Television today
For all practical purposes, you can regard television and video as identical media. They involve the same skills, equipment and techniques.
Broadly speaking, while television usually transmits programs direct to the general public (via broadcast transmitters, cable or satellite), video is invariably concerned with non-broadcast or closed-circuit material.
However, even that distinction is becoming increasingly blurred. We find that programs originally made for ‘video’ audiences are frequently broadcast, and ‘television’ programs are now widely marketed for home viewing.
The Scale of operations
Television and video programs today are made by production units ranging from a single person with a camcorder, to a large group of specialists with a multi-camera team. Equipment varies from basic to state-of-the-art.
While some organizations have their own fully fitted studios and go-anywhere mobile units for remotes/outside broadcasts, others hire equipment as needed from facility houses, to suit particular program needs.
Some program makers work-mainly on location–in streets, public buildings, hired halls, houses, the countryside, etc. Others are usually based in regular TV studios, where built scenery provides backgrounds to their productions.
Originally, broadcast organizations produced most of their programs in-house. Today, an increasing number are ‘buying in’ complete programs from freelance production groups. Some stations are mainly involved with transmitting videotaped or filmed programs prepared by others.
Live or taped
Whether a TV program is being transmitted live or recorded on videotape can have a major influence on production techniques.
In a live production, your audience sees the actual events as they are happening. They feel that they are watching through the camera’s eye, and there is always the thrill of the unexpected! This can add to the tension, and excitement of the occasion, especially in a sporting event, where the results are not known.
For many program subjects, however, the advantages of ‘seeing it live’ are arguable. Certainly, for the production team, live transmission can be restrictive. When we watch a good taped or filmed production, there is still a sense of immediacy, an illusion of realism. We quickly become engrossed, even where we know the outcome, or realize that the performers are no longer living.
Recording a program on videotape gives the director an extra productional dimension. There is greater flexibility, a freedom to correct and modify, to produce a more polished eye-catching product. The production process itself is simplified in many ways. And, most important, you end up with a product that can be marketed, or retained as archive material for inserts into future programs. An unrecorded live production is lost for ever.
