5
A survey of almost one hundred radio and television editors in Britain by the Broadcast Journalism Training Council showed that the ability to write good English in the form of crisp, stylish scripts was the quality most sought after in the hopeful broadcast journalist. That may seem obvious, but there had been an impression in the late 1990s that good writing was not always appreciated. It turned out that this was not the case at all. Time and the proliferation of broadcasting services, it seems, have not changed the skills that matter. Good scripting and lots of ideas are what matter. The first thing to be said to the apprehensive newcomer about writing for television news is there are any number of broad guidelines but few hard and fast rules. This makes sound common sense in a medium where so much depends on instant reaction in the field or in the newsroom, up to and often including the time of programme transmission.
Attempts at some kind of standardization do, of course, take place from time to time, with varying degrees of success. Editors looking for continuity will occasionally assign senior journalists to produce lists of preferred spellings, titles and phrases to match the standards of ethical behaviour they expect from their staff.
All the big news organizations have their own style guides dealing with the way language should be used. The compiler of a recent style guide was a respected senior BBC journalist, but the guide took longer to produce than its slim 30 pages might appear. That was because almost everybody consulted had strong and often contrary views about certain elements: unwritten custom and practices being one thing, a book suggesting tablets of stone quite another. There was, however, no argument about the basic principles of television news writing:
• Be direct, simple and precise.
• Use short words.
• Use separate sentences rather than a maze of sub-clauses.
• Be brief. You write for the ear and eye.
• Prefer active to passive verbs (‘he did something’ rather than ‘something was done’).
• Use familiar phrases but avoid the tired ones.
• Prefer vivid language to the bland.
It may seem obvious to say that broadcasting English is based on the spoken word, not written word. But try reading a few scripts under your breath and the good ones will stand out. If you’re new to television, watch how many excellent writers do read to themselves. The good scripts sound as if the presenter is talking to the viewer, not just reading out loud … Scripts are meant to be read by presenters from autocue … complex numbers should be written out. Writing £17.4m is likely to make the presenter stumble. This should be written as seventeen-point-four million pounds.1
On my very first morning as a trainee reporter with a London suburban weekly newspaper, I was given a slim, yellow-covered volume to treat with the same reverence as I would the Bible. It told me, among other things, that the title Councillor had to be abbreviated to Cllr., Alderman to Ald., that it was not the High Road or even the High Rd., but the High-road, and so on.
In later years I worked in a newspaper office where the length of each paragraph had to be one sentence … in another office, two. These sentences, it was made clear, must not begin with the definite or indefinite article, or with the word ‘But’, and it was a journalistic crime, punishable by office ridicule, to refer to the 18-year-old defendant in a court case when, all along, we knew him to be an 18 years old one.
All this may seem very trivial, and in many ways indeed it is. But … but the fact remains, so far as the printed page is concerned, uniformity and consistency within the columns are more likely to please the reader than to repel. Haphazard changes of typeface or different spellings of the same word in the same or succeeding issues are guaranteed to irritate and annoy, and experts in design are much sought after to bring discipline and good order to newspaper pages, so that the reader’s eye may be led smoothly from one article to another.
By its nature, television news cannot expect to do precisely the same. Complete control over every single word spoken by every single contributor – whether they are reporters, interviewees or participants in some other way – is unachievable in any practical sense, and while it is certainly desirable and possible to lead the viewer from event to event by the proper use of visual signposts, combined with careful phraseology, what occurs within the brief timescale of many a broadcast news item is open to each viewer’s personal interpretation of what is being seen and heard.
It is this extra dimension which helps to place television in its unique position among methods of communication. A newspaper’s verbatim report of an important political speech will give a clear record of what is said … a newspaper reporter’s word picture will give, at one remove, an interpretation of what is meant. A direct radio broadcast will enable what is said to be heard complete with repetitions, hesitations and ‘bad’ grammar. But only the television viewer, sitting in domestic comfort, is given the full information from which to make a personal assessment of the way things are said, together with the sidelong glance and nervous twitch which accompanies the confident-sounding delivery.
Unfortunately, it is extremely probable that the viewer will be shown a relatively small sample on which to base a judgement, as it is freely accepted by television newspeople that the ‘whole’ story, however important, can rarely if ever be told within the context of a routine 25- or 30-minute newscast sandwiched between the domestic comedy and the detective serial. Even if there were no pictures, and the presenter read continuously for an entire half-hour, it would not be possible to pack in more than about 5500 words – fewer than the front page of The Times.
However long they might like to linger over recounting events of the day, television news journalists are acutely conscious that, through no fault of their own, they have to be ultra-selective, both in the number of items put on the screen and the amount of time devoted to each. Critics outside and inside television news are convinced that these factors in themselves result in restrictions on the type of material which can be included, and believe direct comparison shows up a remarkable similarity in the content and treatment of news transmitted on the main programmes of the national broadcasting organizations in Britain.
Whether or not this is entirely true, there is little doubt that the time element does impose an important form of constraint on the newsroom-based journalist in particular. Yet whether it has only negative influence is arguable.
The need to condense forces continuing reassessment of the merits of individual items as they develop, ensures economy in the use of words, and discourages length for its own sake. Above all, it sharpens the newsman’s or woman’s traditional ability to recognize those facts which cry out for inclusion from those which do not.
The availability of all news 24-hour channels does not invalidate the argument. Continuous coverage of events as they unfold, however exciting live, unedited action may be, serves an entirely different purpose from tightly shaped reporting and explanation putting matters into perspective.
Application of a developed news-sense is only one half of the newsroom journalist’s task. The other half, probably more important, is to convey the chosen facts in a way that every television viewer can readily understand. It does not mean pandering to the lowest common denominator of intelligence, but it does pose a problem which does not apply to the printed word. The newspaper reader fed with a regular diet of the tabloid Sun or The Mirror, for example, soon learns to expect every issue to be treated in the same bright and breezy style. The Daily Mail and Daily Express might be a bit more expansive. The regular subscriber to The Daily Telegraph or The Guardian has come to expect the treatment to be sober and more discursive. Television news wants to satisfy the readers of all of them.
Helping the writer do so is a powerful, double-edged weapon – the capacity to let the audience see and hear events for themselves. This advantage must not be squandered either by the use of technical wizardry for its own sake, so complicating otherwise uncomplicated issues, or by the presentation of written material in a way which appeals to only one part of the intellectual spectrum. Ed Murrow, one of the most outstanding of all broadcast journalists, recognized as much long ago when he urged CBS radio reporters to use language which would be understood by the truck driver yet not insult the intelligence of a professor.
It is true to say, of course, that the audience is becoming more fragmented both through the expansion of choice and a noticeable targeting by age and socio-political grouping, and experienced watchers of television news detect more ‘downmarket’ tendencies on some channels and a more serious, analytical approach on others. Clear differences of style and language, exaggerated by teenage, regional or ethnically-based cultural influences, are there for all to see.
Yet there should be no argument over the common ground which does exist. Today’s sophisticated audience has become accustomed to hearing everyday words and phrases used in films, the theatre and on television. The news is no exception, and must be told in an authoritative, yet friendly and informal way which attracts and maintains interest.
Even though the audience may be made up of millions, the writer should be encouraged to think small, perhaps imagining people in groups of no more than two or three. Conversational language, preferably used in short, direct sentences, should be the aim. Decide what it is you want to say: then say it. Experienced television journalists never forget their efforts will be totally wasted if the viewer does not immediately grasp what is being said, particularly when a moving illustration is competing with the spoken word. The admission may be painful to journalists, but the old cliché, ‘one picture is worth a thousand words’ has more than a ring of truth.
It is always possible for the newspaper reader to return to the printed sentence. If necessary he or she is able to pore over a dictionary. But words once uttered on television or radio are beyond recall. A viewer left wondering about the meaning of what has been said at the beginning of a sentence will probably be too distracted to comprehend what is being said at the end of it. That applies to every television news item without exception, and almost the greatest crime any journalist in the medium can commit is to leave part of the audience confused about what is meant. The onus is on the writer, always, to put across the spoken word in as clear, simple and direct a way as can be managed.
There is nothing to stop writers trying out their scripts on each other, because the essence of good writing for television remains fairly simple. In the course of everyday conversation, you would be most unlikely to say, for example, ‘Chancellor of the Exchequer Jack Cash says he’s given industry a multi-million pound boost with his cut in VAT’. On the other hand, you might envisage saying: ‘The cut in VAT will help industry. The Chancellor, Jack Cash, says it’s going to save millions.’ At least it sounds more natural. And note the use of the word ‘the’. Nobody normally refers to ‘Prime Minister Tony Blair’ or ‘Film Director George Lucas’ without the definite article. You wouldn’t in conversation, so why should you do so as a writer for television news?
And there is usually no need to include the word ‘today’ in daily news programmes. Newspapers like to use it because it implies immediacy. In broadcasting, the assumption can be made that every story reported in today’s news programme took place today – it’s only worth mentioning if it did not.
It is, of course, far simpler to set down the principles of good writing than it is to carry them through, especially where some government publications, wordy official announcements or complicated economic or industrial subjects are concerned. Indeed official gobbledegook remains so prevalent that groups of language lovers exist to try to combat it. None of the founders of the Plain English Campaign thought they would still be coming across examples twenty years later.
Despite all our efforts the problem never went away. As fast as we got rid of one form of gobbledegook another would raise its ugly head. And now new foes such as Eurospeak, management jargon and political correctness came out of the woodwork to confront us.2
Until the enemy is finally overcome, as a television newswriter you are left with a single, overriding test to apply. Do you understand what you are writing? If you do not, neither will the viewer.
The successful news script probably also has as much to do with mental preparation as it has with an ability to put words together in a clear way. The journalist working in television must be already attuned to the task ahead before anything is written. Watching yesterday’s and this morning’s programmes before setting off to work, listening to the radio on the way in and reading a selection of newspapers every day may at times be regarded as chores to be avoided, but the journalist who is not well-informed and up to date on a wide range of current subjects is unlikely to be genuinely authoritative when it comes to informing others. The sacrifice of ‘pleasure’ reading and viewing for ‘duty’ reading and viewing is an unavoidable necessity of professional life.
That every journalist should be keenly aware of what is going on in the world will appear to be stating the obvious. Regrettably an astonishing number are ill-informed about subjects they consider to be intellectually beneath them, and are proud of it.
There is also a proper routine to observe once the writer is given the day’s assignments. Where applicable, there are the relevant newspaper cuttings, reference books and pamphlets to be consulted, coverage details to be discussed with correspondents from abroad or with reporters conducting interviews or constructing ‘packages’, and changes of emphasis to be watched on developing stories. Where pictures are concerned, a close check needs to be kept on progress from location to editing suite. In other words, unlike the newspaper sub-editor whose role is similar but not the same, the television newswriter does not simply sit still and wait for things to happen. When the moment comes to put words on paper or screen, the journalist should be in complete control of the shape and content for that part of the programme for which he or she is responsible.
Equally important is recognition that every writer’s contribution, however vital, represents only one fraction of the newscast. There must be conscious awareness of the preceding and following items in the order of transmission so, where appropriate, the right phrases may be used to smooth the transition from one subject to the next.
Knowledge of what is in the rest of the programme ought to be automatic, but it is not. Editorial staff often admit they are so engrossed in their own particular duties they are completely unaware of what others around them are doing. It is a standing joke that the day will come when a writer handling down-bulletin pictures of a VIP opening some prestige project will be happily working away in an editing suite, blissfully unaware that, on his way back to the office, the same VIP had been run over by a passing steamroller.
Finally, although both the television and print journalist trade in words, what ultimately distinguishes one from the other may be seen as a matter of arithmetic. The newspaper or magazine sub-editor works in space – ems, ens, points and column centimetres on a computer screen or paper. The television writer works in time – minutes and seconds, and the formula that three words of English take one second for a professional to read aloud on the air provides the basis of all newswriting in television. This takes into account not only the slight variations in pace between readers, but also the different lengths of words used in normal, spoken language. It has survived the scepticism of successive generations of newcomers to television newswriting, and has proved itself both accurate and flexible enough to be adapted to other languages when calculated in syllables instead of whole words.
One of the delights of the English language is its endless ability to absorb new words and meanings. For professional practitioners it represents a constant need to keep abreast of any current thinking and changes in usage likely to affect their writing. It does not mean accepting glaring grammatical or linguistic errors just because they are in common use, but, for example, to use the word ‘gay’ in its original sense would be flying in the face of reason. On the other hand, my own view is that unnecessary Americanisms have also crept in. Thankfully, while ‘sidewalk’ and ‘diaper’ have yet to be established in place of ‘pavement’ and ‘nappy’ the term ‘meet with’ is heard regularly, as are many other American words or expressions.
The transatlantic influence on UK journalism may also be responsible for some of the gibberish which has crept into the language of business and management. Regrettably the broadcast industry, whose primary objective ought to be good communication throughout, is not immune. Among my personal prejudices are ‘downsizing’ (sacking people), ‘movement sheet’ (diary) and ‘human resource departments’ (personnel).
A more serious argument must be made for the exclusion of sexist, racism and ageist language.
Racism is unacceptable, full stop. The multicultural society is now a fact of life, and professionals addressing a general viewing audience would be foolish not to remember to reflect as much in any writing. Careless or unthinking references to colour, race or religion can be as hurtful as deliberate ones. Only if someone’s racial origin is strictly relevant to the story should it be included.
While age and experience are rightly revered in some cultures, the phenomenal dash for youth, especially in the Western media, seems to have brought with it a certain disregard for anyone over 40. (A nameless very senior manager in one of the world’s leading broadcasting organizations is said to have described anyone over fifty as being ‘brain dead’.)
It is a mistake. The age group between 40 and 55 accounts for around 11 million members of the UK adult viewing audience of just under 53 million3 and in total has a huge amount of disposable income – and votes – at its command. And while ‘middle-aged’ and ‘elderly’ might be perfectly acceptable terms, they are often applied inaccurately. Of course it is possible to go too far. It has been said that in Canada, for example, a ‘senior citizen’ (pensioner) might be described as a ‘Mature Canadian’ – a term which might just as easily be taken to refer to a ripe Cheddar variety of cheese.
The battle for sexual equality has been fought and largely won, although many women would say it has not gone far enough. It is no hardship for any writer to acknowledge the importance of both sexes by referring to ‘police officers’ instead of ‘policemen’, ‘fire-fighters’ instead of ‘firemen’, ‘pilots’ instead of ‘airmen’, and so on. Where it becomes more difficult are those occasions when the use of neutral gender is likely to raise a smirk among a large enough proportion of the audience to make it matter. ‘Spokesperson’ and ‘chairperson’ sound as wrong to some ears as they do right to others. It has, of course, to be a decision for each news service if not each writer, but a middle way might be simply to identify the individual ‘spokesman’ and ‘spokeswoman’, ‘chairman’ and ‘chairwoman’, when they can clearly be seen as such.
For the writer, the uncertainty of political correctness, or what is ‘right’ to say to the viewer represents a minefield. Those who argue sincerely for proper acknowledgement of minorities, the under-represented and the disadvantaged have a point. The description of a wheelchair user as ‘disabled’ or ‘handicapped’ assumes mental as well as physical impairment and it requires only a modest change of emphasis to improve accuracy and avoid offence. There are many other examples.
The trick is to acknowledge change without having the average viewer hooting at the screen in derision. It is hard to imagine ‘vertically challenged’ (short), ‘client of the correctional system’ (prisoner) or ‘terminally inconvenienced’ (dead) and other terms4 becoming part of everyday language. Equally, the string of words and phrases banned by the Los Angeles Times newspaper in its Guidelines on Ethnic, Racial and Other Identification, issued to staff several years ago, included ‘inner city’, ‘Hispanic’, ‘ghetto’ and ‘male nurse’, none of which would seem likely to strike British ears as immediately offensive.
Figure 5.1 English is a living language, capable of absorbing new words and meanings, but large parts of the viewing audience may consider the use of Americanisms unnecessary. The above represents a sample of those heard on British television news programmes.
The simplest way to present the news on television is for the writer’s words to be read direct to the viewer through the electronic camera and the microphone in the studio. In the terminology of television, the reader becomes on camera (on cam) or in vision, which makes the written item a to-camera story or vision story.
All television news programmes contain varying numbers of vision stories. Sometimes they are complete in themselves; more often they are used as a base from which the presenter launches some visual material, hence the frequent use of the terms vision/on camera intro, lead in or link. Theoretically, although an in-vision item may be of any duration (it is in any case impossible to generalize about ‘ideal’ lengths) editors of news programmes have a tendency to keep them to within reasonable limits for fear the programme presentation as a whole may seem to lack pace and variety. It is also felt that long vision stories, those going much beyond a minute (180 words) or so do not make the fullest use of television’s possibilities. Conversely, there is believed to be little point in producing a vision story shorter than two sentences, as anything less seems unlikely to register with the viewer.
Superficially, there may appear to be very little difference between a vision story, newspaper article, or news agency raw material. In fact, there are essential variations. The opening paragraph of any newspaper item will make a point of establishing four main facts – who, what, where and when, as in the typical example.
Figure 5.2 Euphemisms. Some jargon words or phrases employed by politicians and others to mask unpleasant or unpopular actions, or to avoid offence, have crept into the language: writers for television should be sure they are not doing the same thing.
Luton, Bedfordshire, Thursday
Two masked men armed with shotguns forced their way into the High-street branch of Pitkin’s Bank here this afternoon and held staff and customers hostage for nearly an hour while two other members of the gang stripped the vault of an estimated half a million pounds in cash and jewellery from safety-deposit boxes.
An attempt to follow precisely the same pattern on television, with so many facts packed into a very short space of time, would almost inevitably lead to confusion in the viewer’s mind. Arranging the same facts into a different order, the television newswriter aims to explain the incident in much the same easily-understood language which would be used to a group of friends.
There’s been a big bank raid in Luton, about thirty miles from London. An armed gang held customers and staff hostage for nearly an hour before making off with cash and jewellery worth about half a million pounds. The bank, a branch of Pitkin’s …
Using a similar technique, such complicated subjects as trade figures or retail prices indices need hold no terrors for the writer, even if both sets of statistics were to arrive for publication at the same time:
The economy’s continuing to show signs of recovery. New sets of official figures show that for the sixth month running Britain sold more abroad than ever before, and prices in the shops have dropped again.
Once that basic message has been put across, the details can be added with charts prepared by the graphics department. But it is accepted that opening sentences do represent one of the most difficult areas for writers seeking a compromise between impact and full comprehension. There is, for example, nothing much wrong with this sentence which might be heard on a typical regional news programme:
Railway fares in the South-east are going up by an average of ten per cent in the autumn.
Yet if heard with anything less than full attention at least one of the four facts may be missed. The alternative leaves little margin for error. First, the viewer is hooked:
Rail fares in the south-east are going up again.
then firmly landed:
The increases, averaging ten pence in the pound, take effect in the autumn.
Of course there are occasions when this approach would be considered far too soft and tentative. The television newswriter must then talk in bold headlines:
Five hundred people have been killed in the world’s worst air crash.
The Government has been defeated in the Commons.
And Manchester United turn pain into pleasure in ninety seconds in Munich.
Notice how the last one can be a tease, forcing viewers to stay tuned to see what that means.
The transition from these to less momentous events is sometimes best achieved by the use of a form of words most easily described as side headings, to signify change of pace and subject:
Next, the economy …
At home …
Abroad now …
In Munich …
In some quarters these and similar phrases are beginning to be considered clichés, but, used sparingly, they remain good examples of the kind of language which in principle can be used to lead the audience from one item to the next.
There also comes a moment in an event which has been reported continuously over a period when it is desirable to resort to easily understood shorthand by way of an opening phrase. In that way, viewers came to recognize that, for example, The Northern Ireland peace talks…’ was referring to the drawn-out negotiations between the political parties in Northern Ireland during 1998–9. The invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in the early 1990s, which led to fighting between the United Nations and the forces of Saddam Hussein, was termed ‘The Gulf War’ almost as soon as the first missiles were fired. In each case these few words were sufficient to make members of the audience sharpen their senses in preparation for the latest news of events about which they already had some knowledge.
In the context of short news programmes, this shorthand technique is most effective. But there are clear dangers: first in the assumption it makes of the viewer’s understanding of what has already happened; second, in the case of complicated issues, the background may easily be forgotten. After a while, for example, the inquiry which followed the leaking of a secret report into the treatment of inmates at the Naughty Boys and Girls Institute of Correction is handily telescoped into ‘The Naughty Boys and Girls Inquiry’.
A week later, with the inquiry deep into evidence from parents and staff, complaints from social workers that previous warnings of bad treatment had gone unheeded, and questions to the government in Parliament, the viewer may be forgiven for losing sight of the story’s origins. So in these cases it is necessary to go back over the entire ground, however much some editors might consider it a waste of precious airtime.
But, whether it concerns an old event or a new one, the writer’s aim must always be to ensure that an opening sentence of a vision story hits the target first time. The viewer must be properly alerted to matters of interest and importance by the skilled use of words which, in their effect, have the reader bawling from the screen: ‘Hey, you! Watch this!’
The first stage in making the straightforward vision story more interesting for the writer to construct – and the point at which television starts to exploit its inherent advantage – comes with the addition of non-moving illustration to take the place of the reader’s image on the screen while the voice continues to add information.
Almost all illustrative material is stored on computer. Graphics has become the term most widely applied to this material, encompassing as it does both artwork and anything originally photographic. Years ago the stock ‘personality’ pictures to be found in television news libraries resembled the dull, full-face mug shots usually seen in police records or staring from the pages of passports. Then the spread of colour television in the late 1960s and early 1970s gave an opportunity for a complete rethink. As a result those ugly passport snaps gave way to bright, natural, frequently unposed pictures taken by photographers mindful of the television screen format, which was wider than it was high. The arrival of widescreen television sets and widescreen transmissions in 1999/2000 forced another rethink about stills, which needed to be trimmed into frames by graphic designers.
The bulk of these stills start life as 35 mm colour transparencies, although some colour prints, including instant pictures for speed, are also used. Government departments, embassies, specialist and trade libraries also provide a mixture of shapes, sizes and qualities. The international picture agencies, while remaining easily the most important source of black and white prints, particularly from abroad, are also able to transmit colour pictures by wire through a tri-colour separation process. An original colour picture is re-photographed successively through red, green and blue filters, and the results sent over the wire. The original scene is reconstituted in full colour by reverse application of the same process in the darkroom or by computer.
Figure 5.3 Left: old-style ‘mug-shot’ could have been taken from a passport; right: modern-style photograph, natural and unposed.
Rather less complicated and cheaper methods of acquiring stills include the ‘freezing’ of video frames, which can then be edited as part of other sequences or manipulated by computer.
Old photographic methods have been made more or less obsolete. Nothing did more to improve ‘the look’ of television news programmes in the late 1990s than these incredible pieces of graphics design equipment which have introduced almost limitless variety and versatility to the humble still picture.
Nearly all systems of this type depend on the concept of the frame-store, a bank of computer memory in which an entire (still) television picture is stored. Each picture element or pixel – and there will be more than 400 000 in a single frame – is converted into a digital representation of its brightness and its colour. The information is then stored in the memory – the digital frame-store. From there the picture can be replayed, recorded or modified, with virtually no detectable loss of quality.
A typical system for recording and transmitting stills would have two frame-stores and a magnetic disk memory just like the Winchester disk machines used with large computers.
In its simplest form, pictures are taken into a frame-store from a video source – a camera, videotape player or digital source for example – and then transferred to the disk memory under an identifying number, a single disk holding perhaps between 250 and 300 frames. Any still frame recorded on the disk may be called up by its number, transferred into the frame-store and offered as a picture source to the vision mixer in the studio control room, or direct to a videotape machine, or even another frame-store.
The refinement offered by two frame-stores allows one to provide the picture for transmission while the other is being loaded with the next selection from the disk, a process of little more than a second. If two monitors are connected to the output of the frame-stores, one will show the ‘on-air’ picture, the second a preview of the next available still. A video switch between the two frame-stores then makes it possible to cut directly from one to the other without the need to come back to ‘vision’. The next logical step is to arrange for the ‘off-air’ frame-store to be loaded automatically as soon as it is free with the next picture from the disk. In this way a series of presses of a single button will transmit a sequence. A further facility may be provided to allow the changeover from one frame-store to the other to be an electronic mix or wipe as an alternative to the usual cut.
To take full advantage of these options it is necessary to have some way of putting the pictures into the order required for transmission. One way to achieve this is by what resembles the ‘Polyphoto’ technique, a sort of mosaic of sixteen or more pictures from the disk displayed simultaneously at reduced size, together with their catalogue numbers. Using a keyboard and cursor on the screen, the operator may then move, insert or delete pictures to obtain the sequence he or she requires.
It is perhaps interesting to note that in operations of this kind the pictures are not actually transferred from one part of the disk to another. Instead the disk’s directory system merely reorganizes the references to where they are to be found for retrieval in the desired order.
In yet another refinement, dozens of sequences of stills may be recorded by the machine in groups or ‘stacks’ of perhaps as many as 80 pictures each. A stack may itself be one of the items (instead of a picture) within another stack. When the machine encounters one of these ‘nested’ stacks it reproduces the pictures in order, and then returns each to its place in the original stack. This facility is also provided to modify previously prepared stacks at the time of transmission, so that items may be inserted or skipped to allow for late changes in the newscast.
The frame-store principle also makes it possible to alter the framing and size of a picture. To ‘crop’ a picture, a rectangular outline is superimposed on the screen. This rectangle may be altered in size, proportion and position to frame any part of the image, and that information is stored together with the picture to which it applies. Thereafter, when called upon to do so, the machine will offer that image cropped in the memorized format, if necessary reduced to fill the space allotted to it.
A similar procedure allows the creation of composite pictures. A background may be formed by using an existing picture or one of a number of colours provided, and the cropped image then ‘inserted’ into it. If a composite picture is first stored and then used as the background for a subsequent composite and that process repeated, the resulting stored frames may be made into a stack.
The number of pictures it is possible to store will usually be limited only by the number of disks which can be afforded or accommodated, and that in turn will influence the size and complexity of a management system to keep track of the contents. Dates and titles can be added and the pictures retrieved by number, name or category, but in the end the effectiveness of a library system such as this, particularly as it grows, will depend a great deal on methodical house-keeping – clear titling and cataloguing backed up by a ruthless weeding out of unwanted material.
Figure 5.4 Pictures can be taken from any video source, stored, cropped, shaped or moved to fit into any background or montage. 1, full-size picture; 2, picture size; 3, crop; 4, picture position and border; 5, matte; 6, montage.
In many respects it is far easier to choose a still from a strictly limited range, for if a collection carries only one picture of a person or subject there is a straight choice between using it or not. The headaches begin with the vast libraries. Between them BBC Picture Archives, CNN, Reuters, Sky News and ITN carry millions of pictures, both as 35 mm colour slides and as computer-stored images. Such luxury demands the newswriter’s intimate knowledge of each subject as it arises, for no one else is in a position to decide which of the available selection most aptly matches the mood of the story. Judgements may be as basic as ensuring that an item about increased taxes does not show a broadly grinning finance minister who has just announced them to Parliament in the face of strong opposition. That decisions as simple as this are needed only goes to prove what traps exist for the unwary.
For while straightforward mistakes in identity could in some circumstances have legal implications (and have, on occasion), even where the matter of identity is not disputed a writer’s preference for one image over another could lead to accusations of distortion. Subtle changes in the appearance of leading personalities – hairstyle and colour, age, weight, and so on – all need to be noticed, although it is not simply a matter of choosing the most recent photograph, and a constant weeding-out process is necessary.
Writing to still pictures or insets
A straightforward ‘personality’ still picture should be on the screen for a minimum of five seconds (15 words). Anything significantly less is likely to be subliminal for the viewer, for whom the image will seem to vanish from the screen before it has time to register.
The maximum time depends very much on the subject. A fairly ‘busy’ action shot of casualties being carried by stretcher away from a train crash needs longer to register than the library portrait of a well-known politician, but it is fairly safe to assume that a ten second shot is long enough in most cases. Economics add an exception to the rule: a picture bought for a large sum because of its exclusivity or rarity value should be exploited fully, even though the picture itself (say, the last one of someone now missing) might be unremarkable. To dismiss this valuable property in a brief five or six seconds of air-time would be wasteful.
However long it is held on the screen, every still should be used to its maximum advantage by introducing it into the narrative at a point which helps to add emphasis to the story. It must not be allowed to ‘drift’ in, apparently at random, causing momentary but serious confusion for the viewer. The principle applies to the simplest script lines:
Referring to the …
(Introduce still of Chancellor)
… latest rise in interest rates, the Chancellor said …
Bringing in the still a few words later makes all the difference:
Referring to the latest trade figures …
(Introduce still of the Chancellor)
… the Chancellor said …
Choosing the right moment at which to return to the reader in vision is just as important. It is not acceptable to whisk the picture from under the viewer’s nose without good reason. Much better to wait until the end of a sentence.
Where events call for a sequence of pictures, it is important to maintain the rhythm by keeping each on the screen for approximately the same duration. Six, five and seven seconds would probably be reasonable for three successive stills referring to the same subject, five, twelve and eight would not. The temptation to go back to the reader on camera for a few seconds between stills should be avoided, otherwise continuity is broken. In this context, a brief shot of the reader becomes another but unrelated picture, interrupting the flow. If returning to the reader during a sequence is unavoidable, it is far better to make the link a deliberately long one.
Writing to a series of stills can, and should, be extremely satisfying, particularly when action shots are involved. Unlike moving pictures, where the writer is sometimes a slave to editing grammar, stills may be arranged in any required order to suit the script, and even a fairly routine item is capable of being made to sound and look interesting:
Four men have been rescued from a small boat off the Kent coast. They’d been adrift for twenty-four hours after the boat’s engine failed during a storm. Their distress call was answered by …
(Still 1, helicopter landing)
… a Royal Air Force helicopter, which flew them forty miles to Dover for medical treatment.
(Still 2, man on stretcher)
The owner of the boat is now in hospital suffering from hypothermia: the three others have been allowed home.
(Still 3, boat in sea)
Attempts at salvage are thought unlikely before the weekend, when the forecast is for better weather.
Apart from the opening news point, the story is told and the pictures shown in chronological order for ease of explanation. Note, too, that the basic rule of television scriptwriting has been observed even in this short example: the commentary complements what the pictures show and does not merely repeat what viewers are able to see and hear for themselves.
Still 1 says where the rescued men were taken and for what purpose.
Still 2, while identifying the stretcher case and his condition, does not leave the viewer wondering about the fate of the others, of whom there are no pictures.
Still 3 completes the story by looking to the future.
From a production point of view it makes sense to go from one still to another by using the same technique – cutting or mixing. The use of an electronic wipe from one to another should be reserved for changes of subject. It is also easier on the eye to use either all colour or all monochrome pictures for the same sequence. If they have to be mixed for some reason, the two types should be shown in separate blocks.
Zooms or other movements should be used sparingly.
One step beyond the simple still comes the composite or split screen. In their most common form these consist of two heads, each occupying one half of the screen. For preference the faces should look slightly inwards towards each other, and not out of the screen, and they should be matched in size, style and picture quality, even if it means copying one or both originals, or manipulating them by computer. The commentary should always identify the characters from left to right.
A three-way split or more is also possible, but the screen tends to look cluttered. Reducing each picture to ‘postage stamp’ size on a plain background is not always effective, especially as identification is likely to take a disproportionate amount of time.
Other versions have part of the picture occupied by a still, the other by some form of artwork. Written quotations and maps can look particularly striking if illustrated in this way. Modern technology allows the words to be ‘zipped’ onto the screen separately but spoken commentary and text must match exactly.
The opportunities which now exist to employ such a wide range of styles are undeniable advantages to television news as part of its job to make programmes visually attractive as well as informative. Yet it is precisely because all manner of stills are available in such quantities that the danger of overkill is ever present.
Writers must avoid the temptation to use them automatically, almost as a reflex action, without thinking whether they are adding to the viewer’s understanding. Seeing the screen littered with faces of the best-known personalities every time they are mentioned in a news programme quickly becomes irritating. The fact is that some stories are better told with no illustration other than the presenter’s face.
It is more than thirty years since (Sir) David Frost made the cruel but accurate comment about the obsession of some television people to illustrate everything, no matter what the image might be. It became known as the Lord Privy Seal Syndrome. In Frost’s television sketch the words ‘…Lord Privy Seal’ (a Parliamentary title) were used in a news item with three still pictures over each word. It still stands as a warning to anyone lured into the use of pictures for their own sake.
Figure 5.6
Complementing still photographs are graphics, which make use of some of the most powerful and fascinating software available in television and combine these with the journalists’ need to convey complex information in an easily digestible way. Maps help the immediate identification of geographical locations; diagrams and charts allow sports results to be digested more quickly and expand on detail not easily understood when given by the reader alone; budget proposals, the main conclusions of official reports, detailed timetables or events, the ups and downs of interest rates and trade figures are made all the more palatable by the judicious addition of illustration. As important is the impression created in the mind of the viewer, who expects news to demonstrate the same high production values as the programmes around them, and graphics provide editors with excellent opportunities for changes of pace, variety and punctuation.
How artwork is prepared depends on available resources and the extent to which specialist staff and materials can be properly employed. Some very small or impoverished news services still have to get by with part-time artists, maybe staff members spared briefly from other duties, or design students happy to earn small sums for an hour or two’s extra labour of love.
At the other end of the scale are the extensive graphics departments of the major players, whose belief in graphics as an essential weapon in their armoury has led to the investment of substantial sums in a panoply of big memory computers (usually with massive screens attached) and a staff of designers and artists to operate them. It is a clear case of artistic and computer skills coming together and that has now become a commonplace in art galleries as much as in television production. All manner of effects, including complicated animation and 3D, are routine in daily news programmes, but the creation of a computer graphic can sometimes be a slow and frustrating process. Complex fine art may call for special programming of computers or the transfer of images from video or other sources.
Probably the first and most influential of the basic electronic graphics systems was the Quantel Paintbox. This, as its name implies, allows the graphics designer to ‘paint’ coloured artwork directly onto the screen, although that description does not do justice to the range of facilities available. It is not necessary to know anything about either electronics or computers to use it to the full extent of its considerable capabilities, because it has been designed for use by a trained artist, not a graduate engineer, and the terms used are deliberately those with which an artist would be familiar.
The artist sits in front of a tablet representing a smooth, blank drawing board, and draws on it with an electronic pen which leaves no mark. Instead its movements are reproduced on a colour monitor screen, its position indicated by a small cross (cursor).
Figure 5.7 Paintbox graphics. (Photo courtesy of Quantel Limited.)
By moving the pen to the bottom edge of the tablet, the artist is able to display on the screen a palette of colours contained in small square ‘paint pots’, together with an area for mixing other shades and colours. When the cursor is positioned over one of these pots, a sharp tap on the pen lets the artist charge his or her ‘brush’ with the chosen colour which may then be used to ‘paint’ on the ‘canvas.’ Blends are achieved by applying pen pressure on the mixing area to deposit one colour, recharging the brush with a new one and depositing in the same way. If required, the artist can leave an inexhaustible supply of the newly mixed colour in one of the ‘paint pots’ and the whole palette can be stored electronically in the memory for later recall.
A panel to the right of the palette allows the choice of one of several brush thicknesses, again by tapping down on the appropriate square. A menu of other options allows for the selection of an airbrush, for example, a faithful reproduction of its texture being shown on the screen.
Another menu option selects ‘graphics’, which provide for the drawing of separate or connected straight lines by ‘rubber-banding’. One tap of the pen positions the start and a second tap the finish, the line being stretched between the two points. Using the same method, shapes can be drawn to any size, outlined or filled, anywhere on the screen, in any colour, thickness or texture.
The paintbox, now an accepted generic term, also provides electronic versions of stencilling, cutting-out and pasting used in conventional graphics. In stencil mode, a mask is made to protect one part of the picture while work is carried out on the rest using all of the machine’s facilities. Further stencils can be generated within the area being worked on, and any part of the picture covered by the stencil can be revealed and the remainder protected. Every stage can be stored in the memory, so if the next process does not give the desired effect nothing is lost, as a perfect copy of the previous artwork is instantly available.
The artist can start from a blank canvas primed to any chosen colour or a background shaded from one colour to any other. A still picture or a frozen video frame can be worked on. Blemishes on faces can be painted out using an exactly matching colour picked up on the brush from elsewhere on the ‘skin’.
Any part of the picture can be cut out electronically without destroying the original and then enlarged, reduced, turned over top to bottom, reversed left to right, pasted anywhere on the screen, etc., processes which can be repeated as often as required. The same effect can be achieved with different styles of type, which can be cut, manipulated and then pasted into any position in any colour, outline or solid, plain, embossed or with drop-shadow (of any depth in any direction).
Library storage and retrieval, with comprehensive searching and browsing facilities, represent only some of the capabilities of the paintbox. New features are being added all the time. It is a way of producing graphic work for television of a high technical quality and at the same time giving the artist freedom of expression. Probably the only drawback is that the cost of the equipment is likely to mean that few television news graphics departments can afford to buy a paintbox for each member of the team.
Since the arrival of the paintbox, advances in technology have brought with them the development of other equipment, including the digital video effects (DVE) generator of which Charisma, also manufactured by Quantel, is an example. Charisma is able to create movement and manipulate images. Harriet, a combination paintbox, videotape and digital effects machine, is particularly effective at incorporating videotape into a graphics sequence. Among other leading manufacturers are Abekas, whose range includes a digital disk recorder which takes in information and images from different sources to build up multi-layer graphics without loss of quality, and Vertigo, with a 3D system capable of modelling and animation.
Another important advance has been the creation of off-line graphics areas, where the recording of particularly complex graphics or sequences can be undertaken for use at a later stage.
In the past newswriters did not necessarily expect to be overly concerned with the fundamentals of graphics design of any sort. But now that the digital age has added this new dimension to television art, interest in and knowledge of what is possible has become integral to the writer’s responsibility. Helping to create exactly the illustration necessary to accompany a news item has become part of the job.
Not surprisingly, graphics designers often develop love-affairs with their exceptional toys and what they are able to create, and it is up to the journalist to ensure that their enthusiasm does not carry them away. Graphics for the sake of graphics are no help to the viewer. Having said that, the opportunity for experimentation is almost endless. The imaginative use of graphics can bring life to almost any routine news item, while big news stories often lend themselves to dramatic treatment. Among international events the Gulf War and the conflict in Chechnya stand out as offering opportunities for the creation of special effects to explain what happened in a news event for which pictures are not available.
Most artwork for television news has a screen life of no more than a few seconds, and for that reason if nothing else, it must be clear and easy to follow, with bold images on unambiguous backgrounds. An awareness of the dimensional limitations of the screen also helps. Among the most important of these is the amount of information that can be squeezed in, bearing in mind that unnecessary clutter reduces visual impact and ‘cut-off’ (the edge of the television picture automatically lost in the process of transmission) reduces the area the artist has to work on. The effect is exaggerated on old or misaligned receivers, so some of the information intended for the audience is lost. The hazards are trying to squash too much into a limited width so exaggerated that cut-off mutilates each end of the lettering, or making the information occupy so much room that part of the background illustration itself is obscured.
Figure 5.8 (a) Too much lettering obscures part of the face. (b) Abbreviate the title. Smaller lettering would be hard to read.
Above all, using the designer’s skill to illustrate a story must anticipate how the accompanying commentary will be structured. There is little point in commissioning good-looking charts full of important details to which no reference is made, or in cramming beautifully scaled maps with place names which the script ignores, to the confusion of the viewer, who is then left wondering why they were put there in the first place.
The temptation to add anything except the strictly relevant must be resisted. In the report of our Pitkin’s Bank raid, a map illustrating the location of Luton needs only the additional reference points of London and the most important trunk road, the M1, to give a clear idea of the town’s location in southern England. The arbitrary addition of several other big cities and county names may make the map look more attractive to some eyes, but would do nothing for the viewer during its few seconds on the screen. At the other extreme, a large-scale map isolating Luton from everywhere else in the country would be equally valueless.
Figure 5.9 (a) Enough detail is necessary to give the viewer a point of reference during the few seconds the map is on the screen.
Figure 5.9(b) A prettier map, but the extra place names will only confuse the viewer unless the commentary makes some reference to them.
Figure 5.9(c) The other extreme. No reference point means the audience will have no idea how the place central to the story relates to anywhere else.
The key to success in writing to graphics lies in the assembly of words in sequences which lead the viewer’s eyes progressively across the screen from left to right, top to bottom. Anything which gets in the way is bound to be distracting, so any movement within a graphic should be kept to a minimum, especially if it has to compete with text.
Figure 5.10 Simple charts with or without suitable backgrounds help to get figures across. The accompanying commentary must lead the viewer’s eye naturally from top to bottom, left to right.
Younger viewers, with senses attuned to fast-moving computer games, are probably able to cope with it all, but for the sake of the general audience there is much to be said for simplicity. Not that it is enough for the reader to repeat what the viewer is seeing. Some complementary information must be fed in as well, but if, through carelessness, too wide a difference is allowed to develop between what the audience is being told and being shown, the effect that writer and artist have been at pains to create will be destroyed.
That is likely with even the simplest illustrations:
AVERAGE COUNCIL TAX
| North UP £80 | From April, an average of ninety-eight pounds goes on bills in the south, bringing the year’s figure to four hundred and fifty-three. An average increase of eighty pounds makes the total in the north four hundred and ten. |
| South UP £98 |
The writer’s mistake here is virtually to ignore what is on the chart: there is simply no correlation between what the viewer is seeing and hearing. Transposing the two sentences will help a little, but not much.
AVERAGE COUNCIL TAX
| North UP £80 | From April, an average of eighty pounds goes on bills in the north, bringing the year’s figure to four hundred and ten. An average increase of ninety-eight makes the total in the south four hundred and fifty-three. |
| South UP £98 |
It would be far more effective to use the same phraseology as on the chart, and in the same order. Following the ‘left-to-right, top-to-bottom’ guideline would bring about a clearer message:
AVERAGE COUNCIL TAX
| North UP £80 | From April, tax bills in the north will go up by an average of eighty pounds, bringing the year’s total to four hundred and ten. In the south, an average increase of ninety-eight pounds will make the figure four hundred and fifty-three. |
| South UP £98 |
Probably the most admired exponents of the art are the makers and writers of television commercials, who have very similar periods of screen time in which to get their message across, and need to establish immediately unambiguous links between what the viewer is seeing and hearing.
The technique is all the more important where information is added one stage at a time. This, always a popular way of emphasizing facts or figures, has become even more common since the introduction of electronic equipment. The effect is achieved either as part of graphic design, or by a superimposition (mixing two sources to produce a single picture) at the appropriate moment during transmission.
In the case of our Council Tax graphic, the first spoken words would accompany one fact already on the chart:
AVERAGE COUNCIL TAX
| North UP £80 | From April, tax bills in the north will go up by an average of eighty pounds, bringing the year’s total to four hundred and ten. In the … |
The next part of the commentary would be spoken simultaneously with the introduction of the stage completing the picture:
AVERAGE COUNCIL TAX
| North UP £80 | … south, an average increase of ninety-eight pounds will make the figure four hundred and fifty-three. |
| South UP £98 |
Elegantly designed charts and diagrams illustrating the ups and downs of stock markets, interest and currency exchange rates and other statistics have become among the most familiar sights to viewers of modern television newscasts, but in commissioning them writers must take note of the need for accuracy. Comparison of figures must take account of the scale of the graphic, so that, for example, the impression of a huge variation from one month to another is not given when in fact the change is only minor.
Figure 5.11 Charts and graphs must show details in proportion. The imagined fluctuations in ‘Average house prices’ in (a) are represented quite effectively, while the base line in (b) is too low, making the pound’s value against the mythical ‘Newlandies’ appear to swing more wildly than necessary.
Figure 5.12 Electronically keyed insets are sometimes used to accompany presenters for stylistic purposes, or to enliven stories read in the studio. Items can be enhanced by well-proportioned, appropriate illustrations (a) but viewers may be distracted by those which are poorly chosen or positioned in a way that dominates the reader (b). The addition of key words to insets is also a useful device (c) as long as the wording is not so obvious as to patronize the viewer.
Another very popular form of graphic, known as the DOG (digitally originated graphic) or inset, appears behind or beside a studio presenter as part of programme window dressing. Size, shape and position on the screen are usually considered very carefully, but the impression is sometimes given that not nearly sufficient thought or care goes into their design or content. Some seem to have no bearing on the story they are meant to illustrate; inappropriate inset stills dominate the picture or appear to be threatening the reader over his or her shoulder; composite graphics, otherwise well-produced, include text which may be too difficult to read or so simplistically descriptive as to patronize the viewer. Worse still, spelling mistakes are not uncommon. Hard though it may be to accept, the responsibility for proof-reading lies with the writer. Completed artwork must be checked carefully against any original plans, however sketchy. Where sequences of graphics are involved, no doubts must be left about the exact order in which they are to be transmitted.
To have one illustration on the screen while the commentary is clearly referring to another is hardly likely to inspire the audience’s confidence. Misspellings, which somehow seem to occur in only the most simple, everyday words, have a tendency to harvest bulging postbags of complaint. It is true that genuine variations do exist in the spelling of certain place names, particularly where they are transliterations, and news agency reports frequently contain spellings which differ widely from those in atlases or gazetteers. To the domestic audience it may scarcely matter as long as there is consistency, and any confusion created by changes in common usage, for example the switch from Peking to Beijing, dispelled as quickly as possible.
Figure 5.13 A wide range of typefaces can be created electronically in several sizes as text on charts and for subtitling. Foreign-language versions are also available.
The solution to all these problems is to accept certain standard reference books (The Times Atlas, the Oxford Dictionary, etc.) as the arbiters and ignore everything else.
So far the emphasis has been on the addition of visual material to accompany words spoken by the presenter in the studio. Now comes the moment to create a temporary but complete replacement for the reader by the use of sound-only reports. These are the blood brothers of the dispatches which have become the stock-in-trade of radio news programmes all over the world. For use on television, telephoned sound reports, whether ‘live’ or recorded, come a poor second to moving pictures or other forms of illustration. But the nature of world news demands that the voice of the reporter on the spot is, on many occasions, infinitely preferable to nothing at all. What it usually looks like on the screen is a simple composite graphic of either the reporter’s face, or the place he or she is reporting from, and a sound-only report. Only the news value of the story dictates whether to run this on television. This kind of quick sound-only snatch of news became unfashionable in the late 1990s and in some cases many news programmes faced with a ‘while-we’ve-been-on-the-air’ breaking story will simply prefer to do a two-way (interview)
Figure 5.14 A composite graphic to cover a voice-only report usually identifies the correspondent and location. The main difficulty arises when a dispatch is made from one place about events taking place in another.
Britain, and the BBC in particular, is ahead of most countries in transmission of material designed for a widescreen TV set. A traditional TV picture shape is four units long and three units high, called 4 × 3. Widescreen television is more like the shape we see at cinemas. This is sixteen units long and nine units high, or 16 × 9. This means it is wider than traditional television. Several news services are transmitting on widescreen, so the problem is that the usual pictures brought into the news operation simply do not fit when they go out on transmission. They can be broadcast, but for the viewer they look odd, with a stream of distorted, squashed or thick human bodies moving about the screen and the viewers left wondering whether to adjust their sets. The solution is an aspect ratio converter (ARC). This piece of equipment will re-size a picture, like placing a round pin into a square hole. It converts standard 4 × 3 ratio, such as shot by a standard news camera, into widescreen 16 × 9. New material as well as archive can be put through the ARCing process. Widescreen offers the viewer more of a picture, quite literally. It also has greater scope for combining several windows of information on screen at the same time – the presenter, graphics, lines of information moving in another corner and, on television sets capable of Internet access, a view of associated websites.
Figure 5.15 The widescreen television picture, based on an aspect ratio of 16 × 9, enables the screen to contain much more information. This is the BBC’s continuous news service, BBC News 24. At one moment the presenter can be filling the screen and then be moved into a ‘box’ at one side as graphic information and numbers are added to the screen. It is particularly useful in this case for business news. Widescreen TV sets are expected to dominate the market by the end of the decade.
Figure 5.16 The viewer has become more accustomed to the idea of shapes which move and shrink or expand. For example, this composite interview shot in which participants do not fill the screen.
1. BBC News 24 Stylebook and Editorial Guide (1999/2000). BBC.
2. The Plain English Campaign (1994). Gobbledegook II – Utter Drivel.
3. The total adult viewing audience is defined as those aged four and over. Broadcasting Audience Research Board figure for 1994.
4. Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf (1993). The Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook, Grafton.