PALANCA-WINNING journalist Jeff Canoy urged Thomasians to look for the compelling perspectives of subjects in telling stories during the ABS-CBN Documentary Caravan at the Buenaventura G. Paredes O.P. Building on Oct. 3.
“You have to find a person that has a compelling story. Find a case study that can [substantiate] the story [and] can capture the attention of your audience,” Canoy said.
Canoy, ABS-CBN broadcast journalist, stressed that narration and perspective are vital in storytelling.
“There are stories and perspectives that can be best told either in print and broadcast. The basic requirement is the case study [or] the compelling perspective of your sources. It doesn’t matter who is going to narrate the story and how it will be narrated,” Canoy said.
Canoy cited his experiences in the five-month long Marawi siege.
“So I thought, ‘How about the stories of the civilians?’ I went for a long narrative to tell the stories of civilians being trapped in the Marawi siege,” he said.
Canoy’s long-form narrative titled, “Buhay pa Kami: Dispatches from Marawi,” won first place in essay category of the 68th Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature.
His essay contains the “stories of how Filipinos – Muslims, Christians, fathers, mothers, police, and civilians – survived terror in the Islamic City of Marawi.”
The Documentary Caravan, hosted by ABS CBN, included workshops on story pitching, digital content and documentary shooting.
Alongside Canoy in the story pitching workshop was Artlet alumna and ABS-CBN Executive Producer Hera Sanchez.
Associate Producer Cherry Mae Salazar and Multimedia Producer Jim de la Cruz led the workshop on how to use materials to produce digital content for the web and the social media.
College of Fine Arts and Design alumni and ABS-CBN directors of photography Dan Buenaventura and Edwin Dalisay Jr. hosted the workshop on how to shoot a documentary, and taught students how to tell a story through the lenses of their cameras. with reports from Kevin A. Alabaso
