Doing feature video pieces vs news/hard news ones

Question I struggle with is that I just seem to always do video features and nothing "newsy" or stories with "meat" to them.  Issue stories, topical things, etc.

I think you should continue to do what you do best, but don't lose sight of a chance to expand your vision and skills. Though you're not feeling it now, boredom  with the repetition will eventually set in. Doing a one-man band story that needs deep investigative reporting might not be your cup of tea-- It's not mine either. That’s when you should look at collaborating with a newsroom reporter on a story. That way you can concentrate on the visuals and editing and let someone else deal with the words and script. In your producer role, you still have the ability to shape and mold the story that will work best in the video medium.

Not to parrott Yoda, but I think your reference to the "comfort zone" is all the answer you need.

Part of the fun of challenging yourself and growing is to do work in areas that are not comfortable. Many times working a "hard" news story informed how I shot a feature piece because I remember that I wished I had "that shot" to go with the story. Some times we just don't have the shot that we need and so it forces us to be more creative in post production.

I just finished shooting a short non-news feature film because I wanted to challenge myself, and boy did I ever. The good news is that it helped me with pre-visualizing my news shooting, it helped with my storytelling and I just plain learned a great deal.

I like Colin's idea of teaming up. Collaboration can also bring about growth and challenges in itself. Sometimes the "verbal" folks can be annoying, but sometimes they ask questions about things we assume everyone else knows and then we have to reconsider how we tell stories visually.

You are asking the right question(s) and making sweet videos. Glad you are part of the site.

Thanks guys!  Totally agree with you.  I'm so use to doing long term still projects for the paper and need to turn back my focus to the same thing with video and hopefully I'm on my way...