| CHAPTER 13 | |
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TV: Working with Pictures |
THE POWER OF THE VISUAL IMAGE
Working with Strong Pictures
The most critical thing to understand in writing for TV is the power of the visual image. Long after the story ends, the impression in the viewer’s mind is likely to be a strong picture—not the spoken word. Given the nature of the beast, TV tends to seek out the visual story, and to the extent that pictures tell a story, the writer or reporter is best advised to get out of the way.
Note that the story is written for the available video and clearly references what the viewer will see. In this story, the words help add detail and clarity beyond what the audience can plainly see.
Working Without Strong Pictures
On the other hand, many of the stories reporters cover use only weak visuals—pictures whose use would be mystifying if not for the words. Obviously, in that case, the pressure is on the script.
In a story like this, because federal courts will generally not allow cameras, the only possible meaningful visuals involve the construction site. That means the story has to be structured so that those pictures make sense right at the start of the story. Then, having made sense of the pictures from the park site, the script can move away to other parts of the story for which there aren’t worthwhile pictures.
THE TV BALANCING ACT
Television is a balancing act. Telling viewers what they can plainly see wastes their time and misuses the medium. But words that have no relationship to the pictures will surely confuse the audience—hence the balancing act.
Former NBC correspondent Don Larson says that once you’ve focused on what the story is really about, you need to prove your story with video and sound. If you’re talking about how hard someone works, the audience needs to see that. “Allow your viewers to experience the same surprise, alarm, joy that you experienced when you first discovered your story,” says Larson.
Use Pictures and words for what They Do Best
Use pictures for what they can do better than words: convey feeling, emotion, action. Use the script to handle what the visuals don’t: details, facts, background. As simple as this sounds, it’s really the key to writing for television. It also means that if you’re going to do this well, you need to know what your pictures are—and what story they can tell—before you start writing the script.
VIDEO |
AUDIO |
Anchor CU |
((Steve)) |
Students at Smith Elementary School walked the picket line today --and school officials were glad they did. |
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Take eng/nat sound |
((------SOT------)) |
Full |
Natural sound full :03 |
((------VO------)) |
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super: Smith Elementary School |
Armed with posters and banners and led by the school’s drill team -- about 500 kids took to the streets around the school to show the community they won’t give in to drugs. |
North Side |
They also urged others to stay drug free … and promoted the school’s anti-drug DARE program. |
((------SOT------)) |
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“Give me a D -- D, give me an A -- A. Give me an R -- R. Give me an E -- E. What do you have? Dare.” :09 |
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((------VO------)) |
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((Steve)) |
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The idea for today’s parade actually came from Smith Elementary’s Parent Association. Many of them marched, too. |
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((------SOT------)) |
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super: pat Green parent |
“This is great. This is about kids and families taking responsibility for their own actions and asking others to do the same. It’s about positive peer pressure and having kids feel better about themselves.” :12 ((------VO------)) |
((Steve)) |
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Organizers say they’ll all be back out later this month … during the city-wide anti-drug march slated for downtown. |
Note that we started with natural sound full, setting the scene for the march. We start the voiceover script explaining what the audience can see: lots of kids with posters and a banner, led by a drill team. Then the script explains what may not be obvious from the pictures: why the kids are marching. Then we go back to natural sound and then to background. Notice that we’re well into the story before we do that. Note also that this section of the script and the last section relate to the video but only indirectly. No one will be confused, however.
Use Natural sound and Sot
Natural sound (nat sound) can make or break a TV story. Natural sound is real life. It’s what would have happened even if the cameras weren’t there. Always look for it, and to the extent that you’ve got it, use it, write to it and let the story breathe. Notice how it’s used in almost every story in this chapter (and others).
Always use natural sound under anchor and reporter voiceover. The far greater feel given to the story is incalculable. The same, by the way, is at least as true in radio packages. Hardly anything heightens the sense of “being there” as much as natural sound under. However, we generally do not run natural sound under a bite. Usually, the technical recording of the bite isn’t strong enough to handle the competition of natural sound. Besides, the bite should provide its own ambient background.
For some reason, the use of nat sound seems to separate weaker, small-market news operations—that frequently don’t use nat sound—from larger-market stations that do. But nat sound is available to everyone. Use it.
Write TV Loosely
Write television loosely. That doesn’t mean you can write sloppily, but you don’t need to fill up every second with narration. In radio an absence of sound means an absence of news. In TV there’s always the picture, and picture with natural sound can carry a story on its own. How long a story can go without narration depends on what’s happening. A poignant picture may tell part of a story so well that voiceover narration would only detract from the moment.
VIDEO |
AUDIO |
Anchor CU |
((Tina)) |
People on the city’s south side say their neighborhood sounded like an airport runway this morning. Just listen to this: |
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Take eng/nat sound |
((------SOT------)) |
full |
Natural sound full :03 |
((------VO------)) |
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((Tina)) |
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super: South Side |
The roar was actually a high pressure gas line that the gas company started emptying at six A-M. The company is re-routing almost a half-mile of gas line near the intersection of Main and Oak because of development in the area. |
The company says it decided on the dawn reveille in order to get the job done in one day with minimal service interruption. |
Here we point not to a picture but a sound. We’ll also see what’s making the noise, and so will the people tuned to the news, because this type of introduction is guaranteed to get people to pay attention. Having gotten their attention, we’re going to tell them what it is. Then, as the pictures of the scene continue on, we move to the details and background of the story.
Coordinate Words and Pictures
You must not write copy that fights with the pictures. If there’s a clash between what viewers see and what they hear, confusion becomes the only product. The trick in TV is finding the middle ground where the words neither duplicate nor fight with the pictures.
One technique that works well here is to coordinate the words and pictures at the beginning, then let the words move away to discuss related material while the pictures continue. That’s exactly what we did in the scripts above. This way, visual scene changes make sense even as the script covers other, related ground. You can’t move the script so far away that the words and pictures fight with each other. But if you start together and return periodically, you have plenty of freedom.
VIDEO |
AUDIO |
Anchor CU |
((John)) |
The city said no at first, but it now looks like officials will come up with a pile of money to make up for what appears to be a wet mistake by the fire department. |
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Take eng/nat sound |
((------SOT------)) |
full |
(Water rushing along yards) :03 |
((------VO------)) |
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((John)) |
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Super: West Side |
Officials suspect a fire department employee didn’t follow regulations last night while flushing out some hydrants in the 14-hundred block of Smith Avenue. |
Big mistake. The water backed up … breaking underground lines … and flooding yards and basements in 10 homes. |
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When neighbors were told they’d have to pick up the tab for repairs, they complained to the mayor and called the media. And that got just the response they wanted. |
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((------SOT------)) |
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“It was outrageous. The city created this disaster, and then they wanted us to pay for it. Well, we got together and said we’d fight this for however long it’d take. And we said we’d sure remember this in the next election. That’s when things turned around.” :14 |
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((------VO------)) |
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((John)) |
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Damage is expected to come to about 12 thousand dollars. As of an hour ago, fire and water officials were still wrangling over which would come up with exactly how much of the repair money. |
Again, we start the story writing to the video, then move away to give related details of what took place.
Visualizing the story
Obviously, TV’s strength lies in visual stories. Because news refuses to limit itself to visual stories, the real challenge in the business involves creating video for a nonvisual story. If a picture-poor story can be handled well in a reader, that may work the best. But a complicated—and therefore longer—story will need pictures. Think about what visuals are or might be available. Would a slightly different approach to the story make it more visual? Can you compare the issue to something that is visual and then move to the specifics of the story at hand? Could stills be used, inserting movement by the camera (zooming in or out or panning left or right) instead of the subject providing the action? Think about any graphics that might make a story easier to understand or more visually interesting. There are some amazing data visualization programs out there that can help you demonstrate the story.
The writing in a nonvisual story must be that much better to compensate for the visual weakness. The answer is never avoiding the story. A reporter’s job is to make every story interesting—including the nonvisual one. After all, you don’t need a reporter to tell a compelling visual story nearly as much as you need a good photographer.
“We’re more like the Ford Company assembly line these days than we are storytellers,” says NBC national correspondent Bob Dotson. “If the story itself is compelling, we’re home free, but we spend tons of time trying to get the live truck up but not a whole lot of time during the day working to tell the story correctly.”
Find time to do it right.
PICTURE CAUTIONS
Use Meaningful Pictures
Although a TV story sometimes gets told in a certain way or sequence because of available pictures, there’s no excuse for running video that detracts from or obscures the main point of the story. Video wallpaper—meaningless video for its own sake—adds nothing to a story. As obvious as that seems, look at how many times stations insist on running worthless video of the front door of a bank, for instance, that was held up some time earlier in the day. Nothing to see, and the doors look like any other bank, but the station took pictures of it, so it goes on the air. Why would a producer think the audience would rather see that than the highly paid, popular anchors?
Today’s Pictures
It’s understood that in the absence of a super to the contrary, video used on the air was shot for that particular story that day by that station. File footage that might in any way be misinterpreted should be noted on screen with a super, and any footage supplied from outside the station (or affiliated network) should also be identified.
Watch Your Supers
TV pictures allow some shortcuts in script writing. Information like geographic location, names and titles can be supered instead of written into the script. This can help move the story along, all but eliminating, for instance, the weak video of someone sitting at a desk while being introduced. But make sure all the appropriate identifiers are in the story, and don’t keep the audience guessing. Late supers disorient and distract the audience.
CARE ABOUT THE STORY
Reporters generally do not get to choose every story they work on, and journalists must respond to events in the news. So you need to care about those events and the people involved, but you also need to find your own special stories to cultivate.
“You always have to have one story you’re working on that you’re passionate about,” says Larson.
If you are passionate, then sooner or later, you’ll get to do it. And don’t be afraid to take chances. It’s hard to be really good without, occasionally, being really bad.
When you first start out, you’re unsure of yourself, and you can’t afford to fail. “But to be really good,” agrees KCBS radio’s Mike Sugarman, “you have to be bad sometimes, because you’re experimenting, you’re pushing the envelope, and you have to do that.”
Larson says the first critical mission for every reporter is to find a way to care about the story. “If you don’t care,” Larson says, “no one else will.”
It is as simple—and as difficult—as that. If you don’t care about your story or the people in it, you’ll never make the audience care. That caring starts with the job itself.
Part of great reporting is doing something special in every story—something that separates your effort from everyone else’s. Dotson says the key to doing that is figuring out ways to reclaim the bits of wasted time everyone has through the day. That’s how you find the time to make a good story great.
Larson says that too many reporters confuse the need to be objective with “a lack of empathy and a lack of passion.” Reporters need to be more passionate and more empathetic, he says. “There should be stories on a regular basis where reporters finish writing them and start to cry because they care so much.”
KGO-TV reporter Wayne Freedman tells people to look away from the action. “Your best story may not be the fire,” he says. “Once you get the flames, look away.” Look at the people watching those flames.
“The smallest, least powerful voice frequently holds the most powerful story,” notes Larson. “Think big, but then search in the smallest of places.”
STRONG STORIES HAVE CENTRAL CHARACTERS AND A PLOT
“Television is at its best when it lets the viewer experience,” says Dotson, and the easiest way to get the audience’s attention is to start with someone affected by the issue—as opposed to just starting with the issue.
As an example, Dotson says reporters should spend less time at city hall talking to the usual officials and more time in the neighborhood.
“Find someone who’s got the problem,” says Dotson. “Put the information from city hall into a visual story that reflects the day-to-day lives of people who are watching TV.”
“I call it a quest,” says Larson. “What is the quest? Whose quest is it? Great stories begin and end with people, even when you think they’re not there.”
Freedman tries to hook people at the beginning by finding a main character and developing a little theme. “It’s basic storytelling,” says Freedman. “Beginning, middle, ending and a main character. And I’ve added the simple truth.” That “simple truth” could be the moral of the story, or it could just be a human observation.
PROVE YOUR STORY
This is another concept that’s simple enough to explain but much harder to execute. Once you have your focus, your story concept and main character, you need to use the detail and sound that you’ve collected to prove the point you’re trying to make. You do that not by telling the audience what to think or how to feel but by picking sound and bites that demonstrate the point.
“Attention to detail allows the audience to experience truths,” says Larson. “You have to ask questions that go to the heart of the matter; you have to listen for poignant telling detail which will enlighten and move the audience, details which might illuminate or show the complexity or reveal the simplicity of a story. That’s the craft of being a good reporter.”
Larson says reporters need to listen and pay attention for the right detail: the forgotten birthday, the patron saint, a nickname. “Keep sifting details until you find a way to care,” says Larson, “and then allow your viewer the same opportunity.”
A number of years ago, Freedman did a story about a woman named Pam who freeze-dried her newly departed dog, Beast, because she couldn’t bear to be apart from her pet. Making fun of the woman would have been easy, but the story went beyond that. Freedman let you see the woman in the telling details he always finds. Beyond the large portrait of the dog on the wall, the general Beast decorating motif, Pam’s computer opened with Beast’s bark. She tended a garden of artificial plants arranged among artificial rocks. Near the end of the story, when Freedman notes that, “It’s both amusing and sad,” he’s telling the viewer that it’s okay to be confused. “If you don’t understand you never will,” the script reads, “and Pam wouldn’t care anyway because sometimes, even in death, a pet provides comfort.” That’s the simple truth Freedman searches for in his stories. At the very end, we see Pam cradling the stuffed dog in her arms and petting it. Freedman asks, “Aren’t you ever going to get another dog?” “There will never be another Beast,” she says and pauses. “Besides, I already have a dog.”
THE ELEMENT OF SURPRISE
Larson says that powerful stories must surprise the viewer. Not shock or stun, but “reveal something with power.”
Larson says that surprise could be uncovering the truth in an investigative piece or the simple telling detail of how a mother misses a lost son. Most likely, it’s what surprised you as reporter or writer when you first explored the story. It’s what you learned that you didn’t know, it’s the surprise ending or a peculiar twist or turn along the way.
Dotson says that if viewers can sense what’s going to happen right from the beginning, then why should they watch? So he tries to add in something they didn’t expect in every story he does.
Dotson once covered a “nothing tornado story”—no one hurt, limited damage. As they’re shooting, they focus on an older man who keeps picking through debris.
Dotson edited the story in such a way that the audience knew he was looking for something, but he didn’t find it until the last scene in the piece. Then the old man reaches down into a pile of rubble and pulls up a hunk of pink goo and puts it up right next to his face. He opens his toothless mouth and says, “Well, it got my teeth, but it didn’t get me.” “Now you have a piece that people are there for the last frame,” says Dotson. “They notice it; they talk about it.”
CONNECTING WITH TRUTHS
“The simple truth is just whatever connects the viewer to the storyteller and the person in the story,” says Freedman. It’s the concept that you find a story about life in the news of the day. Something the viewer can relate to.
Larson speaks of universal themes, calling them echoes. “What it means to be alive,” says Larson.
Sometimes we may miss the simple truth because it’s so obvious. Freedman struggled with a follow-up story on some of the worst fires the San Francisco area had seen in years. Working on the story, watching emotionally drained people stare and sift through charred former possessions, Freedman thought that he couldn’t write this story—didn’t have the right to write this story—because he hadn’t suffered as they had. “That struck me as being true,” says Freedman, “and I wrote it down and used it in the story. ‘No one can appreciate what these people are going through unless they have done so themselves,”’ the script noted. A simple truth.
Freedman says he frequently puts the simple truth in the story in the same place where it occurred to him. If you can find a story with a universal truth—or find a story’s universal truth—the audience may remember it forever.
“I think that fairness and unfairness are human variables,” says Deborah Potter, “Whether it’s affecting one person or thousands of people, these are stories that are just automatically going to connect.”
Connecting is something that Larson says we really don’t do well—or often. Think of the top 10 news stories of the year in your city or state, he suggests. An election, a major local crime, a scandal in government, perhaps. Then think about the 10 most important things in your own life.
Larson says that if we were really honest, our own list would be about the birth of a son or the fear for an aging parent or the concern about breast cancer or the insecurity about employment—critically important personal truths. And yet, so often, those aren’t the stories we concentrate on.
If you want to be a better journalist, Larson says pay attention to the “personal truths, fears, loves, ambitions.” That’s what people care most about, share with each other, and most understand. And what journalism seldom explores.
SUMMARY
People tend to remember powerful pictures more than words, and if pictures tell a story, a good reporter should get out of the way. When video is more limited, you need to find relevant pictures, and structure the story around what’s available. Use pictures for what they do best: convey feeling, emotion and action. Use the script to fill in what the pictures don’t: details, facts and background. Natural sound is real life; use it throughout stories. Coordinate pictures and words. The real challenge in reporting is making the nonvisual story interesting. Don’t use video wallpaper. The best reporters find a way to care about every story they do. Good stories have a beginning, middle and end … and characters that we care about. The pictures and sound should prove your story. Stories will be more memorable—even everyday stories—if you can find the universal truth in them.
KEY WORDS & PHRASES
power of the visual image
what pictures do best
what words do best
natural sound
video wallpaper
caring
central characters and a plot
stories have a beginning, middle and end
story focus
story concept
prove your story
connecting with truths
EXERCISES
A. Come up with three workable television story ideas. The first one should be a strong visual story for TV. The second should have a strong audio element (not bites but strong natural sound). The third should emphasize content but should specifically be a weak video story. Explain why each story is strong or weak visually or audibly and/or why it would be easy or hard to do on TV.
B. Do enough research on each story so that you can write out how the story might work on TV. You can actually interview people so you can write out exact quotes or you can envision what someone might say for the story. The goal here is to construct on paper how these stories might look and sound. How are you going to get out of the way of the strong pictures? How are you going to feature the strong audio element(s)? How are you going to visualize the story that isn’t inherently visual?
C. Research, record and edit the stories for real. What worked out as you expected? What didn’t?