect information on to other newer interpreters who then pass it on to other newer interpreters, etc. Eventually there is a long history of misinformation that everyone agrees upon. It took me a very long time to convince people that an old silk top hat was just that and not a beaver felt hat. They had misrepresented it for so long, so many times, to so many people that I think some of them still aren’t convinced they were incorrect.
It’s a little embarrassing to finally find out you’ve been wrong about something like that, but it is far worse to put a lot of time into a video production, allow others to put a lot of time into shooting, editing and posting it, only to discover that something you were certain of turns out to be incorrect. Encourage your ranger-writer to run all their scripts past subject matter experts. You can avoid a lot of extra work down the road that way.
Hopefully your interpreter will know the local subject matter experts but if they don’t, have them spend some time interviewing people to learn who the best local folks are to review scripts on the various video subjects.
Back to Chapter 2 | Chapter Index | On to Chapter 4
Tom Cawley
Online Roving Ranger Video Production
tom@rovingranger.com
© 2007 Tom Cawley
