Madurai Kamaraj University

(University with Potential for Excellence)

Directorate of Distance Education

B.Sc Visual Communication- IIIrd Year

Creative Writing –UVIS08

UNIT – I
LESSON 1

Introduction to Creative Writing

INTRODUCTION

Creative writing is any writing that goes outside the bounds of

normal professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature,
typically identified by an emphasis on narrative craft, character development, and
the use of literary tropes or with various traditions of poetry and poetics. Due to
the looseness of the definition, it is possible for writing such as feature stories to
be considered creative writing, even though they fall under journalism, because
the content of features is specifically focused on narrative and character
development. Both fictional and non-fictional works fall into this category,
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including such forms as novels, biographies, short, and poems. In the academic
setting, creative writing is typically separated into fiction and poetry classes, with
a focus on writing in an original style, as opposed to imitating pre-existing genres
such as crime or horror. Writing for the screen and stage—
screenwriting and playwriting—are often taught separately, but fit under the
creative writing category as well.

UNIT OBJECTIVES

This lesson will help you to understand

 What is Creative Writing?

 How to understand the journalistic language?
 Difference between fiction and non-fiction writing for print.
UNIT STRUCTURE
1.1. Introduction to Creative Writing
1.2. Elements of Creative Writing
1.3. Journalistic Language
1.4. Fictional Writing
1.5. Non-Fictional Writing
1.6. Let Us Sum Up
1.7. Unit End Exercises
1.8. Points for Discussion
1.9. Answers to Check your Progress
1.10. Suggested Readings

1.1. Introduction to Creative Writing

Creative writing can technically be considered any writing

of original composition. In this sense, creative writing is a more contemporary and
process-oriented name for what has been traditionally called literature, including
the variety of its genres. In her work, Foundations of Creativity, Mary Lee
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Marksberry references Paul Witty and Lou LaBrant‘sTeaching the People's
Language to define creative writing. Marksberry notes:

Witty and LaBrant…[say creative writing] is a composition of any type of

writing at any time primarily in the service of such needs as

 the need for keeping records of significant experience,

 the need for sharing experience with an interested group, and

 the need for free individual expression which contributes to mental

and physical health.

Unlike its academic counterpart of writing classes that teach students to

compose work based on the rules of the language, creative writing is believed to
focus on students‘ self-expression. While creative writing as an educational
subject is often available at some stages, if not throughout, K–12 education,
perhaps the most refined form of creative writing as an educational focus is
in universities. Following a reworking of university education in the post-war era,
creative writing has progressively gained prominence in the university setting. In
the UK, the first formal creative writing program was established as a Master of
Arts degree at the University of East Anglia in 1970 by the novelists Malcolm
Bradbury and Angus Wilson. With the beginning of formal creative writing
programs: For the first time in the sad and enchanting history of literature, for the
first time in the glorious and dreadful history of the world, the writer was
welcome in the academic place. If the mind could be honored there, why not the
imagination?

Creative Writing programs are typically available to writers from the high
school level all the way through graduate school/university and adult education.
Traditionally these programs are associated with the English departments in the
respective schools, but this notion has been challenged in recent time as more
creative writing programs have spun off into their own department. Most Creative
Writing degrees for undergraduates in college are Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees

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(BFA). Some continue to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, the
terminal degree in the field. At one time rare, PhD. programs are becoming more
prevalent in the field, as more writers attempt to bridge the gap between academic
study and artistic pursuit.

Creative writers typically decide an emphasis in either fiction or poetry,

and they usually start with short stories or simple poems. They then make a
schedule based on this emphasis including literature classes, education classes and
workshop classes to strengthen their skills and techniques. Though they have their
own programs of study in the fields of film and theatre, screenwriting and
playwriting have become more popular in creative writing programs, as creative
writing programs attempt to work more closely with film and theatre programs as
well as English programs. Creative writing students are encouraged to get
involved in extracurricular writing-based activities, such as publishing clubs,
school-based literary magazines or newspapers, writing contests, writing colonies
or conventions, and extended education classes.

Creative writing also takes places outside of formal university or school

institutions. For example, writer Dave Eggers set up the innovative 826
Valencia in San Francisco, where young people write with professional writers. In
the UK, the Arvon Foundation runs week-long residential creative writing courses
in four historic houses. In New Zealand, creative writing courses at NZIBS are
popular because they are home-study (worldwide) to diploma level. In 2015 an
extra service was added at NZIBS whereby creative writers get assistance putting
their stories on Amazon.com. Thus, earning royalties can become an outcome of
the study programme.

Creative writing is usually taught in a workshop format rather

than seminar style. In workshops students usually submit original work for peer
critique. Students also format a writing method through the process of writing and
re-writing. Some courses teach the means to exploit or access latent creativity or
more technical issues such as editing, structural techniques, genres, random idea

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generating or writer's block unblocking. Some noted authors, such as Michael
Chabon, Kazuo Ishiguro, Kevin Brockmeier, Ian McEwan, Karl Kirchwey. Rose
Tremain and reputed screenwriters, such as David Benioff, Darren Star and Peter
Farrelly, have graduated from university creative writing programs.

Creative writing is considered by some academics (mostly in the USA) to

be an extension of the English discipline, even though it is taught around the
world in many languages. The English discipline is traditionally seen as the
critical study of literary forms, not the creation of literary forms. Some academics
see creative writing as a challenge to this tradition. In the UK and Australia, as
well as increasingly in the USA and the rest of the world, creative writing is
considered a discipline in its own right, not an offshoot of any other discipline.

To say that the creative has no part in education is to argue that a

university is not universal.

Those who support creative writing programs either as part or separate

from the English discipline, argue for the academic worth of the creative writing
experience. They argue that creative writing hones the students‘ abilities to clearly
express their thoughts. They further argue that creative writing also entails an in-
depth study of literary terms and mechanisms so they can be applied to the
writer‘s own work to foster improvement. These critical analysis skills are further
used in other literary study outside the creative writing sphere. Indeed, the process
of creative writing, the crafting of a thought-out and original piece, is considered
by some to be experience in creative problem solving.

It is also believed by some in the academic sphere that the term "creative
writing" can include "creative reading" which is the reading of something not
typically understood to be a creative piece as though it were creative. This
expanded concept further addresses the idea of "found" materials being of literary
value under a newly assigned meaning. Examples of this might be product
assembly directions being considered "found poetry."

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 Despite the large number of academic creative writing programs
throughout the world, many people argue that creative writing cannot be
taught. Louis Menand explores the issue in an article for the New Yorker in which
he quotes Kay Boyle, the director of creative writing program at San Francisco
State for sixteen years, who said, ―all creative-writing programs ought to be
abolished by law.‖

According to one view, authors sometimes borrow character traits from

real people, but that in the creative process, they transform these characters into
unique creations by using their imaginations. Since the resulting character is
distorted from a real living person, it is hard to say for certain whether there are
any moral issues involved.

1.2. Elements of Creative Writing

Action is one of the fiction-writing modes authors use to present fiction.

Action includes movement, usually dramatic as opposed to arbitrary movements
such as standing up. The term is also used to describe an exciting event or
circumstance.

"Action is the mode fiction writers use to show what is happening at any
given moment in the story," states Evan Marshall.[1] Jessica Page Morrell lists
action as one of six delivery modes. According to Jordan E. Rosenfeld, action
scenes help the "reader to feel he is participating in the events". Although action is
widely used in fiction, the most effective techniques for its presentation are a
subject of ongoing discussion.

A character (or fictional character) is a person in a narrative work of

art (such as a novel, play, television series orfilm). Derived from the ancient
Greek word χαρακτήρ, the English word dates from the Restoration, although it
became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the
sense of "a part played by anactor" developed. Character, particularly when
enacted by an actor in the theatre or cinema, involves "the illusion of being a
human person." In literature, characters guide readers through their stories,
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helping them to understand plots and ponder themes. Since the end of the 18th
century, the phrase "in character" has been used to describe an
effective impersonation by an actor. Since the 19th century, the art of creating
characters, as practiced by actors or writers, has been called characterisation.

A character who stands as a representative of a particular class or group of

people is known as a type. Types include both stock characters and those that are
more fully individualised. The characters in Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler (1891)
and August Strindberg's Miss Julie (1888), for example, are representative of
specific positions in thesocial relations of class and gender, such that
the conflicts between the characters reveal ideological conflicts.

The study of a character requires an analysis of its relations with all of the
other characters in the work. The individual status of a character is defined
through the network of oppositions (proairetic, pragmatic, linguistic,proxemic)
that it forms with the other characters. The relation between characters and the
action of the story shifts historically, often miming shifts in society and its ideas
about human individuality, self-determination, and the social order.

In literature, the literary element conflict is an inherent incompatibility

between the objectives of two or more characters or forces. Conflict creates
tension and interest in a story by adding doubt as to the outcome. A narrative is
not limited to a single conflict. While conflicts may not always resolve in
narrative, the resolution of a conflict creates closure, which may or may not occur
at a story's end.

Dialogue in fiction, is a verbal exchange between two or more characters.

If there is only one character talking aloud, it is a monologue.

"This breakfast is making me sick," George said.

The George said is the identifier. Said is the verb most writers use because
reader familiarity with said prevents it from drawing attention to itself. Although

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other verbs such as ask, shout, or reply are acceptable, some identifiers get in the
reader's way. For example:

"Hello," he croaked nervously, "my name's Horace."

"What's yours?" he asked with as much aplomb as he could muster. another
example is: "My name is Peg, what's yours?" I asked. "My name is William, but
my friends call me Will," said Will.

Stephen King, in his book On Writing, expresses his belief that said is the
best identifier to use. King recommends reading a novel by Larry McMurtry,
whom he claims has mastered the art of well-written dialogue.

Substitutes are known as said-bookisms. For example, in the

sentence "What do you mean?" he smiled., the wordsmiled is a said-bookism.

Genre, "kind" or "sort", from Latin genus (stem gener-),Greek γένος, gés)
is any category of literature, music, or other forms of art or entertainment, whether
written or spoken, audio or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres
form by conventions that change over time as new genres are invented and the use
of old ones is discontinued. Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of
borrowing and recombining these conventions.

Genre began as an absolute classification system for ancient Greek

literature. Poetry, prose, and performance each had a specific and calculated style
that related to the theme of the story. Speech patterns for comedy would not be
appropriate for tragedy, and even actors were restricted to their genre under the
assumption that a type of person could tell one type of story best. In later periods
genres proliferated and developed in response to changes in audiences and
creators. Genre became a dynamic tool to help the public make sense out of
unpredictable art. Because art is often a response to a social state, in that people
write/paint/sing/dance about what they know about, the use of genre as a tool must
be able to adapt to changing meanings.

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 Genre suffers from the same ills of any classification system. Genre is to
be reassessed and scrutinized, and to weigh works on their unique merit. It has
been suggested that genres resonate with people because of the familiarity, the
shorthand communication, as well as the tendency of genres to shift with
public mores and to reflect the zeitgeist. While the genre of storytelling has been
relegated as lesser form of art because of the heavily borrowed nature of
the conventions, admiration has grown. Proponents argue that the genius of an
effective genre piece is in the variation, recombination, and evolution of the
codes.

Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey

a story to an audience. Narration encompasses a set of techniques through which
the creator of the story presents their story, including:

Narrative point of view: the perspective through which a story is

communicated

Narrative voice: the format through which a story is communicated

Narrative time: the placement of the story's time-frame in the past, the
present, or the future

A narrator is a personal character or a non-personal voice that the creator

of the story develops to deliver information to the audience, particularly about
the plot. The narrator may be a voice devised by the author as an anonymous, non-
personal, or stand-alone entity; as the author herself/himself as a character; or as
some other fictional or non-fictional character appearing and participating within
their own story. The narrator is considered participant if he/she is a character
within the story, and non-participant if he/she is an implied character or an
omniscient or semi-omniscient being or voice that merely relates the story to the
audience without being involved in the actual events. Some stories have multiple
narrators to illustrate the storylines of various characters at the same, similar, or
different times, thus allowing a more complex, non-singular point of view.

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 Narration encompasses not only who tells the story, but also how the story
is told (for example, by using stream of consciousness or unreliable narration). In
traditional literary narratives (such as novels, short stories, and memoirs),
narration is a required story element; in other types of (chiefly non-literary)
narratives, such as plays, television shows, video games, and films, narration is
merely optional.

In literature, pace, or pacing is the speed at which a story is told. The pace
is determined by the length of the scenes, how fast the action moves, and how
quickly the reader is provided with information. It is also sometimes determined
by the genre of the story. Comedies move faster than dramas; action
adventures move faster than suspense. The number of words needed to write about
a certain event does not depend upon how much time the event takes to happen; it
depends upon how important that moment is to the story.

Plot refers to the sequence of events inside a story which affect other
events through the principle of cause and effect. The causal events of a plot can be
thought of as a series of sentences linked by "and so." Plots can vary from simple
structures such as in a traditional ballad to complex interwoven structures
sometimes referred to as an imbroglio. The term plot can serve as a verb and refer
to a character planning future actions in the story.

In the narrative sense, the term highlights the important points which have
important consequences within the story, according to Ansen Dibell. The term is
similar in meaning to the term storyline.

Suspense is a feeling of pleasurable fascination and

scrub excitement mixed with apprehension, tension, and anxiety developed from
an unpredictable, mysterious, and rousing source of entertainment. The term most
often refers to an audience's perceptions in a dramatic work. Suspense is not
exclusive to fiction. It may operate whenever there is a perceived suspended
drama or a chain of cause is left in doubt, with tension being a primary emotion
felt as part of the situation.

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 In the kind of suspense described by film director Alfred Hitchcock, an
audience experiences suspense when they expect something bad to happen and
have (or believe they have) a superior perspective on events in the drama's
hierarchy of knowledge, yet they are powerless to intervene to prevent it from
happening. Films having a lot of suspense belong in the thriller genre.

In broader definition of suspense, this emotion arises when someone is

aware of his lack of knowledge about the development of a meaningful event;
thus, suspense is a combination of anticipation and uncertainty dealing with the
obscurity of the future. In terms of narrative expectations, it may be contrasted
with mystery or curiosity and surprise. Suspense could however be some small
event in a person's life, such as a child anticipating an answer to a request they've
made, such as, "May I get the kitty?" Therefore, suspense may be experienced to
different degrees.

In contemporary literary studies, a theme is the central topic a text

treats. Themes can be divided into two categories: a work's thematic concept is
what readers "think the work is about" and its thematic statement being "what the
work says about the subject".

The most common contemporary understanding of theme is an idea or

point that is central to a story, which can often be summed in a single word (e.g.
love, death, betrayal). Typical examples of themes of this type are conflict
between the individual and society; coming of age; humans in conflict with
technology; nostalgia; and the dangers of unchecked ambition. A theme may be
exemplified by the actions, utterances, or thoughts of a character in a novel. An
example of this would be the theme loneliness in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and
Men, wherein many of the characters seem to be lonely. It may differ from the
thesis—the text's or author's implied worldview.

A story may have several themes. Themes often explore historically

common or cross-culturally recognizable ideas, such as ethical questions, and are
usually implied rather than stated explicitly. An example of this would be whether

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one should live a seemingly better life, at the price of giving up parts of one's
humanity, which is a theme in Aldous Huxley‘s Brave New World. Along
with plot, character, setting, and style, theme is considered one of the components
of fiction.

Tone is a literary compound of composition, which shows the attitudes

toward the subject and toward the audience implied in a literary work. Tone may
be formal, informal, intimate, solemn, somber, playful, serious, ironic,
condescending, or many other possible attitudes. Works of literature are often
conceptualized as having at least one theme, or central question about a
topic; how the theme is approached within the work constitutes the work's tone.

The writer's voice is the individual writing style of an author, a

combination of their common usage of syntax, diction, punctuation, character
development, dialogue, etc., within a given body of text (or across several works).
Voice can be thought of in terms of the uniqueness of a vocal voice machine. As a
trumpet has a different voice than a tuba or a violin has a different voice than a
viola, so the words of one author have a different sound than the words of another.
One author may have a voice that is light and fast paced while another may have a
dark voice.

In creative writing, students are often encouraged to experiment with

different literary styles and techniques in order to help them better develop their
"voice". This aspect varies with the individual author, but having this asset is
considered positive and beneficial to both the writer and his or her audience.

In composition-rhetoric, there is a rich history of debate about the concept

of voice in writing. Peter Elbow is one scholar well known for his work in this
area, and his article "Voice in Writing Again: Embracing Contraries" offers a nice
snapshot of the current state of the discussion.

1.3. Journalistic Language

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 Good journalism has always been associated with competent writing and
competent writing has always required an easy command of correct language and
style. The style of a writer is an involuntary and intimate expression of his
personality. The writer should match the mood of the audience. Style must be
most unobtrusive.

There are many ground rules for good writing. For example, good writing
follows the ABCD principle: Accuracy, Brevity, Conciseness and Directness. A
careful writer must remember the distinction between denotation (direct meaning)
and connotation. The use of active voice should be avoided as it leads to
brevity. The use of prepositions leads to the danger of circumlocution. The
principle of innate selection and control of words most appropriate to the context
must be followed.

Today's Style:

Newspaper style in recent years has moved increasingly in the direction of

uncluttered writing. Simple, direct sentences are desired. Complex and compound
sentences may provide the best vehicle for thought under certain circumstances,
but also increase the probability of ambiguity. The desire for economy in words
has produced tight, swiftly paced writing that has proved to be a boon to
newspaper reading. Loose writing is inefficient writing that leads to wasting of
words.
Tight writing is characterized by the absence of 'breaks' (commas etc.) in the flow
of simple sentences. But tightening that leads to omitting should not be overdone.

Today's journalistic style has the following characteristics:

Compact, usually short sentences, every word selected and placed for
maximum effect. Short, terse paragraphs, each complete in itself and capable of
being removed without destroying the sense of the story. Conciseness, directness
and simplicity through elimination of unnecessary words and phrases
Factualness without editorial opinions and dogmatic expressions

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'Strong' verbs and nouns preferred over hackneyed words and expressions
Observance of grammatical and word usage rules.

Conciseness

The objective of effective journalistic writing should be to avoid

cumbersomeness without becoming repetitive. Relaxing the rule that all of the 5
W's and H (Who, Why, What, Where, When and How) must be included in the
first paragraph of the news story leads to uncluttered writing.

 Superfluous Words The articles the, a and an can be eliminated, as

 Weak: The Harvard students who heard the lecture...

Better: Harvard students who heard the lectur...

 The sentences may be shortened and made more forceful by

making the verbs more direct, as:

 Weak: The group arrived at a decision.Better: The group decided.

 Weak: They did away with the old building.

 Better: They razed the old building.

In their Art of Editing (MacMillan, 1972) Floyd Baskette and Jack Sissors
list 48 'pet' circumlocutions that can be reduced to save 100 words. Some of them
are listed below:

 A good part (much)

 A little less than (almost)

 Accidentally stumbled (stumbled)

 Disclosed for the first time (disclosed)

 Jewish Rabbi (Rabbi)

 Due to the fact that (because)

 Easter Sunday (Easter)

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  Entered a bid of (bid)

 Grand total (total)

 In the immediate vicinity (near) etc

It is not necessary to include the state with the names of large cities, or to
mention the state with the name of the city in the same state as the place where the
newspaper is published.

 Weak: She lives in Los Angeles, California

 Better: She lives in Los Angeles.

 But: Vague: He lives in Catskill.

 Clear: He lives in Catskill, Pennsylvania

 Don't waste words in giving dates, as:

 Weak: The meeting will be held at 12 o' clock noon.

 Better: The meeting will be held at noon.

Superfluous Phrases

Weak: The meeting was held for the purpose of voting for the Chairman.
Better: The meeting was held to vote for the Chairman.

Weak: The colour of the dress was red

Better: The dress was red.

Weak: A baby with brown eyes.

Better: A brown-eyed baby

Superfluous Clauses:

Weak: All women who are interested should come.

Better: All interested women should come.

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Weak: John Donne, who is the President of the Engineer's club, will be there.
Better: John Donne, President of the Engineer's club will be there.

Redundancy:

The following is a short list of redundant words commonly used:

1- assemble together

2- carbon copy

3- each and every

4- necessary requirement

5- first and foremost

6- other alternative

7- totally necessary

8- small in size

9- postpone until later

10- rules and regulations etc

Simplicity:

This is obtained by avoiding 'elegant' words:

1- About is better than with reference to

2- agreement is better than concordance

3- burned is better than destroyed by fire

4- if is better than in the event of

5- meeting is better than rendezvous and so on.

Active and Passive Voice:

The active voice is usually more emphatic than passive voice. However,
sometimes the later is preferred to the former:

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 e.g: Henry Stroke has been appointed chairman of the Republican
campaign committee.

In other cases, the active voice is preferable:

e.g.: Weak: The accident was witnessed by ten people

Better: Ten people witnessed the accident.

Figures Of Speech:

The following are examples of age-old figures of speech that should be

avoided as they are likely to be misused and mark their user as callow.

1- alike as peas in a pod

2- nipped in the bud

3- hail of bullets

4- watery grave

5- white as a sheet and so on

Journalese:

Newspapers have exhausted the effectiveness of a number of words

through indiscriminate repetition. Such words as follows should be avoided:
1- hot seat

2- brutally murdered

3- man hunt

4- crime wave

5- infuriated mob

6- war clouds

7- whirlwind tour

8- quiz

9- grilled by the police

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10- news leaked out and so on

Gobbledygook:

Pretentious phrasing or gobbledygook scares the reader away from the

story, for e.g.

National Association for Advancement of Gay People's Rights attorneys

told the Supreme Court today that overt public resistance is insufficient cause to
nullify federal court desegregation orders.

Readability Formulas

Shortly after World War II, the two major press associations and several
magazines and newspapers experimented with readability formulas that stressed
brevity. The Associated Press reduced its average lead sentence length from 27 to
23 words. The United Press simplified its writing style to be suitable for readers
with 11.7 years of education, whereas formerly it was writing for readers who had
gone to school 16.7 years.

Leads/Intros

A lead is the first paragraph or introduction of a news story that gives the
summary of the news to follow. Different kinds of leads can be used to make the
news story readable and interesting. Some of the different kinds of leads are:

1- The 5 W's and one H: As already mentioned earlier in the chapter, the who,
why, what, where, when and how of the news need not be mentioned all together.
A judicious use of the necessary W's and H makes this kind of lead interesting.

2- The Quotation Lead: In reporting speeches, public statements, etc. it is always

better to typify the feature in the reporter's own words rather than by a direct
quotation, e.g. : Weak: "A sharp decline in mortality rates, medical progress and
greater economic prosperity have enabled welfare agencies to solve most of their
problems except that of the emotionally disturbed child", Horace V. Updike,
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Council of Social Welfare director said yesterday.
Better: "The emotionally disturbed child is the 'No. 1 problem' facing welfare
agencies today, Horace V. Updike, Council Of Welfare director, said yesterday."

3- The Question Lead: Ordinarily a reporter should answer, not ask questions in
his news stories. To do otherwise merely delays telling the news, as in the case of
a lead beginning, "What causes emotional apathy?" followed by a summary of a
new idea advanced by some authority on the subject.

4- The Staccato Lead: When the time element is to be emphasized, this lead is
used. It consists of a series of phrases, punctuated either by periods or dashes and
usually is a form of descriptive lead. E.g.: Almost thirty years ago-back in 1973-in
a different era-in a different life, after years of happiness in her simple home, the
light went out of Mrs X's life -she became stone blind. Torturous, long years
passed and suddenly her prayers were answered - Mrs X could see.

5- The Explosive Lead: Similar to the Staccato lead but consisting of

grammatically complete sentences, the explosive lead is usually used for feature
articles.

6- The Dialogue Lead: Minor court stories with strong human interest can be
handled effectively by this kind of lead. The lead consists of the dialogue between
two people and then followed by a summary or play-by-play account of the event.

7- The Cartridge Lead: When war is declared or ends, when a famous personality
dies or on similar important occasions, it is customary to tell the gist of the news
in the fewest possible words. E.g. Mayor Charles Canterbury is dead. This style
should not be frequently used but reserved for special occasions.

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8- The Punch Lead: Similar to the Cartridge lead but not so abrupt or definite is
the Punch lead.

9- The Descriptive Lead: A graphic description of a person, place or object to give

the tone or feeling necessary for proper understanding and appreciation. The best
descriptive leads are written by eyewitnesses.

10- The Parody Lead: Popular songs, titles of best-sellers, newly coined phrases
etc. may be used while still fresh, usually in parodied form to brighten an
occasional news story lead.

1.4. Fictional Writing

Fiction writing is the composition of non-factual texts. Fictional writing often is
produced as a story meant to entertain or convey an author's point of view. The
result of this may be a short story, novel, novella, screenplay, or drama, which are
all types (though not the only types) of fictional writing styles. Different types
of authors practice fictional writing, including novelists, playwrights, short story
writers, dramatists and screenwriters.
A Genre is the subject matter, or category in which a writer would base their work
on. For instance Science Fiction, Fantasy and Mystery are considered genre
fiction. In fiction, genre writing is the act of a storytelling driven by plot. As
opposed to literary fiction that focuses on themes rather than plot, genre fiction,
also known as popular fiction, is made to appeal to a large group of people and
primarily sells more for it is more commercialized to the general public. An
example to further elaborate, The Twilight series may sell more than a novel
by Herman Melville, such as Moby Dick, because the Twilight novel deals with
pop culture such as romance and vampires, which are in high regards of young
readers, who outnumber older readers who would find Moby Dick more to their
liking.

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Literary fiction, or literature, can somewhat be classified as a genre. Unlike genre
fiction, literary does not focus on a story that is driven by the plot or the typical
good vs. bad guy aspect of a story, like a genre would acquire. Literary fiction
often deals with metaphors, and the way the world works, which is one of many
reasons why literature is read in schools as opposed to majority of genre fiction
focused frequently for entertainment.
Creative Writing: According to Kurt Vonnegut:
Kurt Vonnegut the author of praised novels Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five,
and Breakfast of Champions, has given his readers, from his short story
collection, Bagombo Snuff Box, eight rules on how to write a successful story.
The list can be found in the Introduction of the collection.
"Now lend me your ears. Here is Creative Writing 101:
 Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel
the time was wasted.
 Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
 Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
 Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance
the action.
 Start as close to the end as possible.
 Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters,
make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what
they are made of.
 Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to
the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
 Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To
heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of
what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story
themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages."
Elements of fiction

21
 Just as a painter uses color and line to create a painting, an author uses the
elements of fiction to create a story:
 The elements of fiction are: character, plot, setting, theme, and style. Of
these five elements, character is thewho, plot is the what, setting is
the where and when, theme is the why, and style is the how of a story.
 A character is any person, personal, identity, or entity whose existence
originates from a fictional work or performance.
 A plot, or storyline, is the rendering and ordering of the events and actions
of a story, particularly towards the achievement of some particular artistic
or emotional effect.
 Setting is the time and location in which a story takes place.
 Theme is the broad idea, message, or lesson of a story.
 Style includes the multitude of choices fiction writers make, consciously
or subconsciously, as they create a story. They encompass the big-picture,
strategic choices such as point of view and narrator, but they also include
the nitty-gritty, tactical choices of grammar, punctuation, word usage,
sentence and paragraph length and structure,tone, the use of imagery,
chapter selection, titles, and on and on. In the process of writing a story,
these choices meld to become the writer's voice, his or her own unique
style.
 Character: Author Jenna Blum described the process of creating a
character: "It feels like having a string dangle out of thin air and you pull
on the string, and the next thing you know, a sweater knits itself out of
nowhere and you have a character who is made out of whole cloth."
 Characterization is one of the five elements of fiction, along with plot,
setting, theme, and writing style. A character is a participant in the story,
and is usually a person, but may be any persona, identity, or entity whose
existence originates from a fictional work or performance.Characters may
be of several types:

22
 o Point-of-view character: the character by whom the story is
viewed. The point-of-view character may or may not also be the
main character in the story.
o Protagonist: the main character of a story
o Antagonist: the character who stands in opposition to the
protagonist
o Minor character: a character that interacts with the protagonist.
They help the story move along.
o Foil character: a (usually minor) character who has traits in
aversion to the main character
 Plot: The plot, or storyline, is the rendering and ordering of the events and
actions of a story. Starting with the initiating event, then the rising action,
conflict, climax, falling action, and ending with the resolution.
 On a micro level, plot consists of action and reaction, also referred to as
stimulus and response. On a macro level, plot has a beginning, a middle,
and an ending.
 The climax of the novel consists of a single action-packed sentence in
which the conflict (problem) of the novel is resolved. This sentence comes
towards the end of the novel. The main part of the action should come
before the climax.
 Plot also has a mid-level structure: scene and sequel. A scene is a unit of
drama—where the action occurs. Then, after a transition of some sort,
comes the sequel—an emotional reaction and regrouping, an aftermath.
 Setting: Setting is the locale and time of a story. The setting is often a real
place, but may be a fictitious city or country within our own world; a
different planet; or an alternate universe, which may or may not have
similarities with our own universe. Sometimes setting is referred to
as milieu, to include a context (such as society) beyond the immediate
surroundings of the story. It is basically where and when the story takes
place.
23
  Theme is what the author is trying to tell the reader. For example, the
belief in the ultimate good in people, or that things are not always what
they seem. This is often referred to as the "moral of the story." Some
fiction contains advanced themes like morality, or the value of life,
whereas other stories have no theme, or a very shallow one.
 Style includes the multitude of choices fiction writers make, consciously
or not, in the process of writing a story. It encompasses not only the big-
picture, strategic choices such as point of view and choice of narrator, but
also tactical choices of grammar, punctuation, word usage, sentence and
paragraph length and structure, tone, the use of imagery, chapter selection,
titles, etc. In the process of creating a story, these choices meld to become
the writer's voice, his or her own unique style. Components of style:
o For each piece of fiction, the author makes many choices, consciously
or subconsciously, which combine to form the writer's unique style.
The components of style are numerous, but include point of view,
choice of narrator, fiction-writing mode, person and tense, grammar,
punctuation, word usage, sentence length and structure, paragraph
length and structure, tone, imagery, chapter usage, and title selection.
Narrator
The narrator is the teller of the story, the orator, the speaker, or its in-print
equivalent.
Point of View
Point of view is from whose consciousness the reader hears, sees, and feels the
story.
Tone
Tone is the mood that the author establishes within the story.
Suspension of disbelief
Suspension of disbelief is the reader's temporary acceptance of story elements as
believable, regardless of how implausible they may seem in real life.
Authors' views on Writing

24
Ernest Hemingway wrote "Prose is architecture, not interior decoration..." (New
York Times,"Hemingway's Quality Built On a Stern Apprenticeship" Charles
Poore, 1954) Stephen King, in his Non-fiction, part autobiographical, part self-
help, writing memoir, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, he gives readers
helpful advice on honing their craft.
―Description begins in the writer‘s imagination, but should finish in the reader‘s.‖
Here, King suggests that a writer's work is meant to inspire a reader, so much so,
that the writer's thoughts and ideas can contribute to the reader's own.
Maxwell Anderson, playwright to the films Key Largo (film) and The Wrong Man
feels a character should have conflict within.
"The story...must be a conflict, and specifically, a conflict between the forces of
good and evil within a single person."
Mark Twain, author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the
Pauper, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and much more, felt writers should care
for their characters.
"The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters;
the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want
them all to land in hell, together, as quickly as possible."
1.5. Non-Fictional Writing
Creative nonfiction (also known as literary nonfiction or narrative nonfiction) is
a genre of writing that uses literary styles and techniques to create factually
accurate narratives. Creative nonfiction contrasts with other nonfiction, such
as academic or technical writing or journalism, which is also rooted in accurate
fact, but is not written to entertain based on writing style or florid prose. As a
genre, creative nonfiction is still relatively young, and is only beginning to be
scrutinized with the same critical analysis given to fiction and poetry.
For a text to be considered creative nonfiction, it must be factually accurate, and
written with attention to literary style and technique. "Ultimately, the primary goal
of the creative nonfiction writer is to communicate information, just like a
reporter, but to shape it in a way that reads like fiction." Forms within this genre

25
include biography, autobiography, memoir, diary, travel writing, food
writing, literary journalism, chronicle, personal essays and other hybridized
essays.
According to Vivian Gornick, "A memoir is a tale taken from life—that is, from
actual, not imagined, occurrences—related by a first-person narrator who is
undeniably the writer. Beyond these bare requirements it has the same
responsibility as the novel or the short story: to shape a piece of experience so that
it moves from a tale of private interest to one with meaning for the disinterested
reader." Critic Chris Anderson claims that the genre can be understood best by
splitting it into two subcategories—the personal essay and the journalistic essay—
but the genre is currently defined by its lack of established conventions.
Literary critic Barbara Lounsberry—in her book The Art of Fact—suggests four
constitutive characteristics of the genre, the first of which is "Documentable
subject matter chosen from the real world as opposed to 'invented' from the
writer's mind." By this, she means that the topics and events discussed in the text
verifiably exist in the natural world. The second characteristic is "Exhaustive
research," which she claims allows writers "novel perspectives on their subjects"
and "also permits them to establish the credibility of their narratives through
verifiable references in their texts." The third characteristic that Lounsberry claims
is crucial in defining the genre is "The scene". She stresses the importance of
describing and revivifying the context of events in contrast to the typical
journalistic style of objective reportage. The fourth and final feature she suggests
is "Fine writing: a literary prose style". "Verifiable subject matter and exhaustive
research guarantee the nonfiction side of literary nonfiction; the narrative form
and structure disclose the writer‘s artistry; and finally, its polished language
reveals that the goal all along has been literature."
Creative nonfiction may be structured like traditional fiction narratives, as is true
of Fenton Johnson's story of love and loss, Geography of the Heart, and Virginia
Holman's Rescuing Patty Hearst. When book-length works of creative nonfiction
follow a story-like arc, they are sometimes called narrative nonfiction[citation

26
needed]. Creative nonfiction often escapes traditional boundaries of narrative
altogether, as happens in the bittersweet banter of Natalia Ginzburg's essay, "He
and I", in John McPhee's hypnotic tour of Atlantic City, In Search of Marvin
Gardens, and in Ander Monson's playful, experimental essays in Neck-Deep and
Other Predicaments.
Creative nonfiction writers have embraced new ways of forming their texts—
including online technologies—because the genre leads itself to grand
experimentation. Dozens of new journals have sprung up—both in print and
online—that feature creative nonfiction prominently in their offerings.
Writers of creative or narrative non-fiction often discuss the level, and limits, of
creative invention in their works, and justify the approaches they have taken to
relating true events. Melanie McGrath, whose book Silvertown, an account of her
grandmother‘s life, is "written in a novelist's idiom",writes in the follow-
up, Hopping, that the known facts of her stories are "the canvas on to which I have
embroidered. Some of the facts have slipped through the holes—we no longer
know them nor have any means of verifying them—and in these cases I have
reimagined scenes or reconstructed events in a way I believe reflects the essence
of the scene or the event in the minds and hearts of the people who lived through
it. To my mind this literary tinkering does not alter the more profound truth of the
story." This concept of fact vs. fiction is elaborated upon in Brenda Miller and
Suzanne Paola's book entitled "Tell it Slant." They argue that "...memory itself can
be called its own bit of creative nonfiction. We continually—often
unconsciously—renovate our memories, shaping them into stories that bring
coherence to chaos. Memory has been called the ultimate 'mythmaker'..." as even
one‘s firsthand accounts are unreliable. Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi, authors
of The Sugar Girls, a novelistic story based on interviews with former sugar-
factory workers, make a similar point: "Although we have tried to remain faithful
to what our interviewees have told us, at a distance of over half a century many
memories are understandably incomplete, and where necessary we have used our
own research, and our imaginations, to fill in the gaps. However, the essence of

27
the stories related here is true, as they were told to us by those who experienced
them at first hand."
In recent years, there have been several well-publicized incidents of memoir
writers who exaggerated or fabricated certain facts in their work. For example:
o In 1998, Swiss writer and journalist Daniel Ganzfried revealed
that Binjamin Wilkomirski's memoir Fragments: Memories of a
Wartime Childhood detailing his experiences as a child survivor of
the Holocaust, contained factual inaccuracies.
o The James Frey controversy hit in 2006, when The Smoking
Gun website revealed that Frey's memoir, A Million Little Pieces,
contained experiences that turned out to be fabrications.
o In 2008, the New York Times featured an article about the
memoirist Margaret Seltzer, whose pen name is Margaret B. Jones.
Her publisher Riverhead Books canceled the publication of Seltzer's
book, Love and Consequences, when it was revealed that Seltzer's
story of her alleged experiences growing up as a half-white, half-
Native American foster child and Bloods gang member in South
Central Los Angeles were fictitious.
Although there have been instances of traditional and literary journalists falsifying
their stories, the ethics applied to creative nonfiction are the same as those that
apply to journalism. The truth is meant to be upheld, just told in a literary fashion.
Essayist John D'Agata explores the issue in his 2012 book The Lifespan of a Fact.
It examines the relationship between truth and accuracy, and whether it is
appropriate for a writer to substitute one for the other. He and fact-checker Jim
Fingal undergo an intense debate about the boundaries of creative nonfiction, or
"literary nonfiction."
To date, there is very little published literary criticism of creative nonfiction
works, despite the fact that the genre is often published in respected publications
such as The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Harper's, and Esquire. A handful of the
most widely recognized writers in the genre such as Robert Caro, Gay

28
Talese, Joseph Mitchell, Tom Wolfe, John McPhee, Joan Didion, John
Perkins, Ryszard Kapuściński and Norman Mailer have seen some criticism on
their more prominent works. "Critics to date, however, have tended to focus on
only one or two of each writer‘s works, to illustrate particular critical
points." These analyses of a few key pieces are hardly in-depth or as
comprehensive as the criticism and analyses of their fictional contemporaries. As
the popularity of the genre continues to expand, many nonfiction authors and a
handful of literary critics are calling for more extensive literary analysis of the
genre.
"If, these four features delimit an important art form of our time, a discourse
grounded in fact but artful in execution that might be called literary nonfiction,
what is needed is serious critical attention of all kinds to this work: formal
criticism (both Russian Formalism and New Criticism), historical, biographical,
cultural,structuralist and deconstructionist, reader-response
criticism and feminist (criticism).‖
"Nonfiction is no longer the bastard child, the second class citizen; literature is no
longer reified, mystified, unavailable. This is the contribution that poststructuralist
theory has to make to an understanding of literary nonfiction, since
poststructuralist theorists are primarily concerned with how we make meaning and
secure authority for claims in meaning of language."

1.6. Let Us Sum Up

1.7. Unit End Exercises

1.8. Points for Discussion
1.9. Answers to Check your Progress
1.10. Suggested Readings

1. Baskette, Floyd and Sissors, Jack ,‟Art of Editing‟ ,MacMillan,

1972

2. Curtis D. MacDougal, „Interpretative Reporting‟, 8th Edition,

MacMillan, 1982
29
 3. Myers, D. G. The Elephants Teach: Creative Writing since
1880. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.

4. Fenza, D. "The AWP Official Guide To Writing

Programs". Fairfax, Va: Association of Writers & Writing
Programs, 2004.

5. Palmer, A.J. "Writing and Imagery - How to Deepen Your

Creativity and Improve Your Writing." [Aber Books]2010.

6. Roy, Pinaki. “Reflections on the Art of Producing

Travelogues”. Images of Life: Creative and Other Forms of
Writing (ed. Mullick, S.), Kolkata: The Book World, 2014

UNIT – I
LESSON 2

Concept of Creative Journalism

INTRODUCTION

Creativity in contemporary discourses of journalism and the creative

industries is normatively associated with a specific conception of agency, in the
sense of journalistic volition or self-determination. In contrast to the admittedly
romanticized notion of journalism as a craft, trade or tribe, this form of agency is
demonstrably individualistic, tied up with the authentic voices or trusted authority
of particular journalists. This agency takes many forms, from the increased use of
head shots online and in print and the activity of journalists in comment forums to
30
journalists‘ Twitter feeds and, less straightforwardly, the noticeable presence of
the personal authorial voice in news writing. We might say that there is nothing
wrong with this: collectivist notions of professionalism have been shown to be
exclusionary and hierarchical (Markham, 2010), and whatever academics say
about it, we live in an age of individualism after all. This last point is not meant to
be facetious: there is a tendency in scholarly research to pathologize individualism
and its effects – disengagement, for instance – but empirical evidence (Couldry et
al, 2007) suggests we cannot responsibly assume that it is experienced as
problematic. But nor does this mean that we should simply treat individual agency
as benign. Judith Butler, in particular the Butler of Excitable Speech (1997), is
persuasive in showing that we are never fully the agents of our own practices,
drawing on the Sartrean model in which we are never really subjects but always in
the process of becoming, of subjectifying. But if we are not the agents of our own
practices, then who is? The answer to this lies in the collective, and pushes us
towards thinking of social and economic structures, and technology too, as having
agencical aspects. I return to the significance of the argument that individuation is
a collective practice below. The qualification of agency is not the same as
characterizing identity in the information age as chaotic or even unliveable, as
Bauman (2000) implies. Constraining, productive structures are a condition of
agency, and much of the structure/agency debate has conceded the mutual
constitutivity of the two (see for instance Hays, 1994; Berard, 2005), contenting
itself instead debating to the question of where we should place emphasis. In our
context, what remains important is that the celebration of individual agency risks
appearing naïve if it remains blind to the fact that individuals as such do not exist,
and the way we come to see ourselves and others as individuals is steeped in
power relations and historical contingencies.

UNIT OBJECTIVES

This lesson will help you to understand

 The concept of journalistic creativity,

31
  How to achieve journalistic creativity
 Truth and creativity in creative journalism
 How to write for Creative Journalism
UNIT STRUCTURE
2.1 What is Journalistic Creativity
2.2 Journalism and the Creative Industries
2.3 The Implications of Creativity for Journalism
2.4 Truth and Creativity
2.5 Let Us Sum Up
2.6 Unit End Exercises
2.7 Points for Discussion
2.8 Answers to Check your Progress
2.9 Suggested Readings
2.1 What is Journalistic Creativity

Karel van den Berg travels the world, asking one basic, but surprisingly
challenging question: what is creativity? (Looking up the definition in the
dictionary might show that you don‘t have it, whatever it may be.)

As a profession, journalism is based on pure fact and objectivity. The very

notion of the trade is solidly grounded in the idea that journalists provide answers
to the questions boggling the minds of curious readers. However, if we were to
trust van den Berg, we would learn that ―intellectuals turn answers into
questions.‖ But this isn‘t a subtle attempt at a covert offense to journalists.

―Journalism is one of the most creative professions you can find,‖ he says.
His background in journalism started in 1988, but soon after, he wanted to be
―better at breaking news‖. Being confronted on a day to day basis by the trials of
finding new story ideas in an increasingly ―disruptive, challenging market‖
sparked another curiosity in him: where does imagination fit into the journalistic
process?

32
 ―Creativity is all about breaking thinking patterns,‖ van den Berg says.
But even he admits, that might be easier said than done.

Patterns are ubiquitous and ―you need them to survive, from the day you
are born.‖ Developing yourself means building patterns. That‘s because they are
made up of seven aspects of everyday life:

o Skill

o Routine

o Expertise

o Logic & Reason

o Assumption

o Prejudice

These set notions represent the pillars of our society, and more than that,
the background to our judgment and intuition. Disrupting these almost inborn
instincts and values might leave us without a solid moral compass. But more
importantly, it can haul us out of that dreaded writer‘s block when the presses are
running and the conventional frantic search for new angles didn't yield results.

Boiling down the techniques of his book ―Pattern Breaking News -

Handbook for journalistic ideation,‖ Karel pinpointed the times and places where
ideas get stuck.

―Assumption is one of the greatest sources of killing ideas in

journalism,‖ he says, encouraging us to generally defer jumping to any
conclusions. This is the process of separating creation from realization.

―The biggest problem in combining creativity with journalism is

postponing your judgment, which is not natural to most journalists. Most of the
times, we confuse critical thinking with good judgment. This is where the
biggest challenge comes in.‖

33
 To prove his point that ―our observations are so focused they overlook
other options,‖ he played an awareness test video for the audience. We all fell for
it. We clearly needed to do something about it.

Van den Berg thinks you can structure and organize creativity. Applied
specifically to journalism, the creative process is made up of creative thinking and
creative observation. Starting from the five famous ―W questions‖ of news
writing, the single trick to change the journalistic pattern into a creative technique
is to add the word ―else‖ at the end of each one, as in:

o Who else?

o What else?

o Where else?

o When else?

o Why else?

o How else?

First thing to learn about the pains and pleasures of creative thinking is
that the key is to never give up. But once you found the journalistic needle, don‘t
throw the haystack away – the trick is to combine good and bad ideas, instead of
discarding them.

―Because creativity means breaking patterns, when you run out of answers
is when you [have] reached the barriers of your preconceptions,‖ van den Berg
said. ―And even if you find a brilliant idea, don‘t be satisfied too early in the
process and don‘t stop. Chances are there are many more ideas to come.‖

When George Poultry set out to find the total number of narratives in
world literature, he allegedly found there are only 36 main plotlines, each with
variations. His discovery is echoed by Ronald Tobias, who later on found that
there are also only 20 Hollywood master plots.

34
 According to van den Berg, journalism revolves around a grand total
of eighteen subjects.

―We need to find journalism in the way it used to be, or redefine it. We
lost our monopoly on the news; we don‘t own the media anymore. We need to
find out how to create value to consumers, taxpayers, audiences,‖ he concedes.

―We have to invent the future.‖

2.2 Journalism and the Creative Industries

If the increasing relevance of creativity in journalistic practice is to be seen

in the context of a broader cultural shift in dominant forms of authority from
expertise to authenticity, it is important to avoid the kind of cultural determinism
which would construct this relationship as a simple manifestation of wider
structures – journalism after all exerts its own qualified influence on the field of
cultural production in which it subsists. Further, this is not an abstract relation
between journalism and ‗culture‘, but one that can be concretely assessed in the
context of the creative industries. This term itself comes with normative baggage
(Deuze, 2007: 53-6). John Hartley (2005) is representative of the more sanguine
camp, acknowledging the tension that inevitably exists between creativity and
commercialization, while emphasizing the potential for substantial cultural
generation in the age of ICTs and interactivity. Hartley, however, is outweighed in
academic circles by the pessimists whose position is best summarized by Neilson
and Rossiter‘s (2005: 8) characterization of the term ‗creative industries‘ as: …an
oxymoronic disingenuousness that wants to suggest that innovation can coexist
with or become subordinated to the status quo. In this context, innovation
becomes nothing more than a code word for more of the same – the reduction of
creativity to the formal indifference of the market. This article takes a deliberately
ambivalent stance on whether the creative industries are a good thing in general,
focusing instead on their impact on journalism. This means looking at how the
logics of these subfields of cultural production interact. Journalism can be said to
occupy a doubly-dominated position in the cultural field overall, with its status
35
markedly lower than that of the arts, while its commercial clout cannot compete
with mass popular cultural forms.

Bourdieu adds that journalism is only weakly autonomous, meaning that

the internal logic which governs valorization (or what he terms cultural
consecration) – what counts as news, good journalism, good journalists, good taste
and so on – is susceptible to colonization by external principles, most notably
marketization. But despite this dominatedness, journalism has a special status
insofar as it acts as gatekeeper to public knowledge, and that it claims the
authority to hold power to account (Bourdieu, 1997). The result is that it can often
punch above its weight, though the consequences are as often negative as positive
– writing about the French context, Bourdieu (1993) was particularly concerned
about the extension of commercial journalistic principles to fields such as
philosophy and science. I have suggested here that the main impact the creative
industries have had on journalism is the importing of principles of dynamism,
fluidity and expressiveness, all associated with the fuzzier notion of creativity.
While leading to new and innovative professional practices, this move also brings
with it unintended consequences, such as a culture of professional insecurity
embedded both in different attitudes to work (in which flexibility is key, and
where you are only as good as your last piece; see Bauman & Haugaard, 2008)
and distinct employment policies. Everitt & Mills (2009) use the phrase
‗permanent beta‘ to encapsulate the constant uncertainty cultural workers face
about where technology is heading, and ‗cultural anxiety 2.0‘ to describe the
uneasiness media (and educational) professionals experience in trying to keep up
with the high rate of technical innovation.

The result is that we too often remain uninformed about the social and
political contexts in which new technologies have emerged. It is understandable
that journalists will rush to adopt new practices – launching a website in the last
decade, starting a Twitter feed in the present one – for the sake of maintaining
their market value and perhaps in a genuine enthusiasm to try out new things and
interact with audiences. But they will do so without understanding the politics of
36
social media, for instance, characterized by an epistemology (in which the highest
truth is that produced by the greatest number) quite different than that of
traditional, modernist journalism. They are also unlikely to grasp the normative
impetus of different programming cultures (Everitt & Mills, 2009), some of which
are explicitly politically motivated. Given that the ‗rules‘ governing any subfield
tend to be misrecognized by its own members, it is reasonable that journalists
aren‘t fully cognizant of them. But it does mean that the influence of the creative
industries is complex, irreducible to simple themes such as fluidity and
commercialism. Is it fair to hold technology and the professional cultures of the
creative industries accountable for the destabilization of life in the journalistic
field? I would suggest that influence runs both ways, as can be illustrated by
considering two specific themes: obsolescence and risk.

Liquid modernity is clearly a larger phenomenon than either the creative

industries or journalism, but it is plausible that the journalistic way of representing
the world, often with a dearth of contextualization and a fixation on novelty, is
replicated in other areas of the field of cultural production. The fact that this
worldview is also tied to commercialization, with an assumption of short attention
spans and a reliance on cultural amnesia, suggests a good fit with professionalized
creative industries. Beyond these generalizations, it also seems that the way in
which journalism produces novelty is mirrored in the creative industries. This is
the reliable shock of the new, the drive to grab the attention of publics by
presenting them with something that is simultaneously unprecedented and
familiar. Without subscribing to Neilson and Rossiter‘s thoroughly debased view
of the creative industries, it is reasonable to say that creativity in more commercial
sectors such as popular music and advertising is similarly constrained by the
demand for both novelty and familiarity.

In terms of risk, this is not the place to rehearse arguments about risk
culture – arguments which revolve around perceptions of fear rather than riskiness
itself, often exploring the motivations of state and media actors in propagating risk
discourse and extending its domain (Altheide, 2002; Furedi, 1997). Instead, one of
37
the defining features of the creative industries is that they are subject to high
levels of economic risk, with large failure rates across the sector. This is arguably
less so in journalism: while it is surely risky to launch a new newspaper or
website, there is not the same degree of risk in publishing subsequent editions as
there is in repeatedly releasing new films or albums. But perhaps the way that risk
is conceived in the journalistic field can tell us something about how it is dealt
with in the creative industries, and increasingly in journalism itself. Journalists
routinely face the task of convincing their readers and viewers that they should be
worried about some or other phenomena or folk devil, aware that audiences (or at
least some of them) are quick to detect and dismiss attempts at manipulation. One
technique used especially in the mid-market newspapers in the UK is
personalization: risks are not things which face the nation or the planet, but you
and your family.

This is not simply flattering the audience by appearing to pay attention to

them. It works because it transfers responsibility (often moral) to them as
individuals: they are called upon to monitor their own behavior (if it is a health
risk linked to lifestyle, for instance) and account for the decisions they take. I
would suggest that the creativity agenda contains a similar shift. By encouraging
workers to create and innovate employers are essentially outsourcing risk, leaving
it to individuals to take creative leaps and to deal with the consequences of failure,
and only intervening once risks are shown to have been minimized. This argument
offers an effective counterpoint to the idea that the self-startup phenomenon in
popular music is democratizing cultural production. It may be less pervasive in
journalism, though in the UK at least it is common practice when newspapers hire
new columnists to wait until they‘ve established the viability of their unique, edgy
voice online.

2.3 The Implications of Creativity for Journalism

It has been seen that if creativity is valued because it represents a form of

agency, which we could also understand in classical terms as self-mastery, then it

38
is undermined by the fact that it is focused on the individual, while in reality
creativity is nothing of the sort. And if it is a matter of giving voice and
empowering individuals, then it underestimates the extent to which others – and
ourselves – know our place. Its distinction against (presumably staid, stifling)
material work rests on notions of immateriality and fluidity which are not neutral
but linked to economic and cultural structures (see especially Gill & Pratt, 2008)
as well as a conception of freedom that is at least questionable. We could add that
immaterial labor is associated more than any other kind with the need for
perpetual novelty, and this would certainly complement existing theories of the
creative industries in which innovation is regarded as a response to the need in a
capitalist society for ever-expanding markets. This needs to be tempered by
inserting a caveat about how easy it really is to create new nodes of demand, with
recent audience research (Schrøder & Phillips, 2006; Philo, 2008; Madianou,
2009) calling into question the suggestibility of media audiences. But in any case
the rise of the creative industries in general and the increasing importance of
expressive creativity in professions such as journalism are not the simple
expression of economic determinism, nor are they the straightforward
manifestation of cultural phenomena such as the valorization of anti-establishment
and un-institutional authority.

It is clear that the norms underpinning the creativity discourse, while they
might obscure economic realities which are arguably exploitative, are not in
themselves negative – there is no suggestion that a creativity agenda has been
foisted upon media professionals simply in order to raise productivity. It‘s
certainly not a radical exercise in destructuring journalistic practice: it‘s not the
equivalent of free jazz, and in narrative terms the trend towards more personalized
content in journalists‘ blogs and on social networking sites is hardly on the scale
of the provocations of Wolfe and Thomspon. But there are two orthodoxies of the
creative moment in journalism that need to be challenged. The first comes from
management research, in particular the school of though that believes that
innovation and efficiency can be effectively guaranteed – or at least become
39
predictable, after Ritzer (1993) – by institutionalizing creative practice (a good
parallel to this is the implementation of hacking practices such as extreme and
agile programming by Microsoft and Google; see Everitt & Mills, 2009). The
second is the belief, apparently genuinely held, that everyone benefits from
creativity – it‘s good for the journalist, the organization and the audience. Let us
look at each in turn. Central to Jürgen Habermas‘s work is the belief that public
spheres are not abstract ideals: we can and indeed have a duty to design
institutions that will provide a viable context for rational communication and
deliberation about issues of shared concern (Habermas, [1979] 1991, pp. 178-
205).

The ideal speech act then does not begin conceptually with an authentic
thought or belief which is then warped and corrupted by politics: it is the job of
politics to build the framework which makes the ideal speech act possible. The
upshot is that institutionalizing communicative structures is not only defensible
but mandated. It is unsurprising that this has been translated into those areas of
business studies that emphasize rationalization, but here it is not just rationality
which needs to be planned and codified, but idea generation as well. The results in
general are beyond our concern here, but it is worth dwelling a little on what the
impact could be for journalism. It was noted above that both the physical layout of
the Guardian building and newsroom, and the temporal structuring of work, has
been designed first of all to enhance efficiency through flexibility, but also to
provide a working environment maximally conducive to creative and
collaborative thinking. The effectiveness of such policies is as yet unclear, but it is
of course unlikely in such difficult economic times that the Guardian and other
media outlets would uncritically import the latest techniques from management
research without auditing their value fairly closely. But however they are regarded
by senior management at the Guardian, there are two criticisms of such policies
that warrant consideration.

The first is that while any ideas or innovations generated as a result of their
implementation may be called creative, the extent to which they would be
40
considered so beyond the professional discourse of creativity is moot. This is not
to hold up an idealized version of pure creativity against a degraded corporate
other, but simply to point out that creativity means nothing more or less than what
those working or with a stake in the creative industries say it means. It is likely
that different groups of actors would benefit from the universalization of different
definitions of the term, and as such its deployment should be thought of as
necessarily, if unconsciously, strategic. The second point about formalizing
policies for creativity derives from criticisms of Habermas‘ communication
theory. Giddens (1976) notably argued that however well a communication
structure is designed and monitored, its framework cannot compensate for the fact
that different actors come to it with different communicative (and other)
resources. The upshot is that we could encourage all journalists (and citizens) to
be more creative, but this does not alter the fact that it will come more easily to
some than others, and, crucially, that some will be better placed to use their
creativity to their advantage in terms of the hierarchies of their field. The
argument can be taken further.

For Bourdieu, it is not only the case that the structures in which we operate
affect our ability to communicate. Communication itself is implicated in power
relations, and the result is that to institutionalize specific communicative
structures is to institutionalize coercive power, or in his words, symbolic violence.
While it is defensible to categorize creative production as a form of public
communication, Bourdieu‘s characterization of all communication as suspect
(because it is grounded in an inherently contestable – that is, political, ontology) is
at heart a matter of conviction rather than deduction. But it remains salient that we
cannot assume that by formalizing ways of producing creativity on demand we
devolve power to individuals or redistribute it in an equalizing manner. It is as
likely that this will simply reproduce extant structures of power, or set in train
new cultures of practice that are differently but no less politically implicated. This
leads neatly to the question of who is assumed to benefit from creativity. It‘s clear
that a media organization wouldn‘t emphasize it as policy unless it stood to gain,
41
whether through a more productive workforce on the identification of new areas
for development.

But there is also an implication that it is mutually beneficial, which raises

the question of what, say, junior journalists and members of the public get out of
it. This is not to suggest that people do not like being creative, but rather to
consider the motivations of those in a position to champion it. And here it appears
that there is a genuine sense that this is a good thing, not (usually) in the
potentially patronizing sense of giving voice to or empowering journalists and
their publics, but something more akin to respecting them. This is in line with
contemporary personnel management styles which are, in the words they use at
least, more holistic, their concerns addressed to discrete individuals rather than the
work they do.

But however well-intentioned, low pay rates and systemic job insecurity
for the majority of media workers demonstrate that they are not substantively
respected. While it is very likely that many will derive satisfaction from being
able to work more creatively than would have been possible in the past, creativity
is at base a mode of communication that has much in common with the broader
culture of personalization, but which has little scope for responding to what are
political and economic problems (partly because the appeal to creativity is itself
implicated in these problems). The norm of respect is also implied in the way that
many in the creative industries distinguish themselves against other ways of
working. The distinction against material labor was noted above, but there is also
a strong resistance in the creativity discourse to traditional or received notions
about working in an office or newsroom (Oldenburg, 1999; Nerone and Barnhurst,
2003; Anderson, 2011).

Creativity is set in opposition to the dehumanizing aspects of office life,

from routine and dress codes to staticity and bloodless language. This has the
appearance of a fairly conventional counter-cultural critique of modern life, and in
some cases (Google, for instance) the ‗creative‘ response has risked appearing

42
juvenile. But for our purposes, it will suffice to be consistent with the arguments
set out above and posit that the environments and practices intended to provide a
corrective to stifling conformity are differently, not less, structured. The language
used to talk about creativity in the creative industries inevitably develops its own
conformities, whether through colonization by management speak or the repetitive
demands of grant applications and audits. It is worth noting that in the
‗spontaneous‘ discussions I witnessed at the Guardian, workers often reached for
well-worn clichés and jargon – as I am aware I do in faculty committee meetings.
But if office life is considered dehumanizing, it is worth reflecting by way of
conclusion on what sort of humanizing alternative creativity offers. It is certainly
true that producing cultural objects and seeing them valorized by others is a
potentially important component of subjectification. The distinction with creative
production is that it is not only your ability to meet professional standards in
transforming events in the world into symbolic goods that is assessed, but your
personal integrity, likeability and, yes, creativity. As none of these are qualities
one would not want to have, it is understandable that journalists engaging in
blogging or social media practices will engage in the performance of self to their
audience. Since we do this in everyday life this may be experienced as a fairly
normal thing to do, but in everyday life the meaning we take out of social
encounters is governed by well-established (if unacknowledged) rules of
reciprocity.

In broadcasting to a largely undifferentiated audience the rules are less

clear, but there are several types of seemingly authentic self that have market
value and each requires the mastery of believable subjectification. None of which
is to suggest there is something disingenuous about journalists‘ presentation of
selves: they may self-consciously deploy disarming and flattering techniques from
the red-top or broadsheet playbooks, but the phenomenological literature predicts
that they will come to experience such communicative requirements as second
nature, instinctively resorting to self-deprecation, specific cultural references or
knowing offensiveness as appropriate to project a palatable identity to symbolic
43
consumers. The crowding out of conventional news values makes sense at a time
when personal authenticity and affect are increasingly central features of our
cultural life. But it bears emphasizing three final remarks. First, the rules by which
authenticity is collectively recognized are not well understood. Second, the role
that creativity plays in establishing authenticity is ambivalent: on the one hand,
the fact of expressing oneself creatively is prioritized over the content of what is
expressed; on the other, in a professional environment only a limited range of
creative practice is authorized. Third, there are stakes in creativity, yet those
starting from a relatively dominated position have little scope of using it to their
advantage in a journalistic context. The result is not dissimilar to Hegel‘s position
on the dilemma of enfranchisement: while everyone may be authorized to be
creative and be themselves, to do so only reveals their powerlessness.

2.4 Truth and Creativity

Journalism and creative writing are two opposite ends of the literary rope.
Their difference is grounded on the fact that journalism relies heavily on the
truth, facts, current events, and knowledge. Creative writing, on the other
hand, comprises much on art, fiction, and imagination. This is why these
two ends don‘t meet.

I am a writer. Although I haven‘t exactly labeled myself in any

specific genre yet, I consider myself a writer. Apart from publishing
my novellas on Wattpad and posting free-verse poetry on my blog, I
am also a student of Journalism in college and was once a campus
journalist for the university publication. As an aspiring novelist and a
student of Journalism, I have gained keen insights on the major
differences between writing journalistically and writing creatively.
Let‘s focus on journalism first. News articles, feature stories in
magazines, sports news, and many others found in broadsheets and
tabloids belong to journalism. In this side of writing, the writer must
44
gather credible sources to write informational truth behind current
issues. The issues should contain reliable facts that tell the masses
any ongoing circumstance or situations happening in the community,
country, and the world. It‘s typical news. It should be informative,
honest, and un-biased.
Now let‘s turn our heads to creative writing. Poems, novels, plays,
and short stories are all under this category. Creative writing allows
the writer to delve deeper into his imagination to bring out the story
that he desires to write about. In creative writing, the writer uses
words to paint pictures and create worlds, situations, and characters
that are fictitious but related to life. Creative writers usually
incorporate the art of literature into their works.
In the history of written works, journalism was first conceived during
the 1400s in Italy and Germany. That was the time when people
started chronicling daily events to disseminate the information in
their town. It was popularized throughout Europe in the 1600s when
the printing press was invented. By the dawn of the 20th century,
journalism spread worldwide and became a profession.
Looking back in the ages past, creative writing already existed way
before the term was coined. Our ancestors already practiced this
form of literature in the early days of human civilization. Even
before language was invented, creative writing already existed. The
proof stems on the carvings of ancient caves – paintings and symbols
that tell lores of life. Poetry existed long before the existence of
Christ. Tales of myth and legend were inscribed on primeval
papyrus. Folk tales, fairy tales, ballads, and epics — these are the
earliest forms of creative writing that serve inspiration to modern
novels, short stories, and plays.
45
 In the context of profession, journalists and creative writers are
barred from each other. Their writing styles are far from similar.
Based on my experience as a campus journalist, whenever I write a
news article, it has to be concrete, understandable, and
straightforward. My editor would always advise me to choose words
that are easy to comprehend by the readers. Moreover, ideas are
rarely used freely since a journalist has to rely solely on facts (except
for opinion articles). It‘s like writing something that isn‘t yours. If
you‘re a journalist, you are the medium of information. Not to
mention, the space on the newspaper or magazine is sometimes
limited, so you have to be cautious in using concise words.
Additionally, once you‘re a journalist, you need to update yourself
about any gist of the trending issues or the juicy news. How else can
you write informatively to your readers if you don‘t know what the
news is about?

In creative writing, I always find freedom in exploring my mind and

expressing my thoughts. Whenever I discover new ideas, I always find the
time to write them down. Eventually, they will evolve into a story. Creative
writing relies mostly on self-expression. It gives you the chance to write
your testimony of everything around you. It is limitless, entertaining, and
sometimes informational (some novels are based on facts but they are still
considered fiction since the writer has added his personal ideas into them,
thus taking part in the novel‘s creation). If you‘re a creative writer, you can
use a multitude of words as long as they all create the art that magnifies
your story. Furthermore, creative writing takes you to places you‘ve never
known existed, acquaints you to characters more interesting than anyone
you know in real life, and introduces you to devices more extraordinary
46
than the tools used in this world. The fiction you create comes from your
head. Isn‘t it amazing that creativity allows this?
Journalism and creative writing may be on the opposite ends of the literary
rope, but each of them is helpful and necessary. Journalism lets us see the
truth behind what we know. Creative writing reflects the truth in an art form
and makes us envision it in another perspective. As an aspiring novelist and
a student of journalism, I daresay that these two are vital in the field of
literature regardless of their evident differences.
2.5 Let Us Sum Up
2.6 Unit End Exercises
2.7 Points for Discussion
2.8 Answers to Check your Progress
2.9 Suggested Readings

1. http://www.journalismfestival.com/news/what-is-journalistic-
creativity/

2. http://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/4807/1/4807.pdf

3. Altheide, David (2002) Creating Fear: news and the construction of crisis,
Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter

4. Habermas, Jürgen ([1979] 1991) Communication and the Evolution of

Society, Cambridge: Polity.

5. Philo, Greg (2008) “Active Audiences and the Construction of Public

Knowledge”, Journalism Studies 9(4), pp. 535-44.

6. Schultz, Ida (2007) “The Journalistic Gut Feeling”, Journalism Practice

1(2), pp. 190-207.

47
 UNIT II
Lesson 3

Introduction to Radio Journalism

INTRODUCTION

Broadcast journalism is the field of news and journals which are "broadcast", that
is, published by electrical methods, instead of the older methods, such as printed
newspapers and posters. Broadcast methods include radio (via air, cable, and
Internet), television (via air, cable, and Internet), and, especially recently, the
World Wide Web. Such media disperse pictures (static and moving), visual text
and/or sounds.

48
Scripts for speaking to be broadcast tend to be written differently from text to be
read by the public. For instance, the former is generally less complex and more
conversational. Radio and television are designed to be seen and heard sooner and
more often than is a daily or weekly newspaper.

UNIT OBJECTIVES

This unit helps the student to

 Get introduced to Radio Journalism

 Understanding how to Plan and Develop Radio Stories
How to Write Radio News
 Know about the Audiences
UNIT STRUCTURE

3.1 Introduction to Radio Journalism

3.2 Planning and Developing Radio Stories

3.3 News Writing for Radio

3.4 Radio Audiences

3.5 Let us sum up

3.6 Unit end exercises

3.7 Points for discussion

3.8 Answers to check your progress

3.9 Suggested Readings

3.1 Introduction to Radio Journalism

Broadcast "stories" (articles) can be written in "packages", "readers", "voice-

overs" (VO) and "sound on tape" (SOT).

A "sack" is an edited set of video clips for a news story and is common on
television. It is typically narrated by a reporter. It is a story with audio, video,
49
graphics and video effects. The news anchor, or presenter, usually reads a "lead-
in" (introduction) before the package is aired and may conclude the story with
additional information, called a "tag".

A "reader" is an article read without accompanying video or sound. Sometimes an

"over the shoulder Digital on-screen graphic" is added.

A voice-over, or VO, is a video article narrated by the anchor.

Sound on tape, or SOT, is sound and/or video, usually recorded in the field. It is
usually an interview or "soundbite".

Radio was the first medium for broadcast journalism. Many of the first radio
stations were co-operative community radio ventures not making a profit.
Later, radio advertising to pay for programs was pioneered in radio. Later still,
television displaced radio and newspapers as the main news sources for most of
the public in industrialized countries.

Some of the programming on radio is locally produced; some is broadcast by a

radio network, by syndication etc. The "talent" (professional voices) talk to the
audience, including reading the news. People tune in to hear engaging radio
personalities, music, and information they want. In radio news, stories include
speech soundbites, the recorded sounds of events themselves, and the anchor or
host.

Some radio news might run for just four minutes, but contain a dozen to 15
stories. The concept takes into account when it comes to running time in construct
a radio news bulletin for example, with a running time of only five minutes in
news bulletin, there are not more than 12 to 15 stories selected in bulletin so that it
would not send the audience's head into a spin (Fleming 2009).

The radio industry has undergone a radical consolidation of ownership, with fewer
companies owning the thousands of stations. Large media conglomerates such
as Clear Channel Communications own most of the radio stations in the United
States. That has resulted in more "niche" formats and the sharing of resources

50
within clusters of stations, de-emphasizing local news and information. There has
been concern over whether that concentration of power serves the public. The
opposition says that the range of political views expressed and supported is greatly
narrowed and that local concerns are neglected, including local emergencies, for
which communication is critical. Automation has resulted in many stations
broadcasting for many hours a day with no one on the station premises.

3.2 Planning and Developing Radio Stories

Choose to Write

Everybody on the planet has the same amount of time every day. How we choose
to use that time makes some of us writers and others of us short-order cooks. If
you are a short-order cook who wants to write, however, you should probably take
a bit of time to think about how you use your time.

Sandra Felton, who has written more than a dozen books on how to get organized,
including Neat Mom, Messie Kids, and The New Messies Manual, points to
prioritizing and dedication as helpful organizational tools for writers. ―I think the
whole answer is focus,‖ she says. ―I think what focus means is you have to decide
what you want to do and lob off other stuff that you also want to do. Because you
want to write more.‖

Note that the choice is not between writing and doing something else that you
don‘t want to do. The choice is among a nearly overwhelming array of things that
seem appealing: checking in with your friends on Facebook, reading for pleasure,
or having people over for dinner. Then there‘s going to movies and the theater and
the opera and family get-togethers and on trips and watching way too much
television. Sometimes people would even rather do laundry and dishes than write.
(All writers have days like that, but if that‘s your constant M.O., you may wish to
rethink a literary vocation.) Faced with so many options, people tend to choose
too many and feel like they‘re short of time.

51
Some people actually can use stray snippets of free time to write, penning novels
on the back of envelopes while waiting in the checkout line at the grocery store. If
they have ten minutes between helping a child with homework and driving her to
flute lessons, they use those ten precious minutes to write or polish a small chunk
of prose. Such people are the envy of the rest of us. For the rest of us, writing for
publication requires larger pieces of time to research, ponder, draft, rewrite, and
polish.

Make Writing a Habit

Finding writing time requires a modicum of organization, but using it productively

demands dedication. The theme of virtually every article about getting organized
to write is straightforward: Just do it. Wanting to write and writing itself are
cousins, not identical twins. Psychological research indicates that writing every
day, whether your muse is whispering in your ear or has deserted you, produces
not only more writing but also more ideas for future writing.

The writing habit, like the exercise habit, is its own reward. When you don‘t do it,
you feel as if you‘re cheating yourself. Real writers don‘t sit around and wait for
inspiration to strike before they put fingers to keyboard; they put fingers to
keyboard and know that somewhere during those hours they will discover small
nuggets of inspiration. The fingers-to-keyboard, butt-in-the-chair pose is like
exercise for the writer. In a way, this is just like real runners who pound the
pavement or the treadmill in all weather, whether they are busy with work or on
vacation. Like physical exercise, writing is often not enjoyable while you‘re doing
it, though occasionally an endorphin or two will spark and the serotonin does its
thing. Most of the time, though, writing is just a matter of discipline, plain and
simple. Discipline comes more easily to some people than to others, but it is
certainly a skill that can be cultivated.

―The only thing I can tell you I do that‘s inviolate is when I have to write, I get up
in the morning and literally go straight to the typewriter,‖ says Stephanie Culp,
who has written books on organization and time management. ―Any little

52
distraction that takes me away from my desk kills it. When I‘m writing something
large, it takes about three fitful days, and then I‘m in the rhythm of it, and I write
it. I can still write a book in three weeks.‖

Here are some tips for getting into a writing habit.

 Start by setting aside an hour or a half hour every day to write.

 Or make a goal to write a set number of words each day.

 Try to write at the same time every day so it will feel peculiar to do
something else at that time.

 Write even if you feel uninspired, even if you don‘t feel ready to write. If
you want to be a writer, you must write.

Your Writing Plan

Often, getting started on a writing project is the hardest part. Most writing jobs,
however, can be viewed as a sequence of doable tasks that follow the same
general path from beginning to end. If you accomplish each task in order, you can
follow the plan to a finished piece. The more you write, the more you will be able
to anticipate how much time a particular project will take you.

The planning guidelines below help you break your book project into smaller
tasks. Start with individual chapters, and break down the chapters into component
parts. Schedule your writing project into your day at specific times, and, with a
little luck but more hard work, you‘ll finish your pieces on time.

If you‘re a person who resents and resists scheduling, remember that creating a
writing plan is intended to help you, not restrict you. The goal is to relieve some
stress, organize your life, and make your writing process more efficient. Meeting
even mini deadlines can lift your spirits and bolster your confidence. Simply
crossing items off to-do lists feels so good that the act in itself becomes a reward
and keeps you writing.

53
Take a look at the following guidelines, which will help you better organize your
writing time and, in turn, finish your projects.

 Set reasonable, measurable goals. Even if you‘re not writing to someone

else‘s external deadline, give yourself your own deadline and treat it
seriously. Because you understand the power of the written word, write
down a specific goal, with a due date: ―Finish chapter by [whatever date].‖
Some people even establish a punishment and/or reward if they meet or
don‘t meet their self-imposed deadlines: ―If I complete chapter five by
Friday, I can go to see a movie; if I don‘t finish on time, I will force
myself to scrub the toilets as penance.‖ Well, you don‘t have to clean the
toilets, but a little self-flagellation is probably good for you.

 Divide and conquer. View your writing project not as an overwhelming

monolith, but a compilation of many smaller items. The reason hard jobs
get bypassed is that they often seem too daunting if they‘re written as one
entry on your list of goals. For example, ―Write a book in the next year‖
can be overwhelming. The scope of the project is so big, and the deadline
so far away, that achieving the goal seems impossible. Instead, focus on
smaller tasks to do today, tomorrow, this week, and this month to help you
reach that goal. You‘re likelier to accomplish smaller tasks in the near
future than a vague goal in the abstract faraway. The tasks help you reach
that distant goal step-by-step.

 Create a plan of ordered tasks. Writing down tasks in the order in which
they should be done keeps you focused, as well as frees your mind to
concentrate on the important things—rather than wasting mental energy
trying to remember all the niggling details that must be done each day.
Break the task down into manageable steps.

 Select dates and stick to them. ―Someday, I‘m going to write a book.‖
How many times have we all thought this? Turn your lofty dream into an
actual accomplishment by adopting a workable schedule. For example,
54
 choose a date on your calendar for beginning your writing project. Make it
today. You‘ll be surprised by how much more quickly you‘ll work with
deadlines, especially if they come with positive and negative
consequences. For example, if you miss your deadline at a major
magazine, you may never be hired again and may in fact not see your
piece in print, which are both negative consequences. But if you make
your deadline, determine that you will give yourself a real day off, a
massage, an entire chocolate cake, or what have you. Enlist other people to
hold you accountable.

 Work backward. The most important step in planning the time for your
writing project is this one: On your calendar, mark the story‘s final due
date. (If you don‘t have a deadline from a publisher, give yourself a
reasonable one.) Then figure out when each of the specific items, in
reverse order, must be completed if you are to meet that deadline. Allow a
little wiggle room in your calendar for the delays that inevitably happen:
an interviewee gets the flu and has to postpone by a few days, the
computer crashes, etc.

3.3 News Writing for Radio

Most on-air personalities working at radio stations today have at least some
journalistic background. This is because more and more small radio stations need
people who can are capable of filling many roles. It is not surprising then that
many radio personalities at small stations announce, play music, work the console,
and write the day‘s news. Having all these skills is important, especially for
aspiring disc jockeys.

There are many types of news stories. Hard News is essentially the news of the
day. This is the type of news most frequently read on the front page of the
newspaper or at the top of the hour on a radio or television station. Soft News is
news that isn‘t time sensitive. This can include profiles about local individuals, or
even companies and organizations. Editorials are personal opinions about
55
particular topics. Editors and writers often take a side on a topic and write an
argument about why their side is right and the other side is wrong. Features are in
depth stories about a certain topic. Features can be about current events, but they
often are best at discussing a particular issue in detail.

Radio news features are essentially two to four minute pieces that tell a single
story. The story can be about a current event, or it could be an information piece
about an ever-green topic. The news pieces typically focus on a single topic, and
go in depth about it. They also typically contain interviews or sound bites from
relevant people.

News features typically contain the following elements:

1. A well-researched topic.

2. An introduction or a lead.

3. A main body with a clear narrative pattern.

4. Interviews and/or sound bites.

5. A conversational writing style.

6. The topic‘s character and personality.

7. A wrap up that completes the story.

The Topic:

Topics for radio news features vary greatly, but the vast majorities are specific
topics that are of interest to the intended audience, and that offer themselves to in
depth discussion. It‘s not necessary to choose a topic of interest to the feature‘s
writer, but it is important to do in depth research on the topic. Since a feature is
not an editorial, the facts must be complete and accurate, since the story‘s
integrity relies on them.

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Researching a topic in the 21st century can be very easy, but the researcher must
be diligent about selecting information from reputable sources. Features typically
use information from first hand research, as well as second hand research. This
means the writer interviews pertinent individuals and reads original documents, as
well as obtaining information already gathered by others.

The Introduction:

The beginning of any radio news feature should contain a brief introduction. This
introduction should tell the listener a bit about this story, but without giving too
much away yet. This is also called the news feature‘s hook. The writer‘s main
objective here is to hook in the listener and make her want to listen. Keep the
introduction short; no more than two sentences.

The Body:

The news feature‘s body should contain the story‘s main details. This is typically
referred to as the ―5 W‘s and 1 H‖. The who, what, when, where, why, and how.
The who tells the listener who the main characters of this story are. The what tells
the listener what this story is about. The when tells the listener when this
happened, or if it‘s a future event, when it will happen. The where tells the listener
where this event or story takes place. The why tells the listener why this is
happening. The how tells the listener how this happened, or how they can get
involved or attend. These details should be told in the first paragraph, or at most in
the first and second paragraph.

After the listener understands the main points about this story, the rest of the story
(another four to eight paragraphs) should contain further information about the
story. The further information should be more in depth details about the ―5 W‘s
and 1 H‖. For example, many radio news features tend to go into detail about the
who, what, and why.

Quotes:
Just like any news story published in a newspaper, radio news features should

57
have quotes from related individuals in order to support the story‘s premise. These
quotes are sometimes in the form of interviews with prominent individuals
directly involved in the story.

As an example, pretend a radio news feature producer is writing a story about a

city‘s public transit system. The producer could try interviewing the city‘s director
of public transit, or perhaps even the city‘s major. The producer would need to ask
relevant questions relating to the topic. This is important, since the interviews
need to help prove or disprove the news story‘s premise.

Interviews may be used in at least two different ways within a news feature. The
interview can occur directly after the announcer reveals the story‘s main points, or
it may occur at the very end after the announcer has finished his entire written
dialogue.
Another form of quote used in radio news features is the sound bite. A sound bite
is a short audio recording lasting no longer than 10 seconds, and revealing a major
point in support of the story‘s argument. Sound bites are similar to interviews in
that they are quotes taken from people directly involved in the story. Sound bites
differ from interviews in that the sound bites are typically taken from secondary
sources, such as other interviews or press conferences.

For example, suppose a radio news producer is writing a report on last night‘s
basketball game. The producer can‘t interview the basketball star who scored
thirty points, but he knows there was a press conference after the game where the
star made some comments. The producer could obtain footage from the press
conference and extract a sound bite from when the basketball star was
interviewed.

Writing Style:

Newspaper articles and radio news features are very different in regards to writing
style. Where a newspaper article might be written with a formal tone, the radio

58
news feature is often written with an informal tone. This is because newspaper
articles are meant to be read, not announced.

When writing the radio news feature, the most important style consideration is to
be conversational. The use of contractions in a radio news feature is not only
allowed, but actually recommended. Writers may also want to avoid long,
complicated words, as well as using parenthetical statements and other writing
techniques not ease to announce.

Radio is a broadcast medium in which the announcer speaks directly to each

listener. The announcer must have the ability to relate to the listener directly. This
is why conversational writing is so essential. When in doubt, the writer should try
reading the words out loud. If the sentences are too long or sound like a book, they
should consider rewriting.

Another important consideration when determining the story‘s writing style is to

take the intended audience and format into consideration. Writing a radio news
feature for an audience of young college students will be much different than
writing that same feature for an audience of retired adults. Understand the
station‘s demographics, and that demographic‘s needs before attempting to write
for them.

It‘s also crucial to understand the station‘s format before writing the feature. A
news feature written for a National Public Radio station, and one written for a 24-
hour news stations will be completely different. NPR news features tend to last an
average of four minutes, while a 24-hour news station‘s news features might last a
minute or less.

Depending on the format, the writing style may not be the only difference. On
some formats, some stories may be inappropriate or even obsolete. On other
stations, certain facts may not matter to the target audience.

As an example, when reporting a fire at a hospital, a 24-hour news stations might

briefly discuss information about casualties, but they may also discuss information

59
about how this will affect the listeners‘ commute. On a music station, the story
might be reduced to a one or two line synopsis. It‘s not that people listening to a
music station don‘t care about the hospital fire, it‘s just that news isn‘t as
important as music on a music station.

Tone and Character:

Radio news feature writers should pay attention to the type of story being reported
on, and set the tone appropriately. Different types of stories require different
approaches in tone. For example, when writing a story about clowns at the park,
the tone may be much happier, and the script may even include clown puns and
euphemisms. On the other hand, when writing about a plane crash, anything other
than a serious and delicate tone would be inappropriate and perhaps even
offensive.
The Wrap-up:

The end of every story should include some sort of wrap up in order to complete
the story. Wrap-ups usually include a quick recap of the story, going over the facts
one more time in order to summarize the story. Some stories even wrap-up the
story by looking to the future, perhaps by including a quote about a future action
or event, or with the announcer telling the audience of future plans.

3.4 Radio Audiences

You will need to identify your target audience, you will have a better chance to
get the type of listener that really matters for your station. You may be thinking,
hey listeners are listeners, yes, but, if you shape you strategy to attract the type of
listeners your station will appeal to then listeners who are looking a radio station
like yours will find you faster.

Radio listeners are divided by Geographic area, Race, music, gender, ages, interest
and lifestyle; At least these are the most common criteria used by the companies
who make Radio Ratings and Media Research. The same way you have to identify

60
who is going to be your audience and focus on that group. Make a list of what
defines you station, for example:

1. Type of music

2. Ages of your potential listeners

3. Geographic Area (if you have a specific area)

4. Interest of your potential listeners

5. Message or vision of your station

Communication with Listeners:

Having a conversation with someone is easier than having a monologue. When

you keep in communication with your listeners it makes you feel like you are
having a conversation with someone and you are not alone in one closed room.
You will project more natural behavior and you will sound better. Listeners can
tell when you are nervous, sad, happy, mad etc.; only by your voice.

Maintaining constant communication with your listeners is the best way to please
your audience. You will receive direct feedback knowing if the job you are doing
is good. Two or more heads thinking about how to improve something is better
than just one, listeners are very creative and always will shoot your with ideas.
May be not all the ideas will be great but I am sure you will receive a good one
every now and then. Also do not discards bad ideas, listen and see if you can turn
it into something good. Sometimes people don‘t know how to express or explain
an idea, but indeed after it is polished it could be a great idea.

Social media is the sensation of the moment; you can post your comments, news,
ask for opinions and in a few seconds get a reaction. Do not feel bad if no one is
commenting back, they see it and you are present on your followers mind.
Facebook and Twitter are the most popular but are not the only way to stay in
communication with your listeners. You can consider an Old Fashioned method
like emails. Email subscriptions allow your listener to subscribe and keep them
informed about upcoming shows events etc. You will be surprised how email
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marketing may grow a business; in the same way it will help to grow your
listeners. You also can use the following options:

1. Skype

2. Phone

3. Google Voice

4. Text Messages

5. Chat Room

These are just a few options to keep in communication with your listeners you will
have to choose which works better for you.

1. Tell the truth.

2. Make it matter.

3. Never be boring.

3.5 Let us sum up

3.6 Unit end exercises

3.7 Points for discussion

3.8 Answers to check your progress

3.9 Suggested Readings

1. DeFleur, Melvin (2002). Understanding Mass Communication. New York:

Houghton Mifflin Company

2. Brooks, Brian (2004). Telling the Story: The Convergence of Print,

Broadcast and Online Media. Boston: Bedford, St. Martin's Press.

3. http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules/how-to-
develop-a-writing-plan

4. http://www.understandmedia.com/topics/media-production/68-writing-
radio-news
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 5. http://www.shoutcheap.com/define-your-target-audience/

6. http://www.shoutcheap.com/communication-with-listeners/

7. http://www.airplaycafe.com/radio-airplay-explained.html

UNIT II
Lesson 4

Elements of Radio Journalism

INTRODUCTION

Do you remember the programmes you have heard on radio. Try and recall some
of them. You may have heard the names of radio stations, from where the
programmes are broadcast. Many of you would remember Vividh Bharati, AIR
FM Gold or some private commercial station. You may also remember the time

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being mentioned and what programme you are going to listen to. These are called
announcements. Announcements have been traditionally made by people who are
known as announcers. The commercial radio channels may call them Radio
Jockeys (RJs) or anchorpersons. Before you learn about the different radio
formats, you must know the ingredients of a radio format.

UNIT OBJECTIVES

This unit helps the student to

 know about the types of radio formats

 How to execute the programmes as a Radio Jockey.
UNIT STRUCTURE

4.1 Types of Radio Formats

4.2 Sound Clips

4.3 Sound Bites

4.4 Language and Grammer

4.5 Audio Cur

4.6 Cue Layout

4.7 Let us sum up

4.8 Unit end exercises

4.9 Points for discussion

4.10 Answers to check your progress

4.11 Suggested Readings

4.1 Types of Radio Formats

As you know most of what is spoken on radio is written down. As you have
already learnt that what is written for radio is heard and is referred to as ‗spoken

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word‘ as against the ‗written word‘. But the spoken words on radio is written
down or what is generally called ‗scripted‘. A Radio format can be split into three
parts: They are:-

(a) Spoken Word or Human Voice

(b) Music

(c) Sound Effects

All radio formats have the above three ingredients. So let us first classify the
spoken word format. SPOKEN WORD

1. Announcements : These are specifically written clear messages to inform. They

can be of different types. For example station/programme identification. These
mention the station you are tuned into, the frequency, the time and the
programme/song you are going to listen to. As mentioned already you find in
today‘s commercial radio channels, these announcements have become informal
and resemble ordinary conversation. There can be more than one presenter in
some programmes like magazines.

2. Radio talk : The radio talk probably is the oldest format on radio. There has
been a tradition in India and Britain to invite experts or prominent persons to
speak for 10 or 15 minutes on a specific topic. These talks have to go through a
process of being changed into radio‘s spoken word style. Over the years, these
long radio talks have become unpopular. Instead, today, shorter duration talks are
broadcast. Of course, you can listen to these talks only on public service
broadcasting stations.

3. Radio interviews: Have you ever interviewed anyone? Probably yes. In the
media, be it the newspaper, magazine, radio or television, journalists use this
technique of asking questions to get information. There can be different types of
interviews in terms of their duration, content and purpose. Firstly, there are full
fledged interview programmes. The duration of these may vary from 10 minutes
to 30 minutes or even 60 minutes depending up on the topic, and the person being

65
interviewed. Most of such interviews are personality based. You might have heard
of long interviews with well known people in the field of public life, literature,
science, sports, films etc. Secondly, there are interviews which are used in various
radio programmes like documentaries. Here the interviews are short, questions
specific and not many. The purpose is to get a very brief, to the point answer.
Thirdly there are a lot of interviews or interview based programmes in news and
current affairs programmes. Have you heard such interviews on radio? With
phone-in-programmes becoming popular, you might have heard live interviews
with listeners. These interviews have been made interactive. There is another type
of interview based programme. Here generally just one or two questions are put
across to ordinary people or people with knowledge on some current topic to
measure public opinion. For example when the general budget or the railway
budget is presented in the parliament, people representing radio go out and ask the
general public about their opinion. Their names and identity may not be asked.
Such programmes are called ‗vox pop‘ which is a Latin phrase meaning‗ voice of
people‘. You have to be very inquisitive and hard working to be a radio
interviewer with good general awareness and communication skills.

4. Radio discussions :- When you have a problem in your family or with your
friends, don‘t you say ―let us discuss?‖ Yes we do. Through a discussion we can
find out a solution to problems. In any discussion there are more than 2 or 3
people and then ideas can be pooled to come to some conclusion. In radio, this
technique is used to let people have different points of view on matters of public
concern. Radio discussions are produced when there are social or economic issues
which may be controversial. So when different experts meet and discuss such
issues, people understand various points of view. Generally, these discussions on
radio are of longer duration-say 15 to 30 minutes. Two or three people who are
known for their views and a well informed senior person or journalist who acts as
a moderator take part and discuss a particular topic for about 30 minutes. The
moderator conducts the discussion, introduces the topic and the participants and
ensures that every one gets enough time to speak and all issues are discussed.
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5. Radio documentaries/features: If you see a film in a movie hall, it is generally a
feature film, which is story based and not real. But there are also documentary
films which are based on real people and issues. A lot of programmes you see on
television are educational and public service documentaries. Radio also has this
format. Unlike documentary films, radio documentaries have only sound – i.e. the
human voice, music and sound effects. So a radio documentary is a programme
based on real sounds and real people and their views and experiences. Radio
documentaries are based on facts presented in an attractive manner or
dramatically. Radio documentaries are radio‘s own creative format. The producer
of a documentary needs to be very creative to use human voice, script, music and
sound effects very effectively. Radio documentaries are also called radio features.

6. Radio drama: A Radio drama or a radio play is like any other play staged in a
theatre or a hall. The only difference is that while a stage play has actors, stage,
sets, curtains, properties movement and live action, a radio play has only 3
components. They are the human voice, music and sound effects. Radio of course
uses its greatest strength for producing radio plays and that is the power of
imagination and suggestivity. For example, if you want to have a scene in a radio
play of a north Indian marriage, you don‘t have all physical arrangements made.
All that you have to do is to use a bright tune on the shehnai and excited voices of
people to create in a listeners‘ imagination, a wedding scene. The voice of the
actors, music and sound effects can create any situation in a radio play.

7. Running commentaries : If you can‘t go to see a football or cricket match in a

stadium, you may watch it on television. But for that you have to be at home or at
some place where there is a television. But if you are travelling or outside, then
you may listen to radio for a running commentary of the match. A commentator
would give you all the details of the match such as the number of players, the
score, position of the players in the field etc. So by listening to the running
commentary, you get a feeling of being in the stadium and watching the match.
The commentator needs good communication skills, a good voice and knowledge
about what is going on. Running commentaries on radio can be on various sports
67
events or on ceremonial occasions like the Republic Day Parade or events like
festivals, melas, rath yatras, swearing in ceremony of ministers, last journey
(funeral procession) of national leaders etc. Today radio running commentaries
especially of cricket and other sports can be heard on your mobile phones.

8. Magazine programmes : You are familiar with magazines which are a form of
print media. They are published weekly, bi-weekly, fortnightly or monthly. There
are general magazines and magazines for specific readers. These magazines could
be for children, women, youth or on health, sports, science or music. If you open
any one of these magazines, you will find articles, reviews, features, photo
features etc. Radio also has magazine programmes like those in the print media. A
radio magazine is broadcast at a particular time on a particular day of a week or a
month. That means it has periodicity. Similarly it has plenty of variety in contents.
Some or many formats of radio are included in a radio magazine. These may be
talks, discussions, interviews, reviews, music etc. Likewise, the duration of each
programme or item in a magazine programme also vary. Another characteristic of
a radio magazine is that it has a signature tune. A signature tune is an attractive
piece of music which is specific to a programme. It can be like the masthead (title)
of a magazine. A magazine programme also has a name and one or two presenters
or anchor persons who link the whole programme. In the beginning, the titles of
the day‘s programme will be given by the presenters after the signature tune. They
also give continuity and link the whole magazine.

Magazine programmes are generally broadcast for a special or specific audience.

As the name suggests, a specific audience refers to listeners with specific needs as
mentioned in the beginning.

8. NEWS: Among all the spoken word formats on radio, news is the most
popular. News bulletins and news programmes are broadcast every hour
by radio stations. In India, only All India Radio is allowed to broadcast
news. Duration of news bulletins vary from 5 minute to 30 minutes. The

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 longer news bulletins have interviews, features, reviews and comments
from experts.

MUSIC :

When we say radio, the first thing that comes to our mind is music. So music
is the main stay in radio. There is no radio without music. Music is used in
different ways on radio. There are programmes of music and music is also
used in different programmes. These include signature tunes, music used as
effects in radio plays and features. India has a great heritage of music and
radio in India reflects that. Let us understand the different types of music.
Classical Music There are 3 types of classical music in India. They are:- 
Hindustani classical  Carnatic classical  Western classical There are also
vocal and instrumental music forms. There are also light classical music forms
like, Thumri and Dadra. Insturmental music forms include string (sitar, sarod
etc.) wind (like flutes, shehnai) and percussion (drum) instruments.You might
have heard such music on radio. You may know of a large variety of
devotional and folk music in your area and across the country. Which are
broadcast on radio. But which is the most popular form of music? You would
most probably say ‗film music.‘ While there are film songs in different
languages, the one with a national appeal and popularity is Hindi film songs.
On most radio stations, be it public service or commercial, Hindi films songs
are heard every where. Light western and pop music are also popular among
some groups of listeners and there is a large section of young people listening
to western pop music.

SOUND EFFECTS

Let us see how sound can be used in radio formats.  Sound can play a major role
in evoking interest.  Sound can be used for comic effects to evoke laughter 
Sound can be used to create certain moods or enhance them. INFORMATION
TECHNOLOGY BASED FORMATS India has taken giant leaps in the field of
information technology and radio as a medium, has taken a lead in applying
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information technology in its broadcasts. Let us discuss some of these formats: 1.
Phone in programme – In this age of technological development, phone-in is the
most important format. This is called interactive programming where the listener
and the presenter talk to each other. Their talk goes on air instantly. The listener
has the satisfaction that his voice is being listened to and replied immediately.
Other listeners also listen to him. Such presentations need advance publicity so
that the listeners get ready to air their grievances/queries or requests. They dial up
the announced telephone number at a stipulated time and get their problems
discussed with experts in the studio. Initially this format was introduced for
playing the listeners‘ request based film songs. Now it is being used for health
related programmes, rural broadcasts, complaints against the government
administrative machinery etc.

Radio bridge : Radio bridge means connecting different stations throughout the
length and breadth of the country. In this technique, for example, an expert sitting
at Chennai can interact with the common man in the studio in Delhi. This format
was first used by All India Radio during elections.

Radio on internet : Radio on internet is a growing phenomenon with thousands

of radio stations operating through computer modems. It is altogether a new
format that removes the restrictions of frequency or license. It is relatively cheap
to set up. It has certain advantages as well as disadvantages. Now all the national
and international radio stations like BBC, Voice of America, and All India Radio
are available on internet. It is now possible to listen to the programmes from a
radio station while working on the computer.

All India Radio started its services on internet on 1st May 1998. With this, it was
possible to extend the coverage of programmes to all parts of the world including
USA and Canada.

4.2 Sound Clips

Sound Clips or Sound effects in a radio programme give meaning and sense of
location. It adds realism to a programme and helps a listener to use imagination.
70
Think of a crowded market or temple. If you are creating that scene in a radio
programme, you do not have to go to a crowded market or temple to record. Well,
you can record those sounds and use them. But in most cases, you use sound
effects which are already recorded. Sound effects can be used in two ways:

(a) spot effects or effects that are created as we speak and

(b) recorded sound effects. If you are recording a radio programme in which
someone knocks at the door, you can make a knocking sound either on a door or a
wooden partition. Or you want to show that someone is pouring water from a
bottle into a glass; here again you can use the actual sounds produced on the spot.
But if you want a lion roaring or a dog barking, you probably cannot bring a lion
or a dog to the studios! Here we use recorded sounds which are kept on tapes or
discs. Almost all sounds are available on CDs which you can try and use. There
are also certain types of computer software available for this. You can also create
sound effects. You can use two coconut shells to produce the sound effects of the
sounds of horses‘ hooves. Take a piece of cellophine paper or aluminum wrapper
and crush them in front of a microphone. Record the sound and hear. It will sound
as if fire is raging. You can think and create many such sound effects. However,
there is a word of caution. If you record an actual door opening, you many not get
the real feeling of a door opening when you record it. What matters is what it
sounds like and not what it is.

4.3 Sound Bites

A sound bite is a short clip of speech or music extracted from a longer piece of
audio, often used to promote or exemplify the full length piece. In the context
of journalism, a sound bite is characterized by a short phrase or sentence that
captures the essence of what the speaker was trying to say, and is used to
summarize information and entice the reader or viewer. The term was coined by
the U.S. media in the 1970s. Since then, politicians have increasingly employed
sound bites to summarize their positions.

71
Due to its brevity, the sound bite often overshadows the broader context in which
it was spoken, and can be misleading or inaccurate. The insertion of sound bites
into news broadcasts or documentaries is open to manipulation, leading to conflict
over journalistic.

In journalism, sound bites are used to summarize the position of the speaker, as
well as to increase the interest of the reader or viewer in the piece. In
both print and broadcast journalism, sound bites are conventionally juxtaposed
and interspersed with commentary from the journalist to create a news story. A
balanced news report is expected to contain sound bites representing both sides of
the debate. This technique, however, can lead to biased reporting when a sound
bite is selected for sensationalism, or is used to promote the point of view of one
individual or group over another.

In his book The Sound Bite Society, Jeffrey Scheuer argues that the sound bite
was the product of television's increased power over all forms of communication,
and that the resulting trend toward short, catchy snippets of information had a
significant negative impact on American political discourse. In contrast, Peggy
Noonan feels that sound bites have acquired a negative connotation but are not
inherently negative, and that what we now think of as great historical sound
bites—such as "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself", the most famous
phrase in Franklin D. Roosevelt's first Inaugural Address—were examples of
eloquent speakers unselfconsciously and "simply trying in words to capture the
essence of the thought they wished to communicate."

The increased use of sound bites in news media has been criticized, and has led to
discussions on journalistic and media ethics.[8] According to the Code of
Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists, journalists should "make certain
that headlines, news teases and promotional material, photos, video, audio,
graphics, sound bites and quotations do not misrepresent. They should not
oversimplify or highlight incidents out of context."

72
Despite this criticism, sound bites are widely employed by businesses, trade
groups, labor unions and politicians. Senator Jim DeMint readily admitted this
when he said, "There‘s a reason why most politicians talk in sanitized sound bites:
Once you get out of that, you‘re opening yourself up to get attacked."

4.4 Language and Grammar

When we refer to the language used in radio, we are not referring to any particular
language like English or Hindi but the style of any language used in radio. Here in
radio, you find that it is different from the language used in newspapers and
magazines or what is referred to as print media. In the print media, everything is
written down or printed and they exist in the pages of the newspaper or magazine.
You can keep them for as long as you want. You can take your own time to read
them. If you do not understand them in one reading, you can read them again and
understand. If you do not know the meaning of any word, you can refer to a
dictionary to understand the meaning. Now think of radio. You hear programmes
as they are broadcast. You hear them only once. Of course, you may say that you
can record them and listen to them. Record it and listen to it later. Well, that
generally does not happen. In our day to day conversations, we speak, someone
else listens, or someone speaks and we listen. It is a momentary experience. You
may or may not remember what you said or heard. Similarly, what you hear on
radio is heard only once and then forgotten in a majority of cases. Do you
remember all that you had spoken yesterday? Do you remember all that you heard
from others yesterday? Of course, the answer is a big ‗no‘. In our day to day
conversation, we do not use the words and expressions found in a newspaper
editorial or a feature article. Have you wondered why this happens? It is because
those words and expressions are neither friendly nor easy to understand. Now
compare that with your daily conversation. You use simple words, sentences and
familiar expressions. You also take into account the person to whom you are
speaking. Your gestures and movements add to what you speak. Now let us go
back to your favorite announcer. You don‘t see the person. But yet you feel that
the person is speaking to you. You may not say anything but you may feel that
73
there is some familiarity with that person. Interestingly, in most cases, what you
hear on radio is written down or scripted. It is spoken and is heard only once.

From what you have read so far, we can come to certain conclusions.

 First of all, when it comes to radio, you listen to a person who is not seen.

 The person speaks from a script written down earlier.

 You feel that the person is talking to you.

 The person sounds friendly and you have no problem in understanding what is
being said.

 You can call the language or the words used in a radio script as the spoken word
as against the written word or the printed word used in the print media.

 Unlike the printed word which is written for the eye, the spoken word is written
for the ear. Let us list out the main characteristics of the spoken word.

i) Though it is written, it is spoken

ii) It is written for the ear not the eye.

iii) It is heard only once. The listener normally does not get a second chance
to listen.

iv) It is conversational and should therefore sound like one and have the
following qualities :

a) It should be simply worded without any difficult or unfamiliar

words.

b) The sentences should be short and simple and not complex.

c) There should be only one idea in a sentence and not many ideas.

d) Though there are thousands of listeners, what is written should be

meant for just one listener? At the listening end, there are generally

74
 only one or two persons and not a crowd. So it should be speaking to
one person.

e) The words chosen should denote the exact meaning and not be
vague or abstract.

f) The words should make pictures in the minds of the listeners.

g) Abbreviations or short forms should be avoided. If an abbreviation

is used, then its full form should be given.

h) If the script consists of big numbers it can be rounded off to the

nearest whole number.

i) While referring to more than one person, avoid using ‗he‘ or ‗she‘. It
can confuse the listeners.

4.5 Audio Cut

Digital Car Machines have the standard record features built into the unit,
including some editing capability so as to collapse head and tails of audio
segments to fit tight formatting; however, many stations create promos and
commercials in a production studio as opposed to the air studio, so it is possible to
use a File Transfer Protocol program to load files into the machine. Often the cart
machine is wired to the audio board so that the board operator only needs to push
the on button on the console to trigger playback of the car. In some cases, such as
when a computer is programmed to act like a cart machine, the operator starts the
segment by using a touch screen, hitting a keyboard key or clicking a mouse. It
will play a audio such as station ID or programme Id is called Audio Cut.

4.6 Cue Layout

Cue Sheets mean that each composer can get his/her "performance royalties" from
money already paid by the broadcasting company for each minute of music they
broadcast. A broadcaster always pays a fee for every second of music they use in
their broadcasts. It doesn't matter where that music was obtained, whether the

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music is royalty free music or not, or whether cue sheets are filled in or not - there
are no exceptions, they still pay a fee. If cue sheets are filled in and filed correctly,
the composer (eventually) gets his share of this - if cue sheets are not properly
filled in, the fees are the same, but the money never reaches the composer. Instead
the money goes into a 'pool' which is largely divided up amongst the most-
performed artists such as the Beatles, Eminem, Sting etc. No money is saved by
not filling in cue sheets. With the increase in independent producers and
satellite/cable operations, the filing of accurate cue sheets has become even more
crucial to tracking the use of music in film and television productions. These
newcomers to the industry are sometimes unfamiliar with, or unaware of, the legal
and professional responsibilities involved in using the music of composers and
publishers whose rights are represented by a Performing Rights Society

Keeping track of all the music used in films and on television shows is a
formidable task, made feasible only by the use of cue sheets. Cue sheets are the
primary means by which performing rights organizations track the use of music in
films and TV. Without cue sheets, it would be nearly impossible for composers
and publishers to be compensated for their work.

An accurately filled out cue sheet is a log of all the music used in a production.
This information includes:

 Series/Film Title

 Series/Film Title AKA

 Episode Title

 Episode Title AKA

 Episode Number

 Air Date

 Show Length

 Music Length
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  Production Company Information

 Song/Cue Title

 Composer

 Publisher

 Performing rights society

 Timing

 Usage

If there is more than one composer for an individual piece of music, or if the
writer and publisher split their royalties on other than a 50/50 basis, this must also
be indicated on the cue sheet.

4.7 Qualities of Radio Jockeying and Producer:

A Radio Jockey (or RJ) is a person who hosts a radio talk show where the RJ
selects the music to be played, or topic of discussion, by interacting with the
audience; the interaction is often via telephone, but may also be online, or via
email. This term is primarily used by Indians who coined it from the Western Disc
Jockey. The term derives fromdisc jockey, denoting a person who plays music in
discotheques and Westernized radio stations. Increasingly, radio jockeys are
expected to supplement their on-air personality by posting information online,
such as on a blog. This may be either to generate additional revenue, or to connect
with listeners

The radio jockey dates back to 1909 when Ray Newby of California made his
debut for Herrold College of Engineering and Wireless. The debut would be a
significant moment in media because by 1910 there would be radio jockey's across
the United States. Types of radio jockeys Radio jockeys may start working for
fixed salaries, but their pay increases in proportion to their experience. Many go
on to become voice-over artists, speaking in commercials or animated shows.
FM/AM radio jockeys FM/AM radio jockeys are public radio station jockey's
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whose job is to play music, talk, or both. These jockeys will play music that is
labeled as their stations genre of music or talk a certain subject they are labeled to
discuss. While on the air the jockey will either play the popular current music,
discuss the latest news involving their music or talking subject and interview the
popular acts in their industry. Examples  Kidd Kraddick  Big Boy (radio host)
Talk radio jockeys Talk radio jockeys are jockeys that will only talk for their
entire time on the air. Each jockey will always discuss a different social and
political issues but from a different point of view. Depending on the station, the
jockey will either be a conservative or liberal host with the intention of reaching
an audience that shares the same views. Examples  Rush Limbaugh  Brian
Kilmeade  Brian Lehrer  John Gibson Sports talk radio jockeys "Sports talk"
radio jockeys discuss sports news, the jockey is either a former athlete, sports
writer, or t.v. anchor. The jockey has the responsibility of discussing the latest
sports news and interacting with their listeners by phone, email, or social media in
order to keep the show entertaining. Examples  Dan Patrick  Tony Kornheiser
Satellite radio jockeys Satellite radio jockeys have the same responsibilities as a
jockey that works for public radio. The only difference is these jockey's are not
regulated by the FCC and are allowed to play explicit music and talk about any
subject regardless of the sensitivity of the issue. Examples  Howard Stern

Due to a jockey's vocal training, there is often opportunity for a jockey to expand
their career. Over time a jockey could be paid to do voice overs for commercials,
television shows, and movies.

You may have observed that anybody can be a cook, but only the food prepared
by some turnout to be very tasty. Similarly all people who produce radio
programmes may not come out with good and interesting programmes. You need
certain qualities or skills to be a radio producer. The qualities you need include the
following:-

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(a) ability to see and hear what is happening around you. This would mean a keen
desire to know more about things. We may call this inquisitiveness. Unless a
person is inquisitive, he or she cannot be a good radio producer.

This is because you need ideas to produce interesting programmes. How do you
get ideas? Let us think. Firstly, we need to observe things to get ideas. Remember
the story of Isaac Newton who observed an apple falling? This observation led
him to wonder why the apple fell down from the tree and why it did not go up.
The result was Newton‘s gravitational theory. Let‘s take another example. James
Watson was boiling water in a kettle. When the steam gushed out with force, he
realized that force or power could be used. The result of this paved the way for the
invention of the steam engine. So you can get ideas by:

(i) observing things as discussed above.

(ii) drawing from experiences : We have good and bad

experiences in life. People who have written stories,
novels, poems and plays draw their ideas mostly from
their experiences. The great poet Kalidasa saw the dying
bird and its pair which was sad and took to writing
poems. The English poet Wordsworth observed flowers
(daffodils) dancing in the air and wrote one of the best
pieces of poetry. So from our own experiences or going
through the experiences of others, we get ideas.

(iii) You have just read about the experiences of others. How do
you come to know about them. Well, you need to talk to
others to find out and understand their experiences.

(b) Ability to conceptualize ideas: You may get any number of ideas, but you
need to turn them into concepts and then in to radio scripts.

(c) Creativity: What is creativity ? Are you creative? This is a quality which is
found in almost everyone. But you need to be creative in putting together an

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 idea in a manner which can attract people .Creativity would mean, doing
something new or different. The same idea can be made into a radio
programme differently by different people. If everyone does it in the same
way, they will all be the same and not interesting.

(d) A good user of words. You need the ability to use the right word at the
right time in the right manner. Radio programmes depend on a good script and
that depends on your ability to write well. For this you need a very good
knowledge or stock of words or a good vocabulary. You have to be using
words in the appropriate manner. We shall deal with this aspect later.

4.8 Let us sum up

4.9 Unit end exercises

4.10 Points for discussion

4.11 Answers to check your progress

4.12 Suggested Readings

1. DeFleur, Melvin (2002). Understanding Mass Communication. New

York: Houghton Mifflin Company

2. Brooks, Brian (2004). Telling the Story: The Convergence of Print,

Broadcast and Online Media. Boston: Bedford, St. Martin's Press.

3. http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/asset/document/ElevenLes
sons_Design_Council%20(2).pdf

4. https://help.pond5.com/hc/en-us/articles/202722493-What-Are-PRO-
Clips-Cue-Sheets-

5. http://www.medienhilfe.ch/fileadmin/downloads/balkanradio/RadioEditing
.pdf

6. http://www.royalty-free.tv/rftv/cuesheets.htm

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 UNIT - 3

Lesson 5
Television Scripting

INTRODUCTION

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It's important to remember that there is no hard and fast standardization. Each
show has its own idiosyncrasies. There are some things, however, that remain
consistent in all teleplays whether drama or sitcom. The goal here is to give you
an idea of what those are.

If you want to write for television, you must do your homework. Learn about the
show you wish to write a spec for. Study its style, find out the common script
length, and most of all, read as many scripts as you can get your hands on. Dissect
them, try to figure out if anything is wrong with them and, if you find something,
figure out how to fix it. In other words, know the show inside and out, be
enthusiastic about it, believe in it and be a fan.

Format and story structure are precise when it comes to episodic television. A 1/2
hour story runs about 22 minutes; an hour show, about 45 minutes with
commercials dispersed for the remaining time. The breaks must be in the right
spot for the advertisers to put up their wares. They also need to be compelling
enough to bring your viewer back to the program.

Television is like a factory. It survives on an endless stream of product; sometimes

so similar in nature that it's hard to tell the shows apart. With the increase of cable,
the need has increased an awful lot in the last 15 years.

Network TV is no longer king. An increasing number of channels have gone into

production with their own original programming. Examples are HBO, Showtime,
TNT, Sci Fi, and USA. This is great because it has expanded the marketplace in
which writers can circulate.

The most important thing to remember here is that drama is conflict. Without it -
no drama. You've got to take your characters to hell before you give them a happy
ending or it won't mean anything. Conflict comes from inside the characters and
an external influence. There are three types: Man vs. Himself, Man vs. Man, Man
vs. Nature.

UNIT OBJECTIVES

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This lesson will help you to

 Understanding the nature and characteristics of Television

 Narration Techniques for Television
 Different formats in television writing
UNIT STRUCTURE

5.1 Nature and Characteristics of Television as Medium

5.2 Television Script Formats
5.3 Television Narrative
5.4 Documentary Scripting for Television
5.5 Let us sum up
5.6 Unit End Exercises
5.7 Points for Discussion
5.8 Answers to Check your Progress
5.9 Suggested Readings

5.1 Nature and Characteristics of Television as Medium

AUDIO VISUAL MEDIUM: While radio has sound, television content includes
both sound and visuals. This audio visual character of television makes it a magic
medium which allows us to watch the world from our drawing rooms. This
powerful visual nature helps television to create vivid impressions in our minds
which in turn leads to emotional involvement. The audio visual quality also makes
television images more memorable.

DOMESTIC MEDIUM: To watch television, we need not leave your drawing

room. No need of going to the movie theater or buying tickets. We can watch
television in the comfort of our home with our family. This is why television is
generally regarded as a domestic medium. It provides entertainment and
information right inside our homes and has become an integral part of our
everyday lives. It can actually pattern our daily activities. Even our family makes
it a point to watch their favorite serial at a particular time and adjust dinner
timings accordingly. This domestic nature of television influences the content
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also. We have noticed that a newspaper report has an impersonal tone, whereas
the television anchor addresses us directly. The domestic nature of television
makes it an intimate medium. This makes the viewers experience a sense of
closeness to the Television.

LIVE MEDIUM.: The important characteristic of television is that it is capable of

being a live medium. This is because the live nature of television allows it to
transmit visuals and information almost instantly. The visuals of an earthquake in
Indonesia can reach our television set in almost no time. This capacity of the
medium makes it ideal for transmitting live visuals of news and sports events. If
we are watching a cricket match in a television channel, we can almost instantly
see the wicket hit by our favourite player. On the Television allows you to witness
events which happen thousands of miles away?

MASS MEDIUM:All of us know that there are a large number of people who
cannot read or write. Such people may not be able to read a newspaper, but they
can watch television. Anyone with a television receiver can access the information
shown on television. This makes it an ideal medium to transmit messages to a
large audience. In a country like ours, with a huge illiterate population, this
characteristic of television Makes it an ideal instrument for transmitting social
messages. Television also has a very wide output, range and reach. It is truly a
mass medium.

A TRANSITORY MEDIUM.: Television programmes are not easy to be recorded

by viewers. It may be practically impossible to record every programme which
appears on your television. Therefore, television is generally identified as a
transitory medium.

EXPENSIVE MEDIUM: There is need to large amount of machinery and

expertise needed to run a television station. We can write articles and stories and
draw our own pictures. All we need will be paper, pen, drawing instruments and
time. However, a television programme can never be made this. However, a
television programme can never be made this easily. It requires lots of money,

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machinery and experienced people. Broadcast media in general and television in
particular involves complex technology and organization. We will need crores of
rupees to start a television station.

5.2 Television Script Formats

One-Hour Drama

In addition to the above, start your scenes late and get out early. They must
advance the plot and develop the character. End them on a dramatic highpoint and
make sure the conflict is well developed. Most of all, show don't tell.

Types:

There are a few different kinds.

The procedural, which consists of shows such as the Law and Order franchise and
the CSI franchise,

Next are the shows that deal with lawyers and politics. These are shows like The
West Wing, The Practice, etc.

Police dramas, such as, The District and NYPD Blue.

Hero-types which consist of shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel,
and Smallville.

Fantasy/Sci-Fi - examples here are Enterprise, Twilight Zone, Dead Zone, etc.

Cable - Shows such as Queer as Folk, The Sopranos, and Six Feet Under are
written without the act breaks seen in commercial television.

Format

One-hour shows are formatted like features, except for the act breaks. You begin
and end them as you would a sitcom, however there are no scene breaks. Each
page equals about a minute of screen time and script lengths usually fall between
53-60 pages. There are some, however, such as West Wing, which can be as long
as 66 pages. Again, you must know your show. The best advice is to read the
teleplays and copy the format precisely,
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The Cover Page should indicate the name of the show, episode title, and the
writer's name.

The Title Page should contain show name, episode title, writer's name and contact
information.

Typically, a one-hour drama consists of a teaser and 4 acts. There are some, like
Enterprise, that have a teaser and 5 acts and still others that are only 4 acts, like
Alias. Again, a good reason to study scripts for the show you wish to write for.

Acts are designated numerically, usually written out and centered at the top of the
page. Placing "End Act One" or "End Act 1" creates act breaks. This is centered
and double-spaced beneath the last piece of narrative or dialogue. FADE or CUT
may be used to end a scene, but it isn't necessary. A simple scene slug line will do
nicely instead. Begin each new act of a fresh page.

The act break is where the script reaches a strong dramatic moment. That's where
the station typically inserts commercials. The big question here is whether or not
the story moment is strong enough to break your audience back.

The time breakdown works like this:

Teaser: 2-4 pages

Act One: 14-15 pages

Act Two: 14-15 Pages

Act Three: 14-15 Pages

Act Four: 14-15 Pages

Tag: 1-2 Pages

Total: 59 to 66 pages

Structure

Be sure to follow the 3 Act Structure within your teleplay. In Act One, set up the
goal for the character. Then your character runs into an obstacle. By the end of the

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act he should reach or fail to reach that immediate goal. Act One usually lasts
about 10 minutes. In Act Two, you'll complicate the character's mission, then raise
the stakes. Be sure to move your subplots forward as well and raise the stakes
again. By this point, your character is at his lowest point. This act usually goes for
about 40 minutes. By Act Three, your character, hopefully, will have reached a
new level of determination. You will have made things even tougher for him, so
he'll have to dig inside himself for more strength. Be sure to deal with your
subplots and tie up loose ends. Finally, is the resolution or pay-off.

Depending on the series, there can be up to three storylines running concurrently.

The A story is the main plot, while the B story is the major subplot. The C story is
called a runner or minor subplot, usually character developing. It usually occurs
three times within the hour.

Dialogue

 When writing dialogue, there are a couple of things to consider:

 The character ages, education, and background.

 Any emotional changes. How do they speak when emotional or angry?

 Don't use boring and/or unnecessary dialogue.

 It must move the story forward.

 Characters should NEVER explain their feelings. They should be acted

out.

 Be specific in your dialogue. Details are everything and they'll serve to

enrich your characters.

 Beware of long speeches. The thing about dialogue vs. action is that a page
of action runs a lot faster than a page of dialogue. Time expands when you
talk. Break up speeches with interjections from other characters or actions
pertaining to the scene.

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  Don't let your characters talk to themselves. If it's absolutely critical, do it
sparingly, and only if the scene turns out better with it than without it.

 ALWAYS READ DIALOGUE OUT LOUD.

Situation Comedies

Someone once said that "dying is easy, comedy is hard." You really have to
understand funny in order to write funny. If a joke is told badly, no matter how
good the joke, it'll fall flat. The opposite can be true as well. If a bad joke is well
told, it could be funny.

Format

There are two types of sitcoms: multiple camera format and single camera format.
Multiple camera format is the traditional form, and it started with shows like "I
Love Lucy," and continues with "Everybody Loves Raymond," Will and Grace,"
"Frasier," etc. Single camera shows are shot and formatted like films. Examples of
these would include "Malcolm in the Middle," The Simpsons," Curb Your
Enthusiasm," etc.

No matter what type of show, it's important to find several actual scripts for the
spec you're writing so that you can get really familiar with the format.

Some shows have teasers and tags, some have two acts (multiple camera format)
and some have three acts (some, but not all, single camera shows), and some have
page counts that differ from industry averages. A good example of that is Sex and
the City. This is a single camera show in three acts that includes a key scene in
every script where Carrie sits at her computer and asks the question that frames all
the stories in the episode. An analysis of past scripts would indicate this happens
about 7-11 minutes into the episode, but not always. Know the rules before you
break them.

Typical format for multiple camera sitcoms:

FADE IN: - All caps and underlined

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SCENES - numbered using CAPS. Ample space above and below and underlined.

SLUGLINES - indicate location, time of day, and underlined.

Character List - should appear directly below the slug line and indicate which
characters are needed for the scene. Also enclosed in parentheses.

ACTIONS/DESCRIPTIONS - listed in a capital letters

CHARACTER INTROs - Capitalized and underlined.

SOUND EFFECTS/SPEICAL EFFECTS/CAMERA INSTRUCTIONS -

Capitalized and underlined.

CHARACTER NAMES/DIALOGUE - Capitalized and double spaced.

PERSONAL DIRECTION - appears within dialogue - on the same line - in all

capitals and enclosed in parentheses.

The Cover Page should indicate the name of the show, episode title, and the
writer's name.

The Title Page should contain show name, episode title, writer's name and contact
information.

Begin most 1/2 hour scripts by writing the name of the show, centered and
capped, 6 lines from the top of the page. Double space down from the name and
center the episode title in quotation marks. 6 lines below that, center ACT ONE,
then A below that, also centered. 8 lines below that, write FADE IN: @ the 1.4
inch mark from the margin. A list of which characters are needed appears at the
beginning of each new scene. Every page should contain page numbers as well as
the scene letters.

You can end each scene with a CUT TO:, DISSOLVE TO:, FADE TO:, etc.,
however this is seen less frequently today.

The second scene begins on a new page. 21 lines down, write B, centered. 6 lines
below that, write the opening slug line. All the scenes are "numbered" with letters.
The script is divided into acts and each new act begins on a new page.
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Dialogue is double-spaced for legibility and stage direction is all in CAPS in order
to distinguish them easily from the dialogue. There should be lots of white space
for jotting down notes. Dialogue may also contain "personal direction" for the
actors within it, rather than outside it; just like a stage play.

As for time breakdown, the following applies:

Teaser: 1-2 pages

Act One: 17-20 pages

Act Two: 17-20 pages

Tag: 1-3 pages

Total: 40-48 pages in length

Typical format for single camera sitcoms:

Formatted like screenplays and similar to the one hour drama.

May or may not have formal act breaks written on the page (this depends on
whether or not the show has commercial breaks. "Curb Your Enthusiasm,: and
"Sex and the City" are on HBO, therefore they have no commercial breaks and
read straight through. "The Simpsons," however, has three defined acts.

Dialogue and stage direction are single-spaced.

The characters are described in ALL CAPS the first time they are introduced.

Scripts are generally 28-32 pages in length.

Structure

The plots for these tend to be broad and simple. The show may have a major plot
line (A story) and a minor plot line (B story), but may not have a runner. Each act
tends to be between 3-5 scenes. The locations are fairly basic, though outside
shots are more common than they used to be. The focus isn't on action, but on the
wittiness of the repartee between the characters.

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One page of sitcom script translates into about 30 seconds of screen time. In that
time, there should be 3 to 5 solid jokes. These are jokes that are derived from the
situations that the characters find themselves in. You have to know how to bring
out the comedic nature of any situation.

Taped sitcoms, such as Two and a Half Men, use a specific format. It's videotaped
in front of a live audience, will have a laugh track, and locations are limited.

In the half hour format, a scene break occurs when there is a major change in the
location, time, and sometimes, actions. Ending one scene with a cut and beginning
the next one on the following page indicates this. Scenes are designated with the
alphabet, beginning with the letter A.

A Few Extra Words of Advice:

 Be sure to capture the tone and character voices of the show you want to
write for.

 Executives want to read shows they know and they'll want to see if you
know it, too.

 Don't write a pilot. You have to be firmly established to pull this off. IF
you do want to write a pilot, however, write a second episode and submit
that. 99.9% of newer writers spend the first episode setting up the
characters and the setting, which leaves little room for conflict, interest, or
comedy.

 Your spec script is your calling card, so make it great. There should be no
punctuation or proofreading errors. A dropped comma or a missing
question mark can change a meaning or indicate a lack of concern for the
little things. Make it clean and professional.

 Read as many scripts as you can. Do your research.

 Remember - 12 point, Courier Font is an ABSOLUTE RULE for ALL

scripts whether feature or television.

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  Have a theme. Be sure what your story's about and be clear on exactly
what you want to say.

 Listen to people talk. No one speaks in the same way. Listen to their
choice of words; the rhythm of their speech; the cadences and pauses are
all unique.

 Make your characters listen to each other and respond in kind. You never
want them talking at each other. They must react to what is being said.
Invest emotions and reactions in them; it will say a lot about who they are
and make them more multidimensional.

 If you must use parentheticals (particularly in dramas), use them sparingly

and only use them to enhance the dialogue. Sometimes body language
does speak louder than the actual words. Use them to imply things the
actor may use in performance. It can also serve to change the meaning of
the dialogue entirely by saying one thing and doing something else.

 Flesh out your characters beyond what the story actually needs. Look to
the people you know, your own background, etc., for the little things that
will make them jump off the page.

 When writing narrative pieces, avoid inserting explanations or

clarifications of things that aren't revealed in dialogue or action. If it hasn't
been given before, there's no point to it and the forward motion of the story
stops. Keep it short and sweet; this allows the action to continue on
uninterrupted.

 Never pad your script with dialogue and scenes that are added only to fill
up space. If nothing is happening in the scene, cut it out.

There are numerous books out there on screenplay format and structure. Below is
a list of just a few of them:

o The Complete Book of Scriptwriting by J. Michael Straczynski

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 o Any book written by Linda Seger

o Any book written by Syd Field

o A Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler

o Successful Scriptwriting by Jurgen Wolff and Kerry Cox

o The Screenwriter's Bible by David Trottier

5.3 Television Narrative

When you begin to study television narrative, you will find much familiar –It can
become easy to forget about the distinctions between television and film—in fact
they are very different forms.

Where and how we watch TV.

To consider why television is so different we start by looking at the conditions of

reception – where and how do we watch television.

Almost exclusively, we watch TV at home. Think about the differences between

the typical home environment and the cinema. There is very little chance to
concentrate here – homes are places full of distractions and the tiny television in
the corner of a room has none of the power to take over all of your senses that a
film screen has. Much research has suggested that while the television is on for
large amounts of time in the average household, attention is very rarely truly
focused on it. In fact most of us make choices over which shows to watch
attentively and what we can treat as ‗wallpaper TV.‘ There is also some research
that suggests that there are gender differences when it comes to attention being
paid, with women being more likely to multi-task while the TV is on and men
being more obsessively attentive.

Segmented Narrative:

Television narrative has evolved in a way that takes all of this into account.
Television producers know that they do not have our undivided attention and so
instead of the long sweep of a cinema narrative, the typical television programme,

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whether fiction or non-fiction works in segments of about five minutes. Although
these segments work together to create a longer narrative, the idea is that they can
also make sense on their own. Unlike a film, a television programme can be
picked up quite easily at almost any point.

A typical example of this would be a soap where in any one episode no single
storyline is allowed to dominate. The narrative moves smoothly from one group
of people to another every few minutes. Similarly in television news, no one story
lasts very long.

This is one reason why some critics believe that television is a ―dumbed down‖
medium with a superficial and hurried mode of narrative which never requires the
audience to think deeply about anything. In contrast, the slower narrative of films
is one of the reasons for that medium‘s higher status.

If a television narrative is intended to be easy to pick up, the producers also knows
that there is much more of a risk that you are going to drop the programme at the
end of the segment so television narrative is full of lots of hooks to keep you
viewing from segment to segment. Cliffhangers and competitions, which continue
after an advertising break, are examples of this.

Flow :
It‘s worth considering now how we react to this kind of segmented narrative when
we sit down to watch an evening‘s television. Whatever we watch during that
evening- be it neighbours, the news, game shows or top of the pops will be made
up of these segments and if we are watching anything other than the BBC, the
programmes will be broken up even further by shorter segments of advertising.
One possibility is that over the course of the evening these segments will start to
blur together so that the adverts might resemble the soaps or the news look like a
game show. The critic Raymond Williams called this concept ‗flow‘. He claimed
that the television becomes meaningless because none of the different segments
are given enough time to mean anything on their own. Instead the only way that
they make sense at all is for the different segments to flow together so that

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everything resembles everything else. So soaps mix with documentaries to
become docusoaps, science fiction series like Star Trek start to deal with
relationship issues so that they too begin to resemble soaps and the news begins to
feature funny items so that it becomes like a comedy sketch show. In the end the
whole of television becomes homogenised- everything looks the same as
everything else. This is another major part of the theory that TV is ‗dumbing
down‘.
Domestic television and its subject matter:

Earlier we looked at the idea that it was televisions place within the home that led
to this segmented narrative style, but the effects of television‘s domestic nature do
not stop there. One important result is that television tends to favour very
domestic subject matter. Think of the number of programmes of all kinds that are
based around ‗typical‘ heterosexual relationships, marriage, masculine careers or
feminine domesticity. It could be said that television‘s place in the home leads to
programmes being based around quite mainstream ideology. Certainly it leads to
censorship with the potential of a family audience for all shows before the
watershed resulting in many restrictions being placed upon broadcasters over
content.

The style of television is also very different because of the domestic audience-
rather than the visual excitement that is at the heart of film, television is based
around sound. This is partly because television is lower budget than film, but it
also allow for straying eyes in the typical low attention household to be drawn
back to the screen by stimulating sounds. Typically these noises are that most
domestic of sound-forms, conversation. TV has so much of this that we even have
a name for conversation in the medium- ‗talking heads.‘

Because television has so much chatter, it means that what we see on the screen
has to focus on these people who are talking to us- television visuals are stripped
down with all the lush mise en scene of the film world replaced with fairly bare
settings (cheap again!) What we see instead are a preponderance of close ups of
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the speakers. Because this is visually less interesting than the rich visuals of film,
television tends to favour quick cutting from shot to shot to avoid boredom and
the ever-present risk of channel hopping.

This conversational and domestic style of TV also has effects on our feelings
about the stars and the programmes. Television personalities seem more like parts
of our everyday lives than the out of this world stars of films. In the same way,
television programme seem more immediate and believable. In films realism has
to come from the visuals, which whether in space or amazing locations have to
look believable. Television gets its realism more from the believability of its
character interactions and also crucially from the sense that it is live.

Live TV :

The sense that television is live, that the characters on the screen are living their
lives out in front of us, is central to its nature as a domestic medium. We take it
for granted that shows like the news and sports broadcasts are live but in fact the
whole medium tries to create the sense that events unfold on the screen in real
time. Think of how the events in a soap seem to be carrying on at the same time as
we are watching- when you switch off between episodes, there is a sense that life
in the world of the soap carries on and when you watch, seasonal features,
comments about the news and even current chart music help to create the live feel.
Recently, shows like Big Brother with it‘s round the clock web broadcasts have
taken this idea even further.

This live feel is particularly evident if you consider the working of a typical
segment of a television show. Imagine a character walking toward their house
opening the door and going in to say hello to their wife. In a film we might see the
man approach the house and then cut to a few minutes later when he was sitting at
the dinner table with his family. The cinema has no wish to appear live and cuts
out dead time. In the television segment, on the other hand, we would typically
see the whole journey through the door and to the wife all in order to keep the

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illusion that what we were seeing was live. There might be shot changes to keep it
interesting, but the sense that we were seeing things in real time would remain.

This live feel strengthens the sense mentioned earlier that the characters in
television are more immediately present in our lives than film stars. It allows the
talking heads on TV to address us in ways that would never happen in film and it
creates a closer relationship between viewer and text. Think of the phone-ins that
fill the television schedules or all the programmes, which feature members of the
audience. Even in fiction like the sitcom, there is a sense of the audience‘s
presence in the studio in the canned laughter, which would feel totally out of place
in the cinema.

No voyeurism:

John Ellis has suggested that the different relationship that we have with television
means that it loses the voyeuristic nature of cinema. Voyeurism is the idea of
spying on behavior that we really shouldn‘t be seeing and is central to the
experience of cinema. The long cuts of some film sequences together with the
situation of the viewer in the dark watching the distant figures on the screen all
lead to this sense in film. In television, instead, we do not have this relationship
with what we see- quick cuts and the sense that the characters almost know that
we are there destroy it.

Seeing the text as a whole- beyond the segment :

All this emphasis on segments and the idea of the instant accessibility of
television programmes should not allow us to ignore how complete texts work.
Here again there are some crucial differences with Film
Repetition and Novelty:

Critics of television will often point to this repetition as an example of its inferior
status as a medium, but they may be missing the novelty that does exist within
these programmes. The recognizable pattern of the narrative of Only Fools and
Horses relies for our interest on the producers presenting us with original

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segments- we know from experience that Del‘s plan will go wrong, but our
expectation of enjoyment comes from our belief that the segment where this
happens will be different and surprising (novel).

This repetition of typical situations also adds to the live feel of TV. Most of us
have very few Film like events in our lives, but the repetitive pattern of a
television show is reassuringly familiar and seems more realistic.

Series and Serials. :

A show like Only Fools and Horses where each episode has a self contained
narrative and where the characters generally fail to develop is called a series. The
other principal television form is the serial a long-term narrative that develops
over several episodes and where we are expecting an eventual conclusion. You
could say that the serial is more like a film in its narrative style in that it is based
around the long-term resolution of a single problematic. It is a much rarer form
than the series, but because it is less based around repetition it has higher status
with the critics and audiences. Typically television producers will spend more
money producing serials and will market them more extensively and with a
greater sense of importance although this is partly because their novelty means
they need to be brought to our attention more. It is because of this difficulty in
selling them to us that serials are tending to disappear from the schedules. Another
problem with keeping and attracting audiences for serials is that if they miss a
crucial episode, they may not feel able to return. To solve this problem, episodes
will often start with a re-cap of past events.

5.4 Documentary Scripting for Television

Gene Fowler once said that writing is easy, just a matter of staring at a blank page
until your forehead bleeds. Well, if anything will draw blood from your forehead,
it‘s writing a brilliant documentary script! Often in our real lives, ideas and
emotions, mind and passion, revolve in different spheres altogether. On film, if we
see a dead body, we react immediately with emotion, perhaps even pondering the
waste of life and questioning our own existence. However, if we were to see a
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dead body on a street as we drove by, our immediate reaction may be shock, even
revulsion. Emotion may enter the picture long after the experience has ended. In
real life, experiences become meaningful with reflection in time. In reel life, they
are meaningful the moment they happen. A well-written film script is an
instrument through which you can create emotion and epiphany at will. That is
one reason why it is possibly the most critical aspect of the filmmaking procedure.
The script is also, often, the most underrated aspect of the documentary process. A
school of thought suggests that the documentary-making process should be fluid
and organic, whereby the filmmaker experiences the film as he makes it. Many
filmmakers write a ‗paper-edit‘ after shooting in place of a script. This process has
and does work with many types of films. Especially when the filmmaker is
recording events beyond his control like political rallies, events, natural disasters,
riots and demonstrations etc. However, in most films, the filmmaker will find
himself asking the question, ―What should I shoot?‖ Here, it is imperative to start
out with a well-written script, whether or not things change during the shooting
process. Often preparing a script beforehand can make the difference between a
bad film and a good film. Or, at best, a good film and a great film. There are two
stages of documentary scriptwriting:

o The Pre-shoot or Shooting Script

o The Post-shoot Script

A pre-shoot or shooting script is like carrying a map when you set out on a road
trip. You may stumble across many unseen barriers or unexpected surprises. You
may discover wonderful, uncharted areas off the beaten track. You may decide to
go in one direction or the next or perhaps even a third. A map helps you on your
way and prevents you from getting lost. A shooting script is a conceptual map for
your shooting journey. It consolidates research and outlines the film‘s story,
providing a visual guideline for the shoot. It uses the same format and elements as
a post-shoot script and can be as comprehensive or generic depending on the
information available to the scriptwriter at that stage.

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A shooting script should not be confused with a shot list. A shot list is a
production tool which contains shot numbers, descriptions and transitions along
with production details. Even though some director-scriptwriters often combine
the shooting script and shot list, the two are separate entities. A shooting script
rarely delves into detailed aspects of production unless integral to the story. It is
more conceptual in nature; descriptive, but leaving room for interpretation. The
post-shoot script is the final version of the shooting script. This is often a modified
or re-written version of the shooting script and is created between the shooting
and editing processes of the documentary. The post-shoot script combines
conceptual elements along with audiovisual information gathered at the
production stage and may also include any new knowledge gathered along the
way. It then weaves it all together into a cinematic story, which is used by the
filmmaker to edit the documentary. The postshoot script often includes
descriptions of shots and actions and is quite comprehensive. Again, the post-
shoot script should not be confused with a paper-edit, which contains detailed shot
and production information. Even though the two are often combined by director-
scriptwriters, they are separate entities. The paper-edit is a tool for the editor to cut
the footage and includes elements like time-counters, tape numbers, shot in-points
and out-points etc. The script is conceptual and descriptive of action but should
leave some room for creative interpretation at the editing stage. Both the pre-shoot
and post-shoot scripts are time-specific versions of the same entity. The same
elements and technique can be used to create both depending on the amount of
information available at that time.

Writing for film, fiction or non-fiction, is quite different from writing for print.
There are a few unique features of film that a screenwriter must consider: Film is
visual. The words that a screenwriter writes will never be read by anyone. They
will only be seen and heard as images on a screen. The most important skill of a
screenwriter is that he must be able to write visually. Theorizing or explaining a
concept in a script is pointless; if the audience can‘t ‗look‘ at the theory, it‘s not
worth writing. A screenwriter must think, ‗Is what I‘m about to write visual in
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nature? If not, then how can I make it visual?‖ Film shows motion. Most of the
images you see on screen have action. It‘s what separates moving images from
photographs. Stories for film must be translated by a screenwriter into active
images. Film reveals what the eye often can‘t see. A tiny cell in our bodies, a
country we‘ve never been to, details that we would normally miss. The
screenwriter must bring things to life for the audience who may have never before
experienced what they see on screen. Film transcends time and space. A film
doesn‘t adhere to our dimensions of time and space. Once made, it continues to
exist in a little bubble of its own, transcending the limits of our present lives. A
screenwriter must understand that writing for a film means creating a being that
should have a life of its own long after the writer has moved on from it. Film is
Subjective. By simply pointing the camera in a specific direction, a subjective
choice has been made. The very nature of film, like our eyes, is to focus on what
is considered to be the object of interest and eliminate what lies beyond the lens,
thereby losing all sense of objectivity. Film chooses audience. The screenwriter
must always keep in mind that each film chooses its own audience depending on
how he chooses to tell the story. By varying a script, he may be showing the film
to very different people in the end. Film repeats accurately. Film footage doesn‘t
discriminate between objects, doesn‘t hide, cheat or lie. It consistently reproduces
what the camera sees in full detail. It is the filmmaker who must shoot objects in a
particular way to include or eliminate details. Film may have colour and audio
elements. It‘s not only about moving images. Most films, unless the filmmaker
chooses not to use them, have the elements of sound and colour. These elements
are always, if present, incorporated into the script.

Film emphasizes and emotionalizes. Films can evoke different kinds of reactions
in the audience, from grief to anger. They can make the audience think and send
powerful messages across to them. When it comes to documentaries in particular,
there are a few more things to be kept in mind before starting to write a script.
Documentary scripts do share many common elements with scripts for fiction
films, shorts and features alike. However, they also have their own specific
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considerations: Documentary deals with fact, not fiction. Most importantly,
documentaries delve into a non-fictional world with real events, real issues, real
conflict, real people and real emotions. Everything seen and heard on screen is
grounded in accuracy and has no element of fiction. Documentary is flexible.
Unlike fictional films, documentaries have no fixed visual and conceptual
guidelines per say. It‘s impossible to concretize events or decide one way or the
other about how the film will turn out eventually. There are fewer ‗rules‘ to be
followed, which reflects the fact that there are few rules in the real world as well.
This makes it more challenging but infinitely more exciting. Documentary
inspires movement and action. At the very heart of documentary, there is an issue
and a message at hand. The passing on of this message to the audience is usually
the reason that the film was made in the first place. Documentaries have long been
used as an instrument to inspire change in their audience, be it social change or
inner change. Documentary involves less control. Unlike fiction films,
documentaries must be shot in the real world and show real events happening.
Often, the filmmaker is unable to control the event he is shooting as well as the
circumstances surrounding the event. It‘s difficult to think about lighting when in
the middle of a sniper shootout! There is less control over the subject in
documentary; however this unmodified, improvised element is often the very
charm of non-fiction films. Documentary subject is paramount. Documentaries are
inherently bound to their subject matter. Since their purpose is so issue-specific
and their circumstances are non-fictional, the subject is the most important aspect
of documentary films and is given precedence over other aspects, for example:
entertainment value. In fact, until recently filmmakers scoffed at the idea of a
documentary being entertaining. This attitude has, of course, changed now but
subject still remains the dominant element. Credibility is key in Documentary.
The emergence of the documentary as a recognised cinematic genre in the 1920‘s
inherited the trust of the audience in the veracity of the image as an authentic
representation of the real. Today, we are much more skeptical, even with
documentaries. Audience trust, once lost is gone forever so a documentary, in this

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day and age, must always provide credible information and sources to put a
suspicious audience at ease. Form is more important than formula. There are no
recipes in documentary films. Every subject and issue is specific and is showcased
on film in its own appropriate manner. Form and the layout in which a subject is
showcased in a film are important as they add value to the film, but there is no one
tried and tested way to do this.

The best research is done when there is a genuine desire on the part of the
scriptwriter to learn more about the subject of his documentary. This is easier said
than done, especially when you get that dreaded call about writing a script on the
inner components of a diesel generator, but inspiration and curiosity go a long
way in helping a scriptwriter. After all, if you‘re not excited about it, how on earth
are you going to make hundreds, thousands or even millions of people excited?
Therefore, the first step in the research process would be to develop a healthy
interest and curiosity about the subject of the film. The scriptwriter must ask
himself some important questions: · What have I not yet been told about this
subject? · Is everything I have been told the truth? How much do I need to verify?
· What would I personally like to know about this subject?

If I were a member of the audience, what would I want to learn about this subject?
What can I find that is little known on this subject? · If the shooting has not yet
started, what information can I gather that would aid the filming process?
Quantity Vs Quality One of the more important questions that scriptwriters have
is, ―How much research is enough?‖ The quality of research is far more important
than the quantity. After all, if you were a writing a script for a film on the First
World War, you could spend a lifetime studying the subject and never meet that
script deadline. One of the more important skills of the scriptwriter is to segregate
relevant information from the irrelevant. This can be done by having detailed and
on-going communication with the filmmaker at all times. The focus of the film
and the subject matter it is dealing with must be kept in mind at all times. Any
information gathered or lead followed must first be put through a ‗relevancy test‘.
The scriptwriter must ask himself: · Is this information or source of information
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directly related to the subject of my film? · Is it necessary for the audience to
know this information? · Will this information add to the overall quality of the
film? · Even if it is relevant and will add value, is it more relevant than all the
other information I have gathered so far? · Will I be able to incorporate this
information into the script even if it is relevant to the subject? The ‗Strategy‘
Almost every scriptwriter starts off with a research strategy. After all, it‘s
extremely inconvenient to be in the middle of writing a script when a new piece of
information crops up. It‘s important to think about and list down every approach
and every source you will use to gather information needed for research. The all-
important question that usually crops up is, ―Where do I look?‖ Each scriptwriter
has his own sources and approaches for gathering information and many use the
same tried and tested ways throughout their careers. A few places to start are: ·

Print Research :

There are millions of places to look in print: Newspapers, books, magazines,

journals, digests, reports, archives, diaries…the list is endless. The scriptwriter
must decide which one will be suitable for subject-related information gathering
and then physically get hold of the required publication. The usual places to go for
finding print material are libraries, bookstores, institutions and organizations.

5.5 Let us sum up

5.6 Unit End Exercises
5.7 Points for Discussion
5.8 Answers to Check your Progress
5.9 Suggested Readings

1. http://wecommunication.blogspot.in/2012/03/characteristics-of-television-
as-medium.html

2. James Monaco. “How to read a film: Movies, Media, Multimedia” Oxford

University Press (2000) 3rd Edition. USA.

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3. Sheila Curran Bernard. “Documentary Storytelling for Video and
Filmmakers” Focal Press Publications (2004). USA

4. Dwight V. Swain with Joye R. Swain. “Scriptwriting; A Practical Manual” Focal

Press Publications (1988). USA

5. Robert McKee. “Story; Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of

Screenwriting” Harper Collins Publishers (1997). USA.

6. http://www.movieoutline.com/articles/television-script-format.html

7. http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/progra
mme_doc_documentary_script.pdf

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 UNIT – 3

Lesson 6

Television Scripting
INTRODUCTION

Writing a TV news script is not as easy as it might seem at first. You might think
that all you need to do is cover the simple five W's and one H (who, what, where,
when, why and how), but it's actually more complex than that.

Writing a news script is structural and strict in a sense that you need to cover all
the facts. However, it is also predictable because there's a certain pattern that
needs to be followed.

UNIT OBJECTIVES

This lesson will help you to

 How to write television news

 Time factor in Television News Story
 Language and Style of Presentation in Television News
 What is Video Jockeying?
UNIT STRUCTURE

6.1 Television News Writing.

6.2 Time Factor in Live News Reporting Script
6.3 Language
6.4 Style of Presentation
6.5 Video Jockeying
6.6 Let us sum up
6.7 Unit End Exercises
6.8 Points for Discussion
6.9 Answers to Check your Progress
6.10 Suggested Readings

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6.1 Television News Writing
Writing for a TV newscast is a challenge and it could be difficult at first. Knowing
the main parts of the script will help.

Introduction, or "the Readers":

This is the first 30 seconds, an introduction read by the news anchor in the studio.
It is commonly called RDR or "the readers". There are no videos included in the
script yet, only a photo of the headline and the anchorperson is seen on the TV
screen.

Lead

1. A lead (spelled lede by journalists) is a one line thesis statement of the

report. It consists of one sentence. It introduces the main topic of the
script.
2. Five W's and one H. These are the who, what, where, when, why and how
questions. Answers to these basic questions are briefly written for the RDR
and are assessed one by one in the body of the report.

3. Writing the RDR. Since the readers or RDR only lasts for 30 seconds, it
has to be substantial. But you do not need to squeeze too much of the
message into one paragraph. Here is a guide on how to write the RDR:

4. Use simple but compelling words. The lead is the first sentence that the
anchor says, so it has to be inviting. The viewers, upon hearing the lead,
should be hooked to watch the whole report or segment. Use words that
appeal to the senses and interests of the viewers.

5. One thought at a time. The viewers will only hear the RDR once. It's vital
to keep sentences short but clear. Limit sentences to 15 words or less
because it is easier to digest and get the thought of the story with simple
and clear information.

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 6. Do not say 'quote.' If the headline is about what the President said, never
use phrases such as "...and I quote". Remember that you need to give a
succinct message, or it could create confusion for the viewers.

7. Cover only the main thought of the report. Analyze the story carefully and
identify what particular W questions you should provide answers for in the
readers. It may only need at least three W's and one H to project the story
summary in the introduction.

8. Introduce the name of the reporter. Include in the script whoever is the
reporter of the story. If he is live in an area, recognize it in the script. And
if it's an exclusive report, specify this in the script too because the reporter
deserves a credit.

Body:

This is the meat of the report. Writing a script for the body part is a bit
complicated, especially if it is your first time. The technique in writing this part of
the script is to digest the information mentioned in the RDR.

Components of the Body:

1. Videos. These are the footage caught by the videographer and reporter
during the day. It may also include file videos from past news reports or
from online video sharing sites.

2. Voice Over. This is the reporter's voice reading the script as the video
plays.

3. Natural Sound. This the background noise of the location of the event or
report. It may be the quietness of a night, tidal surges of the flood, or the
New Year's fireworks' natural sound. These are also called "natsots".

4. Interviews. Every report has interviews. The reporter might have gotten
plenty of interviews but it should be limited too. Include at least two
interviews in the body of the report.

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 5. Piece to camera. This is the reporter directly talking to the camera. It may
be live or recorded and is also called a stand-up.

6. Pictures. Pictures are used when there are important events, statistics or
any factor that should be included in the report. These include sketches,
screen captures from public information sites, or old photos.

7. The news report usually has a maximum of three minutes story telling
time. Sometimes less, sometimes more. The script must explain the
necessary details in that time frame.

Conclusion

This last part of the report includes a temporary resolution to the story. Never
leave the audience hanging. Always include a statement that gives a follow-up
information or assurance to the viewers.

Organization of a News Story:

A story should have a smooth flow and development. There are several styles
to writing a news script, but the basic organization is as follows:

1. Introduction.

2. This is a brief summary of the story and the mention of the thesis
statement or lead.

3. Establish the scene.

4. Write the basic details that answer the questions to the five W's and one H.
What is the story all about? Who are the people involved? When did it
happen? What date or what time? Where is the setting? Is it local or
international issue?

5. Recognize the issue.

6. This is the part where you elaborate on the issue or the event. Why did it
happen? What is the issue or the event for? What are the factors that made
the issue arise? And how did it happen?
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 7. Addressing the issue.

8. This includes the action items that can be done. A story should present
possible solutions to the problem. The script must tell that the story is
well-researched and substantial enough.

9. Follow-up.

10. The story should be moving forward. There will certainly be another
follow-up for the following day's event. Include in the script that the news
team will continue to cover the issue.

Proper Format in Writing a News Script:

The news script is divided into two parts - the audio and the video part.

Audio:

This is usually on the right side of the page. It includes everything that is
heard on the report, such as the voice over, natural sound and soundbites.
Here are some guidelines on how to make and choose the right audio:

The natural sound or natsots should be clear and a bit louder.

It catches the attention of the viewer because natural sounds bridges

familiarity.

Voice Over:

The voice of the reporter must match the tone or mood of the story. If it is
a tragic news report, the tone should be serious and authoritative. Good
news will require a cheerful voice with lively intonations. A good voice
over is clear, precise, authoritative, alive and sensitive. The voice
practically describes the video. It should match what is being shown at a
particular time frame.

Place sound bites on transitions:

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 This serves as a universal communication that a new angle of the story is
about to be told.

Video:

This is located on the middle part of the page and it complements the
audio. What is being described in the audio must be included in the script.

Here are the steps on how to write the video part of the script:

1. Gather the materials you need.

2. Get the tapes used in shooting, prepare a pen and paper and a video camera
to view the shots.

3. Preview the file footage and determine the important videos and dialogues
of the person being interviewed.

4. Select the video clips you will use and jot down the time at which that
specific clip appears.

5. This will help the editor in cutting the video clips you need.

6.2 Time Factor in Live News Reporting Script

Reporters who are reporting live on a location do not have much time to
compose a detailed and well-structured script specially when they are
doing a coverage of a historical event. The anchors in the studio and
reporters on the field are exchanging details, questions and information
live on television.

It's not that easy to come up with a good script while reporting live on
camera. There are instances that a reporter forgets their points of
discussion. The secret is focus. Remember that you are reporting for the
viewers and that their concern should be your utmost priority. Ask
questions as if you are the viewer. A live reporter, even under pressure,
knows what the audience would want to know or ask out of a report. Here
are tips on how to make a good live report:

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Have your own notes.

When a reporter is sent to a location to cover a specific event, there is no

researcher beside him or her. He does his own research and he composes
his own report. It's a good thing if an ample time was given to write the
report, but if not, then he will have to report the news he gathered live on
TV. Reporters learn the hard way, their training is basically being sent to
far away areas and just prove their worth. That is why it's important to
write down notes and be curious enough to elaborate the other side stories
of a certain report.

Talk to people in authority.

There are subjects that are difficult to explain for a reporter that's why a
good source person is necessary. You should familiarize yourself with
people from the government, doctors, specialists, experts and other
resource persons. For more credible information, invite authority people to
be interviewed live on camera. But make sure you have briefed them and
that you have already asked the necessary questions prior to live airing.
This will help him be prepared for questions to come.

When having a co-host, listen well to his thoughts and opinion and
react accordingly.

You are given a partner for a good reason. A good newscast reporter also
knows how to converse well with a fellow news reporter live on camera.
The interaction must be substantial. Humor and wit is also important
specially when there are light issues on the news.

Do not lead the interviewee on.

Your purpose is to ask questions for clarity. Let the subject lead the news
but providing the correct information. Ask follow up question according to
what he said but never assume. The last thing you want to happen is to get
humiliated in front of national TV.

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 Keep a balanced opinion.

News reporters are analysts. They report based on facts and they do not
necessarily interpret it according to their own understanding. However
there are times that reporters give some comments on topics. These are
fine for as long as it's clear that they're not being biased.

6.3 Language and Style of Presentation

Writing a news script for television seems so simple, until you try it for the
first time. Experts in English or print journalism often struggle with
turning stories into tight scripts that are meant to be heard, not read. While
you'll spend your entire career perfecting your TV news writing style,
mastering the basics of how to write a news script will provide a
foundation for success. These news writing tips help you create strong
content for TV news with every single script:

1. Write for the Ear

Read your script out loud. Is it easy to understand just by hearing it one
time only? Unlike in print, a TV news audience has one shot to get the
story.

That's why words that sound alike but have different meanings create
stumbling blocks for the ear. Words such as "cite", "site" and "sight"
should be avoided if possible. Short, punchy sentences are easier for the
ear to digest than long, complicated sentences that are full of dependent
clauses.

2. Avoid Passive Voice

Passive voice writing jumbles up the usual sequence of subject, verb,

object in active voice writing. This sounds like a lesson from English class,
but it really makes a critical difference in broadcast news writing.

An active voice sentence is, "The robber fired the gun." You see the
subject, verb and object. A passive sentence is, "The gun was fired by the
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robber." The object and verb came before the subject. Viewers have to
wait until the end of the line to know who did what. Then their brain has to
process that information while trying to keep up with what the newscaster
is saying.

Beware of the "by" in a sentence. That's usually a giveaway the sentence

has been written in passive voice.

3. Use Present Tense Where Appropriate

TV news is designed to sound like "now." That's another big difference

between broadcast and print news writing. A 6:00 p.m. newscast needs to
sound fresh, as if the news is just now unfolding.

But the mayor's news conference you covered happened at 2 o'clock. The
natural tendency is to write, "The mayor held a news conference earlier
today."

By shifting the focus of the sentence to the subject of the news conference,
you can put the sentence in present tense and give it extra punch. "The
mayor says he wants to slash taxes by 20 percent. He made the
announcement at a news conference..."

That example starts out in present tense for the hook, then shifts to past
tense. It's important not to simply force the present tense into every
sentence you write. It would sound awkward in a 6 p.m. newscast to say,
"He makes the announcement at a news conference that happens at 2
o'clock."

4. Write Stories about People

This seems obvious, but it's easy to allow a script to veer away from
focusing on the people who are watching your newscast. If viewers sense
your stories don't directly affect them, they will turn away.

So when the state department of transportation announces a huge

infrastructure improvement project that involves replacing bridges around
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your city, you may be presented with institutional information. But
transform it into something personal and meaningful to the people at
home.

"Your drive to work or school will soon be safer and easier, thanks to a big
project to make our city's bridges better." You've taken the information
and told viewers how it could change their lives. Dissect press kits, graphs
and data before you start writing to determine why your viewers will care
about it.

5. Action Verbs Add Verve

In news writing, you can't do much to the subject or object of your

sentences, but you can spice up your verbs. They are the part of speechthat
can bring life to your stories.

Look at a story to see whether you can switch a sentence that says
"Residents are requesting information..." to "Residents demand answers."
That easy change adds urgency and action.

Before you get carried away, remember your story still has to be accurate.
"Demand" may be too strong. Try, "Residents want to know."

Using "is, are, was, were" weakens the impact of the action. "Residents
want answers" sounds better than "Residents are wanting answers."

6. Be Careful with Numbers

Numbers are hard on the viewers' ears, especially when there are a lot of
them. Make your point with a number or two, then move on.

Instead of, "The company's profit was $10,470,000, then fell to $5,695,469
a year later," you can simplify the line to be, "The company's profit was
about 10 and-a-half million dollars, then fell to about half that the next
year." The viewer gets the idea without having to hear every last digit.

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It's ideal to take big numbers and translate them into something
meaningful for the audience. Besides pointing out that the electric
company is raising rates by $3.5 million, take the time to say that the hike
means a typical customer will pay $200 more a year. That's the number
that affects people the most.

7. Skip Cliches and Journalese

Even experienced news writers fall into a trap of writing the same tired
words and phrases. Powerful storms always "wreak havoc", political
candidates "throw their hat into the ring" and the moments after a crime
has happened "details are sketchy."

Those empty terms make your news writing seem shallow. Replace them
with words that normal people would actually use in conversation.

Reporters often use journalese when they are confronted with the cliches
of other professions and merely repeat what they hear. A police officer
may say a shooting suspect "fled on foot". It's a TV news writer's job to
change that to "ran away". The law enforcement, government and health
care industries have their own way of speaking, which shouldn't be
repeated on the air. Otherwise, your news writing sounds like it came
straight from apress release.

8. Write to Video

Many TV news stories are read as the audience watches video playing on
the screen. Connect the words to the video as if you were leading a tour
group.

That requires you to know what is going to be on screen as the viewers

hear the script. Once you have that information, the rest is easy.

If you're talking about an embezzlement suspect while the video shows

that suspect walking down the street with his lawyer, say, "The suspect,
seen here on the left walking to the courthouse with his lawyer." That
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reference to the video keeps the viewer from wondering which of the two
people is the suspect while missing out on the rest of the story.

A line like, "Watch what happens when firefighters try to get the kitten out
of the tree," forces the viewers' eyes back to the screen. Remember, some
people have the news turned on while reading the newspaper or cooking
supper. Get their attention riveted to the television.

9. Sell the Story

Print journalists may groan at this basic aspect of TV news writing. In

most cities, there's one newspaper but several TV stations providing news.
That means in television, a news writer also has to sell the product as
something different and superior to the competition.

"When the school board said there wasn't any money for classroom
computers, we decided to dig for answers." A line like that demonstrates
that the news team is aggressive, and is taking action to get to the truth.

"We are the only station with video of the brawl inside the college
cafeteria." A TV station uses its scripts to combat the perception that all
newscasts in a city are the same.

While this isn't pure journalism, this is a basic part of news writing that is
common at most TV stations. Realize that a newscast is also a television
program that not only competes with other newscasts, but also all TV
shows that are on the air in the same time slot. Sell the coverage as
something special.

10. Move the Story Forward

A TV news story doesn't have a "the end" at the bottom of the script. The
end of your script should usually tell the audience what will happen next to
the people involved.

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 "The school board will take a vote on whether to cut teachers' pay at its
next meeting," lets the audience knows what developments to expect next.
Leaving that fact out leaves the audience hanging.

"We will be at that meeting and tell you the outcome of the vote," is good
to add so that your viewers will return for updates. That line reinforces that
your news team will stay on top of the story and not just drop it.

That's a lot of effort to put into a 30-second script. Even though TV news
would seem to be all about video, crisp news writing will put you above
others in your newsroom and could be the key to building your career
faster than you thought possible.

6.4 Video Jockeying

A video jockey (abbreviated VJ or sometimes veejay) is an announcer who
introduces videos on commercial music television stations such
as VH1 and MTV.

The term "video jockey" comes from the term "disc jockey", "DJ"
("deejay") as used in radio. Music Television Network (MTV)popularized
the term in the 1980s (see List of MTV VJs).

The MTV founders got their idea for their VJ host personalities from
studying Merrill Aldighieri.[citation needed] Aldighieri worked in the
New York City nightclub Hurrah, which was the first[citation needed] to
make a video installation as a prominent featured component of the club's
design with multiple monitors hanging over the bar and dance floor. When
Hurrah invited Aldighieri to show her experimental film, she asked if she
could develop a video to complement the DJ music so that when her film
would become part of a club ambiance and not be seen as a break in the
evening. The experiment led to a full-time job there.

Several months later the future MTV founders patronized the club,
interviewed her, and taking notes. She told them she was a VJ, the term

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 she invented with a staff member to put on her first pay slip.[citation
needed] Her video jockey memoirs list the live music she documented
during her VJ breaks.

Her method of performing as a VJ consisted of improvising live clips

using a video camera, projected film loops, and switching between 2 U-
matic video decks. She solicited the public to collaborate. The club
showcased many video artists, who contributed raw and finished works.
Her work also incorporated stock footage. Aldighieri next worked at
Danceteria, which had a video lounge and dance floor separate levels.
Video jockeying then expanded to incorporate live television
feeds, musique concrète, and other experiments with multimedia crowd
participation. More equipment at the new Danceteria facilitated this
collaboration, including live television feeds of broadcast television.
Experimental video artists John Sanborn and Kit Fitzgerald, who chose
Aldighieri to direct the performance and programming, supervised the
design of "the video lounge", this new video installation.

6.5 Let us sum up

6.6 Unit End Exercises
6.7 Points for Discussion
6.8 Answers to Check your Progress
6.9 Suggested Readings

1. http://visihow.com/Write_a_TV_News_Script

2. http://handbook.reuters.com/?title=Television_Scripts

3. http://media.about.com/od/mediawritingtips/a/News-Writing-Tips-For-Tv-
News.htm

4. https://processofwritingnews.wordpress.com/chapter-five-writing-for-
broadcast/

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VJ_(media_personality)
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 UNIT 4
LESSON 7

Production Elements of Radio and Television

INTRODUCTION

Writing for television and radio requires the writer to consider story
elements such as location and time of day and how to let the viewer/listener know
there‘s been a change in location or time of day. Writers have to understand the
unique requirements for each medium, which includes the use of transitions,
sound effects, and music.

UNIT OBJECTIVES

This lesson will help you to

 Understand the basics elements of Radio and Television

 Work Flow of the production

UNIT STRUCTURE

8.1 Basic Elements of Radio Production

8.2 Basic Elements of Television Production
8.3 Work Flow of the Production
8.4 Let Us Sum Up
8.5 Unit end Exercises
8.6 Points for Discussion
8.7 Answers to check your progress
8.8 Suggested readings.

7.1 Basics Elements of Radio Production

A radio show is any type of program broadcast on the radio, or on the
Internet in the case of Internet radio. Radio programmes can be spoken word
programmes or music programmes. In spite of the type of programme aired on the

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radio, the elements of the different programmes remain the same; such as –
 Voice,

 Music,

 Script, and

 Sound effects.

Whether music or speech based, radio relies on the human voice to

connect with its audience. It is the voices of presenters and RJ‘s that we respond
to on a radio. They are the personification of a radio providing a personality with
which we identify and connect.

The style of music each station plays is a crucial aspect of the station‘s
identity. In any event, the music played on most radio stations is not randomly
selected by individual presenters or producers, but it is governed by a music
policy that has been developed to appeal to the station‘s target audience.
A radio show script is a norm in the stations across the nation. While it may
seem that things are flowing naturally on your favorite radio station you can bet
that a radio show script is being used. Most radio shows are live, and to avoid
catastrophe they will utilize a radio show script for the guests and the personalities
alike.

In short, Good audio content is anything that keeps your listener through
the next minute. Audio quality is determined by two main factors – the quality of
the microphone and the proximity of the microphone to the person speaking.
THE ROLE OF VOICE IN RADIO:

For our voice to be recorded in a studio, we use a microphone. They

amplify or in other words, increase the volume of your voice. When you speak
before a microphone, you don‘t have to shout. You speak normally and it will be
made louder if you use a loudspeaker to listen to.

Voice is important in the following ways:

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 Voice conveys meaning.

It stimulates our visual imagination: it creates visual images in our minds.

When we think of radio, the microphone is the most important element
using which you present your programme. The main stay in any radio
programme is the human voice. Think of the voice of an announcer or
newsreader on radio. You often find them very pleasant and nice to listen
to. That is because of the quality of their voice and the proper use of it.
There are two aspects of the use of human voice in radio production:

Firstly, there has to be a well written script to be spoken and

Secondly, someone has to speak or read it before a microphone in a

studio.
SOUND EFFECTS IN RADIO PROGRAMME:

Sound effects in a radio programme give meaning and sense of

location. It adds realism to a programme and helps a listener to use
imagination. Sound effects describe the circumstances of a dramatic audio
situation. They can be used for such things as setting and place, conveying
action, solving certain narrative problems and evoking characteristics.
Effects should sound as though they were being heard by the character.
Dubbing adds extra sound effects or bring disparate sounds together.
Sound effects can be used in two ways:

(a) Spot effects or effects that are created as we speak and

(b) Recorded sound effects.

Categories of Sound Effects:

a) Ambiences: It provide a sense of place, ―where‖, and perhaps of time ―when‖,

events occur.

b) Discrete Effects: Indicates individual events; ―what‖, ―how‖, and ―how much‖.

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c) Crowds: Sounds of many people in a crowded situation, without specific voices
or words being distinguishable.

d) Dialogue: Dialogue is sound too. The character of the voice indicates a lot
about who the character is. Give importance to vocal contrast. e) Silence: A
dramatic element.

MUSIC IN RADIO PROGRAMMES:

Music is the soul of radio. Film songs and classical music programmes are
independent programmes on radio. Music is also used as signature tunes or theme
music of various radio programmes. It enhances the programme in the following
ways:
a. Music adds colour and life to any spoken word programme.

b. Music can break monotony.

c. Music is used to give the desired effect of happy or unhappy situations, fear or
joy.

d. Music can suggest scenes and locations. For example, you have to create a
bright early morning situation. This can be done by playing a pleasing note on the
flute along with the sound of chirping birds.

Most music based stations operate a playlist that is updated every week. The
playlist determines what will be played and how often it will be played. The
selection of music is not done on personal taste but is a professional judgement
that takes into account a variety of factors including the stations target audience,
how appropriate a track is to certain times of the day, and increasingly how well it
has scored in audience research.

THE ROLE OF SCRIPT IN RADIO PROGRAMMES:

A radio script is a writing which gives the detail of how an entire programme
should be. A script takes some of the pressure off presenters doing live broadcasts.
It provides them with the reassurance that they know what they
are going to say next so that they can concentrate on how they say it. Scripts also
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ensure that an item is covered fully, in a logical manner and to set time. A radio
script for a presenter is largely a safety measure but it needs to contain certain
characteristics to make it effective.

 Though it is written, it is spoken

 It is written for the ear not the eye.

 It is heard only once. The listener normally does not get a second chance to
listen.

 It is conversational.

 It should be simply worded without any difficult or unfamiliar words.

 The sentences should be short and simple and not complex.

 There should be only one idea in a sentence and not many ideas.

 Though there are thousands of listeners, what is written should be meant for just
one listener.

 The words chosen should denote the exact meaning and not be vague.

 The words should make pictures in the minds of the listeners.

 Abbreviations or short forms should be avoided. If an abbreviation is used, then

its full form should be given.

 While referring to more than one person, avoid using ‗he‘ or ‗she‘. It can
confuse the listeners.

Radio differs from other media because it is for the ears, not for the eyes.
Therefore, sound, voice, script and music plays a vital role in a radio production.
In fact, the strength of a radio programme is that it speaks to individuals, and the
way it does this by talking to them, not reading to them. This means that whatever
is said on the radio – whether it is a link in a magazine programme, a film review,
or even a voice piece in the news – needs to sound as if it is coming from the mind
of the speaker – almost like part of a conversation – rather than something that is
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being read. The human voice in any radio broadcast is the main element that helps
the listener construct their own image and picture the person behind the
microphone.

Music is the straightest path to the emotional centres of the mind. Other sounds,
dialogue or effects must be translated and understood first. It makes significant
contribution in radio but must be used with great discretion. Suitability is an
important factor.

7.2 Basics Elements of Television Production

TV production involves various elements that come together to create a
successful TV show. So, if you are enamoured by large houses and the over-the-
top look of the show, then read on to know what all goes into making these sets
into a reality on TV:

The Production Team: This team includes: producer, writer, director,

actors along with the technical crew. Each member of the team and crew has
various responsibilities. For instance, a producer is responsible for developing and
executing the idea for a show along with planning the budget. The production
manager on the other hand is responsible for production elements including
handling of equipment and crew. While the production designer, is responsible for
constructing the set innovatively.

Pre-production: The three most important team members involved in pre-

production are the production manager, director and casting director. During the
pre-production meeting, locations are decided, script is reviewed, the cast is
finalised and the schedule of the show is prepared.

Photography: Television shows are generally shot using two basic

methods of photography. One is single film production or the multiple camera
tape production. The first one is generally used for dramatic series and the latter is
used to produce talk shows, game shows or news.

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 Post-production: It begins with the completion of filming and continues
until the project is delivered to the network for airing. The most important aspect
of post-production is editing. The director, producer and the networker view the
film from the daily shoot. These films, also called as ‗dailies‘, are then broken
down and assembled into scenes by the editors.

Each of the above elements includes various nuances, which make up for
the daily TV shows. This is a complex and exciting field. But, to be a part of this
creative field one needs to undergo formal education training.

7.3 Work Flow of the Production

The demands on media enterprises are continuously increasing due to
general technological progress. Workflow management systems generally support
all kinds of working processes, reduce complexity and secure quality durably.
Whether it concerns newscasts, entertainment shows or film productions, one
finds planners, secretaries, editors, cameramen, cutters, stage hands, illuminators
and others, who organize themselves with different aids (telephone, forms, fax,
mail, Excel tables etc.) and software programs. In the past work was usually
directed at one particular transmission format; today outputs are usual for the
Internet, Digital TV, radio, SMS/WAP/i-mode, VHS and DVD. Concepts such as
workflow, process optimization and application integration become more
important. This article examines a modern, software based process planning and
controlling environment.

1. Typical Operational Sequences in a Broadcast and Production

Environment Despite all individuality, it is nevertheless common to
find similarities in most production processes, which can even
repeat themselves several times daily. These processes are usually
performed by established teams and thus depend on the experience
and the know-how of the team members. Occasionally these
processes are even formally documented - e.g. in ISO9000 process
manuals or in simpler problem descriptions. Usually these

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processes have not been planned beforehand, but have grown over
time. For instance, an example of a typical process could be the
idea of an editor for a particular contribution, which would lead to
a number of further work procedures, e.g. a discussion in the
editorial conference, followed by some investigations, ENG,
editing, approval, play out, and archiving. Each of these steps can
be decomposed further and presupposes a set of interfaces:
resource inspection and reservation in the scheduling department,
planning in the editorial system, the EDL transfer and the cut,
commentating and the feedback to the planning systems up to
automation, should the contribution be aired. A live interview in
the studio is very similar. For example, the decision to interview a
caller during a live broadcast inevitably leads to co-ordination
duties like notification of the parking lot and reception, exchange
of address and telephone number, giving detailed instructions to the
camera, lighting and make-up and the assignment of a journalist to
prepare and co-ordinate questions and so on. In addition, small,
apparently trivial processes also lead to expenses and tying up of
resources if repeated often enough. An example of such a small
process with high frequency would be the planning and realization
of crawls during broadcasts. The starting points here would be the
formulation of the idea for, let‘s say, a raffle, the further processing
and granting the permission, if necessary resetting or revision, the
input of time codes and page numbers for the font generator and
afterwards the deletion and perhaps an evaluation. This is clearly a
trivial process, which however can become quite a complex affair
without standardization and without a supporting system due to its
recurring nature and the involvement of various individuals Such
simple processes are by no means limited to media-specific
applications, but can be found in commonplace administrative

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 procedures like applications for leave etc. Central coordination can
lead to bureaucratic nightmares even with only a few hundred co-
workers. Let‘s go back to our crawl example:

Workflow management first of all means nothing more than

ensuring that an appropriate screen in the system is at the disposal
of the co-worker with the idea for the crawl and that the
information entered therein is automatically forwarded in a
structured way to the coordinator in charge of the broadcast. If
necessary, this person approves the proposal electronically and the
workflow engine ensures that the time codes can be registered by
the responsible co-worker. As soon as somebody activates a
predefined process, the Workflow System thus ensures that the
following tasks are correctly accomplished at the right time by the
correct co-workers – until the crawls are shown. Thus the staff
members can concentrate on their actual duties and less time is
consumed by coordination and flow control. That is effective and
also very comfortable. With more complex and extensive
processes, for instance news productions, there are naturally more
functionalities, more sophisticated workflows and some interfaces
needed. A function often required, for example, is the integration
of documents and simple content management, so that not only
forms can be worked on, but also ideas and concepts can be
exchanged world-wide through normal MS Office documents or
pictures in a uniform way.

2. Workflows and the Importance of Scheduling Contrary to static

operational sequences, as they occur in a typical administration or
in banks and insurance companies, procedures in TV or radio
productions are usually more complex and even more individual
and creative and thus more difficult to plan and standardize. For
this reason modern systems are in a position to adapt dynamically
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to the specific and/or personal operational sequences without
stubbornly following only a given, rigid path. In order to ensure the
transparency of the CEITON Workflow Engine, despite countless
individual work steps, all activities can be viewed and supervised
in different views and can additionally be manually adjusted. Thus
the pair Workflow and Scheduling is able to fulfill two essential
functions:

1. The monitoring of all processes independent of locality

and

2. The coordination of all decentralized tasks by a central

control instance. Due to the fact that in a production process co-
workers do not only receive their information and input masks
from the Workflow engine, but also have to work in many other
systems (editing, newsroom, content management system, play out,
archives etc.), one further important task is added to the duties of a
Workflow System

3. Application integration. If an editor or an ENG team

comes in from a take outdoors and transmits the material onto the
server system, then the Ingest can be confirmed by the operator in a
simple mask. The system subsequently graphically visualizes the
current status accordingly, activates the production of a browsing
copy, gives orders for browsing sighting, reserves an edit suite
Fig.1 – Signature: The Workflow engine coordinates the tasks of a
process Fig.2 – Signature: Co-workers work on a job in freely
definable masks and releases the further handling of the
contribution. Thus there are usually a number of processes, which
lend themselves to be depicted electronically so that the workload
becomes manageable and simpler. In particular for 24 hours
productions with 3-shift operations, it is essential that all

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information is organized transparently and can easily be found by
everybody - whether on the job next door, in the mobile
broadcasting unit somewhere or even by external suppliers.
Description of Workflows In principle workflows consist of two
components:

1. The description of the functions involved (e.g.

screen/masks for co-workers or interfaces for machines and
software systems) and

2. The structure of these functionalities, meaning the rules

which describe the dependencies by themselves and between each
other. The description of the functions can be accomplished by
graphic front ends, similiar to the customization of applications.
All required data (field type, range of values, storage place,
coordinates, authorizations etc.) is saved to a database in a
repository. The structure of the workflows can also be stored in the
database, be that mathematically as a Petri net or simply as an array
of rules. If an event occurs (e.g. saving of a mask or receipt of an
XML file), the Workflow engine examines whether the associated
rules are fulfilled and whether a particular action is needed.
Needless to mention that this depiction is somewhat simplified
with regard to dynamic masks, self-adapting workflows with
rollback functionality etc. If, for example, under standard
conditions a particular sub process can be processed further only if
the associated quality check was successful or if some inputs are
mandatory, the system can automatically take over the control
mechanisms and monitor, for instance, time or costs. Thus the
completeness and validity of the inputs can be guaranteed and the
information distribution process helps to avoid repeated,
superfluous input of already collected data. With the introduction
of a Workflow Management solution, first of all the operational
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sequences, which can be improved, must be identified and
captured. With this information at hand, one can conceptualize a
workflow which details the functions and interdependence in the
correct form according to the requirements. These two steps
usually represent the biggest challenge and are typically
accomplished either in-house by process managers or by consulting
houses specialized in process design. Once these steps have been
completed, the technical implementation of the workflows in the
respective workflow specifications and the adjustment of the
interfaces follow.

4. Application Integration As mentioned before a multiplicity of

systems has to work together by accessing common data and
exchanging information. This usually happens by means of direct
interfaces between the Signature: Scheduling screens can display
each processes differently Signature: Simple sub-workflow
example of a media production programs or manual input and/or
renewed input of data. The latter should certainly always be
avoided, because it is errorprone, inefficient and frustrating for the
user. But direct interfaces are not the silver bullet either. There is a
number of reasons:

1. With an any-to-any connection of 8 systems, one has up

to 28 interfaces. If however the traffic runs through message
brokers, only 8 interfaces are needed.

2. In CEITON‘s Web Workflow system one can deposit

rules of transformation for the data, which are dependent on the
process states and further variables, instead of simply exchanging
data.

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 3. Central interfaces are simpler to maintain than
decentralized ones, where the interface logic lies within the
application.

4. If one can process arbitrary interfaces in the message

broker (service bus) of the Workflow System itself, the dependency
on the original software producers is reduced. Signature: four
masks with a simple Split and Join dependence Benefits of
Workflows Increase of transparency in the enterprise for
management, staff and customers For the persons in charge, the
fundamental function of real-time monitoring is made possible
while the overall process with its goals and current states is
understood intuitively by co-workers. Improvement of Control
Changes in the workflow can be implemented easily and instantly,
without elaborate briefings of co-workers and renewed definition
of forms or interfaces. Standardization of processes, process times
and documents Standardization brings continuity into complex
processes and is therefore an important tool for quality assurance
and planning. Lowering of the process and communication costs
Superfluous agreements, enquiries, forms, faxes, mails etc. can be
reduced because the system controls the important information
flows automatically.

Work becomes less stress-prone and communication more

comfortable. Prevention of errors during service rendering
Effective controlling of quality management by workflows avoids
errors or visualizes these in time. Optimization of turn-around
times Smooth interlinking of work procedures and their
coordination by the system reduces production times. Enabling of
IT supported reports All data collected during a process can be
archived automatically and can subsequently be evaluated for
standardized or individual reports Applications can thus
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concentrate on the provision of functions again, instead of being
involved with process functions and interoperability to other
vendors' systems. A universal interface suffices which, if
standardized, obviously means the least amount of work. In
principle the integration capacity is thus expected of the Workflow
System. As an interface, different procedures are supported; some
of them will briefly be discussed below. The exchange of ASCII
files (asynchronous) e.g. through a file system is the most
frequently used procedure because of its simplicity (XML),
universality and compatibility.

A database-based exchange through the database level/SQL

(asynchronous) on special tables is very safe because of its
transaction security and automatic validity examination, but the
manufacturers however often don‘t permit this. A very accepted
procedure is the exchange of data by SMTP (asynchronous),
particularly since one can communicate through temporary off-line
connections. However, delivery is not controllable, which limits
the employment to non-time critical interfaces. Exchange of data
through HTTP/HTML (synchronous) is becoming even more
popular - it is an uncomplicated procedure, which can be used
through firewalls and over long distances. Even encoding is very
simple through SSL. Function calls (synchronous) are the most
direct, but in addition also the most special way (e.g. through
SOAP, COM+ or CORBA) and are used only with strongly
integrated systems. There are a number of further interface types;
some of them can handle distributed transactions for example,
which sometimes can be very significant. In practice, various
combinations are employed, for instance the exchange of XML
files via e-mail.

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 They all have different characteristics concerning
universality, simplicity, scalability, availability, efficiency etc. and
must therefore be differentiated for each individual use. If
bandwidth is no consideration, the use of XML formats is surely
recommendable today, because they can be processed
automatically and are structured in an obvious way. 5. Flexibility
of Architecture

A Workflow Management System is software, which is

installed on one or more servers with various interfaces for the
most different purposes, e.g. a complete and dynamic user interface
for humans or XML interfaces such as MOS to other applications
and machines. The system runs centrally and communicates among
other things over TCP/IP and requires in principle no interference
into the existing infrastructure - neither on the server nor on client
side. Modern software is developed today at least in a 3-
tierarchitecture, i.e. one separates the GUI from the application
logic and this in turn again from the database. The GUI should also
not be defined rigidly, but be derived from customizable records
from the database (repository).

Through this mechanism enterprises can arrange their own

applications and can, if necessary, even completely exchange the
GUI. The surface should be web based, so that production can take
place in a decentralized way and without installation expenditure,
and even the sales force, the field service and other external staff
can participate in the defined workflows without hassles.
Scalability and reliability (e.g. through availability clusters) are
attained by the component-based architecture, which brings about
almost any possible distribution of application parts. Conclusion
Through the means of a Workflow System arbitrary processes can
be modeled and managed. Workflow Management means
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 coordination, integration and at the same time monitoring of all
jobs. Thus Workflow Management is not only a component of the
automation of play-out servers, teleprompters, VTRs, cameras, font
generators, lighting etc., but is suitable in particular also for the
complex communication processes that lie before those tasks. In
consequence users can concentrate on their conceptual and creative
duties and are not distracted by questions of technology or
structure. Nevertheless they can be informed comprehensively
about all materials, processes and their current states. The
technologies involved are established and are being used
comprehensively in other industries. For a deployment in an
enterprise, it is always sensible to begin with a manageable sub-
area first and to learn from this experiences. Workflow Systems
simply grow along.

7.4 Let Us Sum Up

7.5 Unit end Exercises
7.6 Points for Discussion
7.7 Answers to check your progress
7.8 Suggested readings.
1. Broadcast Media, 4th Edition. The Radio Handbook, Carole
Flemming.

2. https://whistlingwoodsinternational.wordpress.com/2015/06/05/fou
r-key-elements-of-tv-production/

3. http://download.nos.org/srsec335new/ch16.pdf

4. http://ceiton.com/CMS/EN/CEITON-CTWS-FKT-Broadcast.pdf

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 UNIT 4
LESSON 8

Equipments for Production

INTRODUCTION

Production equipment control involves production equipment that resides

in the shop floor of a manufacturing company and its purpose is to produce goods
of a wanted quality when provided with production resources of a required
quality. In modern production lines the production equipment is fully automated
using industrial control methods and involves limited unskilled labour
participation. Modern production equipment consists of mechatronic modules that
are integrated according to a control architecture. The most widely known
architectures involve hierarchy, polyarchy, hetaerarchy and hybrid. The methods
for achieving a technical effect are described by control algorithms, which may or
may not utilize formal methods in their design.

We all know that in order to make a food item we need different materials
like vegetables, utensils, knives, spoons, spices, water, oil etc. Similarly, in order
to make a television programme we need various equipments and people required
operating them for the production of a specific kind of programme. Let us now
discuss the equipments required for the production process. Machinery and
Equipment required for Production Imagine you had to paint something on a
canvas. Essentially, you will need a brush, colours and a palette. Similarly, if you
want to make a good programme on television, you need some essential
equipment like camera, lights, sound recorder etc.

UNIT OBJECTIVES

This lesson will help you to

 About Camera. Lights for Television Production

 Microphone, Sound Recorders for the Television Production

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  Video Tape Recorder, Digital platform for storage

 Editing

UNIT STRUCTURE

8.1 Camera
8.2 Lights
8.3 Microphone
8.4 Sound Recorders
8.5 Video Tape
8.6 Editing
8.7 Let Us Sum Up
8.8 Unit end Exercises
8.9 Points for Discussion
8.10 Answers to check your progress
8.11 Suggested readings.

8.1 Camera
Camera The most basic equipment in any and every production is the
camera. In our lives also, many of us or our friends must have used the camera for
capturing various events. If you carefully look at any camera, you will see a lens
in it. This lens selects a part of the visible environment and produces a small
optical image. The camera is principally designed to convert the optical image, as
projected by the lens, into an electrical signal, often called the video signal.

A professional video camera (often called a television camera even though

the use has spread beyond television) is a high-end device for creating electronic
moving images (as opposed to a movie camera, that earlier recorded the images
on film). Originally developed for use in television studios, they are now also used
for music videos, direct-to-video movies, corporate and educational videos,
marriage videos etc. Since the 2010s, most of the professional video cameras are
digital professional video cameras.
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 With the advent of digital video capture in the 2000s, the distinction
between professional video cameras and movie cameras disappeared as
theintermittent mechanism became the same. Nowadays, mid-range cameras
exclusively used for television and other works (except movies) are termed as
professional video cameras.

Most television studio cameras stand on the floor, usually

with pneumatic or hydraulic mechanisms called pedestals to adjust the height, and
are usually on wheels. Any video camera when used along with other video
cameras in a multiple-camera setup is controlled by a device known as CCU
(camera control unit), to which they are connected via a Triax, Fibre Optic or the
almost obsolete multicore cable. The CCU along with genlock and other
equipment is installed in the production control room (PCR) often known as the
Gallery of the television studio. When used outside a formal television studio
in outside broadcasting (OB), they are often on tripods that may or may not have
wheels (depending on the model of the tripod). Initial models
used analog technology, but are now obsolete, supplanted bydigital models.
Studio cameras are light and small enough to be taken off the pedestal and the lens
changed to a smaller size to be used on a Multiple-camera setup's shoulder.
Cameras can be mounted on a tripod, a dolly or a crane, thus making the cameras
much more versatile than previous generations of studio cameras. These cameras
have a tally light, a small signal-lamp used that indicates, for the benefit of those
being filmed as well as the camera operator, that the camera is 'live' - i.e. its signal
is being used for the 'main program' at that moment.

8.2 Lights
Have you ever tried to see something in dim light? It‘s difficult to see.
Isn‘t it ? Now imagine seeing in the dark. You must be wondering how it is
possible to see in the dark? Just like the human eye, the camera also cannot see
without a certain amount of light. There comes the role of lights in television
production. Lighting any object or individual has three main purposes:

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 1. To provide the television camera with adequate illumination for
technically acceptable pictures.

2. To show the viewers what the objects shown on screen actually look
like, say, for instance, if there was no light in the room, we would not have been
able to see how the chair, table or anything else for that matter would look like.
Lights also help us know when the event is taking place, in terms of the season
and the time of the day.

3. To establish the general mood of the event.

In typical lighting setups, lighting instruments serve four functions:

 key lights

 fill lights

 back lights

 background lights

The photo below was shot with so-called formula or three-point lighting.

Even though some lighting directors claim there is no such thing as a "formula"
for lighting, we'll discuss in these modules will provide excellent results for most
of your video work.

We'll have a series of examples that shows this formula in action.

If you study this photo you may detect four light sources:

 one on the left (the key light )

 one of the right (a much dimmer fill light )

 one on the hair (a back light ),

 one on the background (a background light )

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Note: black and white photos and movies are often preferred when studying
lighting because lighting effects are more readily apparent without the dimension
of color.

By the way, in case you are wondering, we call this three-point lighting, even
though it involves four lights. Since the background light is not on the subject, it
doesn't count in three-point lighting.

The combination effect of these four lights (put in exactly the right place, at
exactly the right intensity and with the right quality/coherence), creates an
optimum over-all effect.

We'll start with the key light in this module and take up the other lights later.

Key Light Considerations

As the name implies, the key light is the main light.

In terms of coherence or quality the key light should be in the middle of the hard-
to-soft range.

As you can see from some of the illustrations in these chapters, light that is either
too hard or too soft is not desirable for most subject matter -- especially people.
This middle ground between hard and soft light is often achieved with a Fresnel
light.

In three-point (formula) lighting the key light is placed at an angle of between 30-
and 45-degrees from either the left or the right of the camera.

In the photograph of the model at the start of the module the key light is on the
left, just as it's shown in this drawing.

Forty-five degrees off to one side is best because, among other things, it brings out
optimum texture and form (dimension) in the subject. For the sake of consistency,
the 45-degree angle will be used throughout this discussion.

This brings us to the rule we'll need to keep in mind, especially if multiple
cameras and camera angles are involved in the production:
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Light for the close-up camera.

In multiple-camera dramatic productions you will have to confer with the director
during the camera-blocking phase of preproduction to find out which cameras will
be taking most of the close-ups of each person.

Does it matter if the key is on the right or the left? Possibly.

There are four things you need to think about in making this decision.

Follow source Is there an apparent source of light in the setting such as a window
or nearby table lamp? If so, be sure to key from this direction. consistency In most
settings it will look a bit strange if two people are sitting next to each other and
one is keyed from the left and one from the right.

the person's best side Put the key on this side. It will emphasize the positive and
downplay the negative facial characteristics.

what's most practical If there is a wall or obstruction on one side of the subject -- a
possible problem when doing on-location shoots -- you will generally want to key
from the side that will enable you to use a 45-degree angle.

One thing you don't want is to "put lights everywhere" in a frantic effort to wipe
out every shadow from every conceivable camera angle.

Controlled shadows give subjects desirable form and dimension, and the illusion
of three dimensions.

At the same time, it's sometimes necessary to sacrifice form and dimension to
cover multiple camera angles.

Among other things, the key light creates a catchlight in the eyes of subjects -- a
(single) spectral reflection in each eye that gives the eyes their "sparkle." In the
eyes of the model previously shown notice the single catchlight in the eyes.

When you "put lights everywhere," it not only results in a multitude of catchlights
in the eyes, but it generally results in flat, lifeless lighting.

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Numerous lights hitting talent areas also create a confusing horde of shadows.
Barn doors and flags can be a great help in keeping light out of unwanted areas.

The Key's Vertical Angle

We have established that the horizontal angle for the key light is approximately
45-degrees to the left or right of the subject in relation to the camera. One other
key light angle should be considered: elevation.

Some lighting directors prefer to place the key right next to the camera, or at a
vertical angle of less than 30 degrees. Sometimes in limited on-location conditions
this may be unavoidable.

However, three problems result from reducing these angles:

the full illusion of depth and form will be sacrificed (not especially desirable
unless you want to create a flat effect with minimal surface detail) there is a risk
of having shadows from the key light appear on the background directly behind
the subject (where they are most objectionable) the talent is forced to look almost
directly into a key light when they try to look at their camera, which can result in
squinting, not to mention make reading a camera prompter difficult

Ideally, when the talent face their close-up camera they should see the key light
45-degrees off to one side of the camera at an elevation of about 45 degrees --
which is not unlike the effect we often see outside in sunlight.

8.3 Microphone
There are six common microphone designs:

 Hand held -- the type held by on-camera talent or used for on-location
interviews

 personal mic (lavaliere / clip-on mic) -- Whether hung from a cord around
the neck (lavaliere) or clipped to clothing, these are all referred to as
personal mics.

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  shotgun -- used for on-location production to pick up sounds a moderate
distance from the camera

 boundary effect microphone -- also called PZ or PZM mics These rely

primarily on reflected sounds from a hard surface such as a tabletop

 contact mics -- which pick up sound by being in direct physical contact

with the sound source. These mics are generally mounted on musical
instruments.

 studio microphones -- the largest category of microphone. These include a

number of application designs that we'll discuss.

These six categories include different transducer types, or approaches to

converting sound waves into electrical energy.

Dynamic Microphones

The dynamic mic (also called a moving-coil microphone) is considered the most
rugged professional microphone.

This type of mic is a good choice for electronic newsgathering (ENG) work,
where a wide variety of difficult conditions are regularly encountered.

In a dynamic microphone sound waves hit a diaphragm attached to a coil of fine

wire. The coil is suspended in the magnetic field of a permanent magnet.

When sound waves hit the diaphragm they move the coil of wire within the
magnetic field. As a result, a small electrical current is generated that corresponds
to the original sound waves. This signal must be amplified thousands of times.

When small size, optimum sensitivity, and the best quality are all prime
considerations, another type of mic, the condenser mic, is often preferred.

Condenser/Capacitor Microphones

Condenser microphones (also called capacitor or electret condenser mics) are

capable of top-notch audio quality.

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As shown on the left, they can be made so small that they are almost invisible.
(But, the smaller they are, the more expensive they tend to be!)

Condenser mics aren't as rugged as dynamic mics, and problems can result when
they are used in adverse weather conditions.

Condenser mics work on the principle that governs an electric condenser or

capacitor. An ultra-thin metal diaphragm is stretched tightly above a piece of flat
metal or ceramic. In most condenser mics a power source maintains an electrical
charge between the elements.

Sound waves hitting the diaphragm cause fluctuations in an electrical charge,

which then must be greatly amplified by a preamplifier (pre-amp).

The pre-amp can be located within the microphone housing or in an outboard

electronic pack. Although most pre-amps output an analog signal, some of the
newer models immediately convert the output to digital.

Because they require a pre-amp, this means that, unlike the dynamic mics
discussed earlier, most condenser mics require a source of power, either from an
AC (standard Alternating Current) electrical power supply or from batteries.

An AC power supply for a condenser mic is sometimes built into an audio mixer
or audio board. This is referred to as a phantom power supply.

When this type of power supply is used, the mic cord ends up serving two
functions: it delivers the signal from the mic to the mixer and it carries power
from the mixer to the pre-amp of the condenser mic.

Some camcorder instructions recommend condenser mics because the pre-amp

provides a high enough audio level to reduce undesirable system noise.

Of course, using batteries to power the pre-amp of the condenser mic is more
convenient -- you don't have to use a special mixer or audio board connected to an
electrical power source.

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But battery-powered condenser mics introduce a problem of their own: at the end
of their life cycle the batteries can go out without warning.

To get around any unexpected problems, especially on important productions, two

miniature condenser mics are often used together. If one mic goes out, the other
can immediately be switched on.

This double microphone technique is called dual redundancy.

Ribbon Mics

Except possibly for an announce booth (shown here), ribbon mics are seldom
used in TV production.

Although they can impart a deep, resonant "coloring" to sound, they are fragile
and highly sensitive to moving air. This precludes their use outside the studio and
on most booms -- which covers most TV production applications. Ribbon mics
were primary used in radio studios.

Boundary Effect Mics

PZ (also called PZM) stands for sound pressure microphone, which comes under
the heading of aboundary effect microphone. This mic relies entirely on reflected
sound.

In specific situations, such as when placed on a tabletop, a PZ mic will provide a

pickup that's superior to that of other types of mics.

Contact Mics

As the name suggests, contact mics pick up sound by being in direct physical
contact with the sound source. These mics are generally mounted on musical
instruments, such as the surface of an acoustic bass, the sounding board of a
piano, or near the bridge of a violin.

Contact mics have the advantage of being able to eliminate interfering external
sounds and not being influenced by sound reflections from nearby objects. Their
flat sides distinguish them in appearance from small personal mics.
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Shotgun Mics

So called shotgun mics with their hypercardioid or narrower angles of acceptance

are one of the most widely used types of mics for on-location video work.

Since they are quite directional, they provide good pickup when used at a distance
of 2 to 4 meters (7-13 feet) from the talent. Like other types of directional
microphones, they tend to reject sound that would interfere with the on-camera
talent.

Highly directional mics should not be used close to talent because they exaggerate
bass. In addition to on-location settings, they are useful in stage and PA
applications where amplified speakers are being used, because they can deliver
higher audio levels before feedback starts.

The drawing below shows another way basic microphone sensitivity patterns
(polar patterns) can be visualized. These drawings represent top views of the
microphones and the light blue arrows represent the direction the mics are
pointed. The magenta areas represent the areas of maximum sensitivity.

8.4 Sound Recorders

DATs (digital audiotapes) are capable of audio quality that exceeds what's
possible with CDs.

Although the cassette is about two-thirds the size of a standard analog audio
cassette, its two-hour capacity is 66 percent greater than a standard 80-minute CD.

Even though DAT has been largely replaced by hard (computer) disk recording,
the DAT format is still used to a limited degree in film and television recording.

One of its major advantages is that it incorporates time code that can synchronize
audio with other devices.

Computer Hard Drives

Today, radio stations and professional production facilities rely primarily on

computer hard drives for recording and playing back music, commercials, sound

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effects, and general audio tracks. Recording audio material on computer hard
drives has several advantages. First, the material can be indexed in an electronic
"table of contents" display that makes it easy to find what you need. This index
can also list all of the relevant data about the "cuts" (selections) -- duration, artists,
etc.

Second, by scrolling up or down the index you have (with the help of a mouse or
keyboard) instant access to the selections. Once recorded on a hard drive, there is
no wear and tear on the recording medium when audio tracks are repeatedly
played.

Another advantage is that the selections can't be accidentally misfiled after use. (If
you've accidentally put a CD back in the wrong case, you know the problems this
can represent.)

And, finally, unlike most CDs, hard drive space can easily be erased and reused.

Data Compression

Both digital audio and video are routinelycompressed by extracting data from the
original signal that will not be missed by most listeners or viewers.

This makes it possible to record the data in much less space, and, thus, faster and
more economically.

In the case of audio compression, there is considerable controversy over what is

gained and what is lost. "The Loudness Wars: Why Music Sounds Worse" on
NPR discusses this controversy. An example of what is lost through compression
can be found in "The Loudness Wars, A Real Example!"

As we will see in the chapters on video where this process is discussed in more
detail, data can be compressed to various degrees using different compression
schemes.

Although hard drives are extremely reliable, they do occasionally "crash,"

especially after thousands of hours of use or if a major jolt damages the delicate
drive and head mechanism.
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Unless anti-virus and anti-malware programs are used, and assuming the
computer is connected to the Internet or "the outside world," the computer
operating system can be infected with viruses and malware. Among other
problems this can can result in a loss of recorded material.

With these possibilities in mind, critical files and information should always be
"backed up" on other recording media.

IC and PC Card Recorders

Some audio production is now being done with PC card and IC recorders. These
and similar audio and video recorders use a variety of solid-state devices, referred
to as flash memory.

These memory cards contain no moving parts and are impervious to shock and
temperature changes.

The data in these memory modules can be transferred directly to a computer for
editing.

These units typically give you the choice of two basic recording formats: MPEG-
2, a compressed data format, and PCM (pulse code modulation) which is an
uncompressed digital format. The latter is used with CD players, DAT recorders,
and on computer editing programs that use wave (.wav) files.

RAM Audio Recorders

As shown on the right, this new generation of recorders can be a fraction of the
size of other types of recorders.

However, unlike recorders with removable media, the stored audio must generally
be played back from the unit, itself.

The iPod Era

When iPod-type devices and computers that could "rip" (copy) musical selections
from CDs and Internet sources arrived on the scene, consumer audio recording
andplayback changed in a major way.
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Users can assemble hours of their favorite music (up to 2,000 songs) on a
computer and transfer it to a pocket-sized, solid-state listening device such as an
iPod (on the left) or to one of the new generation cell phones (on the right).

"Podcasts" from TV networks or the Internet can also be downloaded and listened
to or viewed at the user's convenience.

With the iPod nano (photo on the left) you can watch up to 5 hours of TV shows,
music videos, movies, and podcasts.

Although Apple Computer initially popularized these devices, many

manufacturers now produce their own versions.

Audio Editing Systems

Audio editing used to require physically cutting and splicing audiotape — an

arduous process. Today, there are numerouscomputer-based audio editing
programs available. Many are shareware that can be downloaded from the
Internet. Shareware can be downloaded and tested, generally for about a month,
before the program quits working and you need to pay for it. Once you pay, you
may be given an unlock code that will enable you to use the program for an
unlimited time. Often, minor updates to the program are free; major updates will
probably involve an upgrade charge. In addition to basic editing, audio editing
programs offer audio filtering, manipulation, and an endless range of special audio
effects.

The audio line above shows how a single channel of sound appears in an audio
editor. The vertical red line indicates the cursor (selector) position. Much as a
cursor is used to mark words in a word processing program to make changes as
needed, the cursor in an audio time line provides a point of reference for making
audio changes.

The display above shows how the time lines are integrated into a typical audio
editor. Most programs use a computer mouse to drag-and-drop segments and
visual effects onto a timeline (the graphical representation of the audio along a

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time continuum). The hard drives on computer-based audio editing systems can
also store a wide range of sound effects that can be pulled down to a time line to
accompany narration and music.

8.5 Video Tape

Although the concept of "live" may have positive connotations, recording a
production has many advantages.

 once recorded, program segments can be reorganized and rearranged in

postproduction for optimum pacing and dramatic effect

 mistakes on the part of the talent or crew can be corrected, by restarting a

show or segment

 the length of a program or segment can be shortened or lengthened during

editing

 program content can be embellished through the use of a wide array of

editing and visual effect techniques

 production costs can be saved by scheduling production talent, crew, and

production facilities for optimum efficiency, and

 once recorded, programs can be time-shifted or played back to meet the

needs of time zones and the programming preferences of local stations

Even when productions are produced on film, which a few still are, they are
routinely converted to a video recording before broadcast.

In the last few years preferences in recording media have been rapidly shifting.
The chart below shows the relatively popularity of five top video media in 2012.

Film and videotape have been losing ground while solid-state memory has been
gaining ground.

The Videotape Recording Process

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Although videotape is being phased out at TV stations in favor of hard disks or
solid-state devices, for decades it was the dominant recording medium in TV
production. Today, it's primarily used for archival storage.

The videotape recording process was first demonstrated in 1953, and the first
machines went into service in 1956.

Video recording revolutionized TV production.

Two-inch wide videotape (pictured at the left) was the first practical video
recording medium. Because it used four video heads to scan a complete video
picture on two-inch wide tape, this system was referred to as the 2-inch quad
system.

At the other end of the size scale was the Hi8 camcorder (right) that used
videotape that's only 8mm wide.

All videotape formats used video heads that traveled across the surface of the tape
and left magnetic traces in the tape's coating.

To be able to record the very high frequencies associated with video, not only
must the tape be moving, but also the heads, themselves, must spin over the
surface of the tape. This ends up being a little like walking along a moving
sidewalk; the two speeds are added together.

Disk-Based Recording

DVD

In 1997, the DVD was introduced. The initials stand for both digital versatile
disk and digital videodisk. Although DVDs resemble audio CDs, they are capable
of holding much more information -- up to 17GB of data. To achieve capacities up
to this level some innovations were added to the standard audio CD approach.

First, it is possible to recorded at two disk surface levels on the same side of the
disk. (Note Blu-ray in the chart below.) For even greater a storage capacity both
sides of the disk can be used.

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Red light lasers were originally used, but the recording-playback density of data
advanced in the early 2000s with the introduction of lasers using a shorter
wavelength blue light -- hence, the name, Blu-ray.

The chart below compares standard audio CDs with several versions of DVDs.
Recording technology has been demonstrated that raises the Blu-ray data capacity
to 200GB for a double-sided platter.

Data compression is used in almost all audio and video digital formats. Data
compression is a little like freeze-dried instant coffee; elements are removed that
can be later restored without appreciably affecting the final result.

In the same way that instant coffee is almost as good as the real thing, compressed
video is almost as good as the original video signal.

Even though an engineer with a sharp eye (or ear) can tell the difference (just as
coffee connoisseurs can tell the difference between instant and freshly brewed
coffee), by "dehydrating" video and audio signals they take up much less digital
space.

Since the spiral tracks on the DVD disk surface are microscopic in size, it means
that DVD equipment requires a high level of mechanical precision.

The move from videotape to DVDs was also accelerated when DVDs became
cheaper to manufacture than VHS tapes.

DVDs also allow for random-access, while VHS tapes were totally linear in
nature. This means that with a DVD you can almost instantly jump to any point in
a recording. No lengthy fast-forward or rewind process is involved.

The high data capacity of DVDs also means that a production can include a
number of "extras."

Depending on the length of the original production, these extra options may
include out-takes, audio in multiple languages, and commentary from the stars or
production personnel.

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The narration from the director can be of particular value to people in production
because it can add significant insight into music selection, production problems,
acting issues, and the reason why some scenes were deleted.

DVDs are typically backwards compatible with standard audio CDs, which means
that you can play an audio CD on a DVD player.

Although initial DVD machines didn't allow for recording, more recently DVD-
R (DVDs that could be recorded once) and DVD-RW(DVDs that could be used to
record or rewrite multiple times) were introduced.

High-Definition DVDs

In 2006 we began to see "home theaters" centered around 5.1 sound from HDTV
videodisks (and even 7.1 sound, with an option for two more speakers). At the end
of 2007, there were two major competing and incompatible standards for DVDs in
the high-definition. There was the HD-DVD format led by Toshiba consortium
and Blu-ray backed by a Sony-led consortium.

By early 2008, after several major motion picture studios backed away from HD-
DVD, Toshiba conceded that Blu-ray had won the HD format competition. The
public had also become aware of the picture quality advantage of Blu-ray, as
shown in side-by-side comparisons of the various video formats.

Disk-Based Camcorders

In 1995, two companies introduced the first disk-based camcorders, primarily

designed for ENG work. After going through a few generations of improvement, a
disk-based camcorder was introduced in 2002 with a three-hour capacity and the
ability to simultaneously record on DVCAM videotape. Once video and audio
segments are recorded with the professional versions of disk-based camcorders,
the segments can be played back almost instantly and in any order. We'll have
more on this in the next module.

Solid State Memory

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Many camcorders -- amateur, prosumer, and professional -- now record on solid
state-memory cards, sometimes called flash memory. The memory module shown
in front of the credit card on the left can hold up to 90 minutes of video. This
approach provides faster camera-to-computer transfer speeds. Plus, since there are
no moving parts in the camcorder, maintenance costs are reduced to a fraction of
what they were with videotape, or even videodisc.

Consumer-grade camcorders were the first to use solid-state recording or flash

memory. In 2003, after quality and recording capacity had advanced sufficiently,
this type of recording also moved to professional camcorders. As we noted earlier,
there are currently many types of solid-state or flash memory.

Camera memory cards can be slipped into a computer and quickly accessed by an
editing program. A common transfer approach for cameras with hard disks is with
camera-to-computer cable -- often a fire Wire connection.

File Servers and File-Based Systems

While we are talking about digital recording approaches we might briefly venture
into the editing domain and talk about file servers (also called video
servers and media servers).

Instead of videotape, file servers store audio and video information on high-
capacity computer disks. Most broadcast and production facilities are now
"tapeless," meaning that file servers are used almost exclusively. These are
referred to as file-based systems.

A cutaway view of a high-capacity computer hard disk is shown here. File servers
typically consist of numerous computer hard drives.

A file server can be thought of as a kind of high-capacity depository of audio and

video segments that can be accessed from workstations(computer editing stations)
throughout a production facility.

A production facility may have numerous workstations that all tie into a single,
high-capacity server.
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This concept, which is widely used in newsrooms, is referred to asfile-based
architecture.

In its structure it's similar to a LAN (local area network) used in many institutions
to tie desktop computers into the company's main computer.

Once material has been stored on a server, access time is virtually instantaneous.

8.6 Editing
Dedicated and Software-Based Editors
A dedicated editor is designed to do only one thing: video editing.

Video editing is just one of the tasks software-based editors can perform; it all
depends on the software you load. It was in the early 1990s that sophisticated
video editing hardware and software first became available for desktop computers.
By 2000, the best laptop computers had become powerful enough to handle
sophisticated editing assignments. The Video Toaster system for the Amiga
computer was the first widely used system. The basic screen for that system is
shown here. The Toaster was both a simple video switcher and an editing system.

Thereafter, several software companies introduced computer-based editing

systems for the Apple and Windows operating systems. Today's desktop and
laptop computers can rival the capabilities of dedicated editing systems.

Simple, Free Editing Systems

Mac and Windows machines both have simple, free video editors.

Although they aren't capable of sophisticated effects, for assembling audio and
video clips with basic transition effects (such as those typically found on
YouTube) they are quite adequate.

Although some people prefer the Mac editor, the Windows Live Movie Maker
shown here is simplicity in itself, and as a free Windows download it's potentially
available to many computer users.

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You only have to drag the video clips (either stills or movie clips) from anywhere
on your computer to the area on the right. You can trim segments as needed, add
filter effects, and create special effect transitions between video segments.

If you wish, the program can automatically space the timing of the video segments
to correspond with selected music or audio. The result can be output in the .WMV
file format.

Apple has a movie editor for a minimal cost.

These editors can be used to create a quick "blueprint" of a production to get an

idea of how shots will flow together.

Later, if you need more elaborate visual effect filters or color correction, the
original footage can be put trough a more sophisticated video editor.

The illustration below shows a basic representation of how scenes, transitions, and
audio sources can be represented on the timeline.

Note in the top half of the illustration that transition effects (in black) are used
between scenes one and two, and two and three.

So we move from scene one through a transition to scene two, and then through a
transition effect to scene 3.

A mouse is used to drag the elements into different positions.

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In the lower half of the illustration the audio elements (music, narration, and
visual effect tracks) are shown in light blue. The height of the blue areas indicates
the audio levels. Note that the music and sound effects are faded down (by
dragging the red lines down with a mouse) as the narration is introduced.

Compositing:

The question arises, what happens if you select two video sources for display at
the same time -- for example, in the above illustrationScene 1 and Scene 2 without
the transition effect that moves fully from one to the other?

Answer: As you might expect, you simply end up with one scene on top of the
other -- which may result in a mess, or (if you know what you are doing) a crafted
effect in compositing or layering.

In it's most basic form you get a superimposition ("super") or a key effect, which
we illustrate in Module 60 through the use of a video switcher. However, with an
editing system such as the one shown below it's possible to combine multiple
video sources and create much more sophisticated effects.

For example, you can place at least two video clips on your editor timeline, one
directly above the other, and by adjusting the individual layers -- turning down the
opacity, cropping, or keying out parts of each one as needed -- you'll see the
combined effect.

Using this technique you can add titles over video, substitute elements in a scene
(such adding a new background) or create a variety of visual effects.

The Avid editing screen shown below more accurately depicts how timelines
actually look on an editing system. This particular system allows you to mix
standard-definition and high-definition video in the same project -- an important
consideration during this period of analog-to-digital transition. (Avid's Media
Composer is used in the majority of network programming.)

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Although you can edit audio on a machine like the one above (note the two tracks
of audio on the timeline at the bottom of the screen) for more demanding audio
editing you will want to consider a sophisticated audio editing system, such as
this one.

With sophisticate editing systems there are a variety of video filters and plug-
ins available (software that adds various effect options to the original editing
program).

Examples in video are various types of blur, color correction, cropping,

sharpening, fog effects, geometric distortions, and even image stabilization.

The latter attempts to lock onto a central element in a scene and keep it from
moving, thus canceling moderate camera shake. More on that later.

Although it's not possible to create detail that isn't in video to start with, with
some plug-ins it's possible to rather convincingly convert standard definition video
(SDTV) to HDTV.

As we've noted, there are both dedicated and software based laptop editing
systems.

An example of a rugged dedicated system is this Panasonic field editing unit,

primarily used in news work. Note that the controls designed exclusively for video
and audio editing.

However, with computer-based systems you have the advantage of a wide variety
of "off the shelf" laptop computers, plus the software can be readily switched and
upgraded.

In addition to editing, computer-based systems can accommodate other computer

programs, such as those used to write news scripts.

Computer-based editing used to be confined to especially modified ("souped up")

desktop computers. However, in recent years high end laptop computers can do
most anything desktop systems can.

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These computers typically use a FireWire, IEEE 1394, USB-2, USB-C,ori.Link
cable connection to download the video from the camcorder to the computer's
hard drive.

Because video information takes up a lot of digital space, these computers need a
high-capacity hard-drive. (One minute of uncompressed video requires about one
gigabyte (GB) of disk space.)

Even though most computer-based editing systems today are nonlinear, at this
point we need to point out the difference between linear and nonlinear systems

Linear and Nonlinear Editing Systems

Working on a nonlinear editing system is like working with a sophisticated word

processor. Using a computer screen and a mouse you can randomly cut and past
segments and move them around until you are satisfied with the result.

Working on a linear editing system is a bit like using a typewriter to type a term
paper; you need to assemble everything in the proper sequence as you go along.
After it's all on paper (or in this case recorded), adding, deleting or rearranging
things can be a major problem.

With nonlinear editing the video and audio segments are not permanently
recorded as you go along as they are in linear editing. The edit decisions exist in
computer memory as a series of internal digital markers that tell the computer
where to look for segments on the hard disk.

This means that at any point you can instantly check your work and make
adjustments. It also means that you can easily (and seemingly endlessly!)
experiment with audio and video possibilities.

Sony's complete high-definition NLE (nonlinear editing, or random

access editing) system is shown below. This editing system compliments Sony's
line of XDCAM cameras.

159
Although a sophisticated nonlinear (random access) editing system such as the
one above may take a while to learn, once you figure one out, you can transfer the
basic skills to other editing programs.

After you finalize your edit decisions most editing systems allow you to save your
EDL (edit decision list) — preferably on some removable media that you can take
with you in case you need to reload it again to make changes.

The final edited video and audio output can be handled in two ways.

It can be "printed" (transferred) in final, linear form to videotape or DVD or it can

remain on a computer drive to be recalled and modified as needed. The latter
approach, which is often used for segments in newscasts, requires high-capacity
storage devices such as...

File Servers

Video and audio segments—especially HDTV—take up a great amount of hard

disk storage space.

Instead of trying to replicate the needed storage in each desktop computer, many
facilities use a centralized mass storage device called a file server, sometimes
called a media server or video server (shown here.) These were introduced in an
earlier module.

A centralized video server not only gives all of the computer editing stations the
advantage of having access to large amounts of storage, but it means that
segments can be reviewed, edited, or played back from any of the editing
workstations (desktop or laptop computers equipped with a network connection)
within the facility.

As high-speed, Internet connections become commonplace, you will be able to

link to a media server from any location — even your home — and edit and re-
edit pieces. Many professionals are doing that now.

8.7 Let Us Sum Up

8.8 Unit end Exercises
160
8.9 Points for Discussion
8.10 Answers to check your progress
8.11 Suggested readings.

1. http://www.cybercollege.com/tvp031.htm

2. http://www.cybercollege.com/tvp056.htm

3. http://www.cybercollege.com/tvp_ind.htm

4. Tape Recording Used by Filmless 'Camera", The New York Times,

Nov. 12, 1951, p. 21

5. Tape-Recorded TV Nears Perfection, The New York Times, Dec. 31,

1952, p. 10.

6. Magnetic Tape Used By RCA to Photograph Television Program, The

Wall Street Journal, Dec. 2, 1953, p. 1.

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 UNIT 5
LESSON 9

Freelance Opportunities in Television

INTRODUCTION

First, it‘d be helpful to define what journalism is and what journalists do,
before moving on to freelance journalism. The dictionary.com definition of
journalism is ‗the occupation of reporting, writing, editing, photographing, or
broadcasting news or of conducting any news organization as a business.‘ So,
journalists investigate and report on issues, event and trends that they think the
public will be interested in and, importantly, they do it in a timely manner.

UNIT OBJECTIVES

From this section you can learn

 What is Freelancing?

 The freelance opportunities in Television

 Advantages and Disadvantages of Freelancing

UNIT STRUCTURE

10.1 Freelancing

10.2 Freelancing Industrial Perspective

10.3 Contacts and Networking

10.4 Ownership and Control

10.5 Independent Production – The Indies

10.6 Let Us Sum Up

10.7 Unit End Exercises

10.8 Points for Discussion

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 10.9 Answers to check your progress

10.10 Suggested Readings

9.1 Freelancing

The dictionary definition of the freelance is deceptively simple. It goes to the heart
of the matter by talking about short-term assignments and that‘s what, at its
simplest, being a freelance is all about – working on a particular project until it is
finished – and then moving on. Like most things in life, however, things are not
quite as simple as they first appear and a simple dictionary definition is not going
to get us very far in an understanding of freelancing in the audio-visual industries.
The aim of this chapter (and in some ways of the whole book) is to arrive at an
understanding of just what a freelance is, what a freelance does and how a
freelance does it. To do this we will need to look at the idea of the freelance from
a number of different points of view. In this way we may come to an
understanding of what is involved in actually being or becoming a freelance. The
term freelance is used widely and, it has to be said, very loosely. Its meaning can
and does change depending on the speaker and on the nature of the conversation.
Let‘s take one or two examples.

FREELANCE MEANS BEING UNEMPLOYED (OR ALMOST) For some the

expression suggests thinly disguised unemployment. Just as an actor might
describe himself as resting if he has no work, so a director might describe himself
as a freelance if his income stream is intermittent, unreliable or simply non-
existent. In other words, freelance may mean that you aspire to work in some
capacity in the audio-visual industries, but you haven‘t actually got a job.

FREELANCE MEANS FREEDOM TO CHOOSE At the other end of the

spectrum, some of our most distinguished media professionals would describe
themselves as freelance and it would be very surprising if their income stream was
intermittent or unreliable! In a recent interview, correspondent Rageh Omaar

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talked about his decision to leave the employment of the BBC. He said: ‗It just
made sense to go freelance; most of the names at the BBC are freelance.‘1 The
reason for his decision was the freedom that his freelance status would give him to
pursue his interests across a broad field of activity in both journalism and
television production.

FREELANCE MEANS YOU HAVE NO CHOICE For many, if not most, new
and aspiring entrants to the industry, the freedom to choose a project or to choose
an employer is an undreamed of luxury. Reality and experience suggest that if you
are determined to work in broadcasting, freelancing may be the only way to
develop a career if offers of permanent employment are not forthcoming. A great
deal of evidence suggests that most freelances and certainly those in the early part
of their working lives are freelance of necessity and not by choice. Having chosen
radio or television as their preferred field of work, they have been obliged to
develop a freelance career because they have been unable to secure a permanent
contract of employment.

FREELANCE IS THE ONLY OPTION Of the many freelances I have spoken to

in the preparation of this book, I can‘t recall a single individual under the age of
about fifty who wouldn‘t prefer to be permanently employed. That is not to say
that they are not happy and fulfilled in their chosen field, indeed most of them
regard themselves as privileged to work in an industry where variety, change and
often excitement and travel may well be an accepted and expected part of the daily
landscape. For most people, though, the ideal seems to be to secure a permanent
full-time job with a major employer like the BBC, ITV, an independent
production company or a facilities house.

FREELANCES IN CONTEXT Freelances in a changing industry There have

always been freelances in the broadcasting industry. In the past these were often
specialist workers with particular craft skills. So, for example, a costume designer,
much in demand for specific skills in, say, seventeenth-century clothing, would be
needed for a particular drama. This designer might then move on from a BBC

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series to a commercial cinema production. Similarly a wildlife cameraman (and in
those days they usually were men) might be engaged for a programme which
called for his particular skills and experience. These might include the ability to
locate, track and film big game in Africa.

When the programme ended, the cameraman would move on to other work quite
possibly with a different company. Freelancing was, for these few, a way of
specialising, of doing only the work they particularly wanted to do and of
continuing to hone and develop their particular skills. Because of such
specialisation, and the demand for their skills (even if for concentrated but limited
periods), these freelances often commanded higher wages than their employed
counterparts, and this percentage lift (as it was known in the BBC) more than
compensated for lack of pension, holiday and other benefits. Today this kind of
specialist freelancing is still common, though probably only a small proportion of
all freelance employment. Until relatively recently, however, and certainly well
into the 1980s, if you worked in broadcasting then in all probability you would
have been permanently employed by one of a small number of major employers,
most of whom would have been recognised as household names. These would
have been the BBC, ITV companies like Granada or TVAM or independent local
radio stations like Capital or Radio Clyde.

This period of relative stability in the structure and operation of the broadcasting
industry (and in patterns of employment in the sector) rapidly gave way to a
period of unprecedented change and upheaval. The 1990 Broadcasting Act
imposed on the BBC and ITV companies a duty to commission 25 per cent of
programming from independent production companies (known in the trade as
Indies). This consolidated the market for independently produced programmes
which had already been established by the launch of Channel 4 in 1982. Channel 4
was set up as a commissioner as opposed to a producer of television. As a result of
these changes, the independent production sector expanded rapidly. Small and
often financially insecure companies proliferated, competing for a share of
available commissions. Any employment from these companies usually lasted as
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long as the commission and contracts were often issued on a month-by-month or
commission-by-commission basis. This pattern of employment continues to be the
norm.

As the independent sector grew, internal changes in the UK‘s biggest broadcaster,
the BBC, also had a profound effect on employment practices. Producer Choice
introduced an internal market to the corporation. This gave BBC producers the
ability to choose between internal BBC suppliers of services and outside
companies. It was now possible for a series filmed by a BBC crew to be edited
outside in a facilities house. Similarly ‗outside‘ crews could be hired and graphics
facilities bought-in. In this way the BBC sought both to reduce costs and to
transfer business risk and uncertainty to outside companies. Sometimes by choice,
often by redundancy, many technical, craft and production staff left the BBC.
They either set up their own businesses offering their services to the BBC and
others, or went to work for such facilities. It will be obvious even from this
necessarily brief overview that, as a result of these far-reaching structural changes,
patterns of employment in the broadcasting industry changed too. This has been
described as the casualisation of employment in the sector.

The echo of the expression casual labour is quite deliberate and reflects concern
about the short-term nature of many engagements and the vulnerability and lack of
security experienced by many, especially (but by no means exclusively), at the
outset of their careers. This then is the world of work to which the freelance
aspires. A conservative estimate suggests that every year 3,000 young people
leave British universities with media studies degrees of one kind or another. No
doubt similar if not greater numbers leave institutions of further education with
varying qualifi- cations in this broad subject area. Obviously, not all these young
graduates will be seeking careers in media-related employment. Equally obvious,
however, is the fact that many graduates from other disciplines will also be
looking for a job in radio or television. Whatever the precise statistics might be,
common sense and experience lead to one conclusion – that jobs in the media
industries are highly sought-after and that competition is fierce. Most students
166
graduate in early summer just at the point when many companies offering the
potential of work are preparing to wind down their business operations for the
summer whilst their crews and managers are on the road making programmes.
This is not an especially good time for recruitment. Sterner commentators will
point out that preparations for employment should have started well before
graduation, and so they should, but other preoccupations may well have
intervened to disrupt this best of all possible worlds! For whatever reason, the
search for employment may not have been successful and, like the majority of
their contemporaries, recent graduates will find themselves competing with each
other for jobs.

9.2 Freelancing Industrial Perspective

The freelance profile This chapter has been all about trying to find out what a
freelance is, and what a freelance does. So far, however, we haven‘t really looked
at the data that‘s available to us. From it we can put together a fairly sharp and
accurate picture. The Skillset Freelance Survey published in January 2002 tells us
that: • two-thirds of freelances are men. • 7.6 per cent are of ethnic minority
origin. • the average age is 39, though the age profile of women is much lower,
with 56 per cent aged 35 or under. • over one-quarter of them have a media studies
degree; a further quarter have a degree in another subject. • 15 per cent have a
postgraduate degree in a media-related subject. • in financial terms, a third of
freelances earned less than £20,000 in the preceding year, though 10 per cent of
the men earned more than £50,000. • 60 per cent of freelances live in London or
the South East.5 This then is the freelance in the audio-visual industry; a
demanding, rewarding and in many ways privileged occupation. The freelance
world is a tough, hardworking world too and has more than its fair share of
disappointment and difficulties. Yet despite the problems, it‘s a world which
every year, thousands want to join and in which even more thousands seek to
prosper

9.3 Contacts and Networking

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The television and radio industries are very much network based – each
geographical area of the country will have its own media haunts and both formal
and informal groups. Plugging into these overlapping and interconnected networks
is one of the most important activities the freelance and the intending freelance
can engage in. It is difficult to give advice on how to network, but it is possible to
suggest possible approaches: • Take care to find out as much as you can about
groups and meetings which might be relevant to your interests. • Target these
groups carefully; you will not be able to give time to everything that is going on,
so choose carefully. • Spend time nurturing your contacts, this is not something
you can rush. • Be subtle, nothing is quite as overpowering as a work-hungry
freelance eagerly clutching a handful of business cards. If you gain a reputation
for button-holing potential employers, they will simply avoid you in order to
avoid embarrassment and boredom. • Be prepared to work. If you have joined a
trade union or interest group, one of the best ways of developing contacts is to
volunteer and to help. Engaging in common tasks is a good way of getting to
know people and forming a bond. Someone who knows you and trusts you is far
more likely to offer you work or to tell you if they know of opportunities which
might interest you. If you‘re very lucky, they might even recommend you! Being
prepared to engage in the work of the group demonstrates your ability to be a team
player, and indicates that you are a giver as well as a taker. • Polite persistence is a
phrase well worth remembering. It embodies a recognition that many media
employers are extremely busy and however well-intentioned they are, find
difficulty allocating time to those trying to start a media career. They may well
need tactful reminders to keep promises of work, work experience, introductions
or other kinds of help. There is a delicate middle path to be walked between
tenacity and determination on the one hand and pestering on the other. A strategy
is needed to find ways of gaining attention without getting a reputation as a
nuisance!

9.4 Ownership and Control

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The BBC – all of the BBC‘s activities including television, radio, interactive and
commercial operations are the responsibility of the board of governors of the
BBC. They in turn operate under the Corporation‘s Royal Charter, due for renewal
at the end of 2006. The BBC is its own regulator in that the governors take
ultimate responsibility for editorial policy, content, and for taste and decency
issues. In this sense the BBC regulates itself without reference to outside agencies.
The Hutton report in 2004 made a number of damaging criticisms of the BBC‘s
control of editorial policy and led directly to the resignations of both the Chairman
of the Governors and the Director General of the corporation. This was as a result
of Andrew Gilligan‘s report on the Radio 4 Today programme about the
government‘s handling of intelligence material concerning weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq.

It remains to be seen whether, in the light of this damaging controversy, the BBC
is permitted to retain quite the same degree of autonomy that it has previously
enjoyed or whether it will be subject to some external regulation. Ofcom – apart
from the BBC and S4C, all television broadcasting – analogue, terrestrial digital,
satellite or cable – is licensed and regulated by Ofcom. In the case of all
broadcasters, including the BBC and S4C, the regulator has the authority • to
direct that a programme not be repeated; • to direct that a correction or a statement
of Ofcom‘s findings be broadcast; • to impose a fine (to a maximum of £250,000
on the BBC and S4C).

With the exception of the BBC, Channel 4 or S4C, Ofcom has the power in an
extreme case to shorten or even to revoke a broadcaster‘s licence. Nevertheless,
part of the intention of the legislation23 which created Ofcom was to deregulate
and to take a lighter touch in its approach to carrying out its duties than some of
the bodies whose work it had inherited. Under the Communications Act, 2003,
Ofcom has a duty to:

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• balance the promotion of choice and competition with the duty to foster
plurality, informed citizenship, protect viewers, listeners and customers, and
promote cultural diversity.

• serve the interests of the citizen-consumer as the communications industry enters

the digital age.

• support the need for innovators, creators and investors to flourish within markets
driven by full and fair competition between all providers.

• encourage the evolution of electronic media and communications networks to

the greater benefit of all who live in the United Kingdom. ITV – as suggested
earlier, the ITV network has been changing through a series of mergers and
acquisitions.

Its structure was essentially federal with a number of independent companies like
Granada and HTV, for example, providing content for their own regions and, in
addition, contributing programming for the entire network. As a result of
legislation relaxing rules on media ownership, the merger of Carlton and Granada
was accomplished with the approval of the Secretary of State in early 2004. The
ownership of twelve of the fifteen regional licences is now in the hands of one
company, ITV plc. At present, the licences for Grampian and Scottish (owned by
SMG plc), Channel and Ulster are outside the ownership of ITV plc. How long
this will continue to be the case remains to be seen.

It should also be noted that two licences remain outside the strictly regional nature
of the ITV network. These are TVAM and ITN. TVAM holds the licence to
broadcast throughout the UK at breakfast time from 6 am to 9.25 am and under
the terms of its licence is committed to the provision of a broad range of
programming including news and current affairs. The company has also
committed itself to regional content opt-outs (provided by regional broadcasters),
for news, weather and travel and a regional representation within the main body of
its programming. ITN (Independent Television News) provides news
programming for the ITV network and Channel 4. The organisation also provided
170
news for Five (formerly Channel Five) until January 2005 when Five awarded its
contract for the provision of news bulletins to Sky News.

It should also be noted that ITN provides a broad range of other news-related
services. These include the production of radio news for a large number of
commercial radio stations under the banner of IRN (Independent Radio News).
Channel 4 – established in 1982, a publicly-owned corporation, with a board
appointed by Ofcom (inheriting the roles and responsibilities of the former
regulator, the Independent Television Commission or ITC). According to the
Communication Act of 2003 its particular remit is to:

• demonstrate innovation, experimentation and creativity;

• appeal to the tastes and interests of a culturally diverse society;

• include programmes of an educational nature;

• exhibit a distinctive character.

Of particular interest to the freelance is that Channel 4 does not produce its own
programmes; all its output is commissioned or bought in from sources outside the
corporation. In that sense Channel 4 has been the single major contributor to the
rise of the independent production sector in the UK. Five – the latest, and
presumably the last of the terrestrial stations to be licensed started broadcasting in
1997. After a rather interesting start as Channel 5 (initially attracting its audience
with late evening adult content) it is now rebranded as Five and is gaining a
reputation for new approaches to arts, history and factual programming. Five
generates freelance employment because its programmes are commissioned
externally, mainly from independent producers and are not made in house. S4C
(Channel 4 Wales) – on air since 1982, despite its title, S4C is not Channel 4 in
Wales, though it does re-broadcast much of C4‘s programming, although
programmes are generally rescheduled. It has a statutory obligation to broadcast in
the Welsh language at peak times, and has a second digital channel S4C 2 which
is primarily concerned with coverage of the National Assembly for Wales. The

171
station is funded directly by treasury grant, supplemented by the sale of its own
advertising. Most significantly, S4C commissions all its programmes from
independent producers and HTV and therefore indirectly provides a significant
amount of work for freelances in Wales. BSkyB (British Sky Broadcasting) –
Sky‘s first programmes were downloaded to British homes for the first time in
1989 from the Astra satellite. Eighteen months later around one million homes
were connected. Aggressive programming, marketing and rights acquisitions,
especially in sports meant that by the mid-1990s satellite and cable accounted for
a 10.8 per cent share of the UK viewing audience. By the end of 2003, Sky had
seven million subscribers.

9.5 Independent Production – The Indies

Those unfamiliar with the intricacies of the broadcast television industry might be
forgiven for being confused by the term independent, for there are independent
television companies and independent production companies. Having now
contributed to the confusion, I should explain. Independent Television is made up
of a number of independent companies which formed a federation to provide
programming for Channel 3. Such companies form what should perhaps be better
known as Commercial Television, funded by advertising revenue rather than by
the licence fee. This federal structure is now rapidly becoming a unitary structure.
Independent production companies (indies) on the other hand are by definition
producers and not broadcasters. The definition is enshrined in law by the
Broadcasting (Independent Productions) order of 1991 and subsequent
amendments. This law ensures that, to be defined as an independent production
company, no broadcaster may own more than 25 per cent of that company. There
are limits too on how much an indie may own of a broadcaster. The reason for
these legal definitions is that the market for independent production is protected
and that broadcasters like the BBC and ITV are legally obliged to commission 25
per cent of their programming from the independent sector. The quota applies to:

• Channel 3;

172
• Channel 4;

• Channel 5;

• BBC

Independent producers are hugely important as providers of work for freelances

and in many ways are responsible for the growth and viability of freelance
employment. Skillset figures (2002) estimate that just over half the workforce in
the independent sector is freelance and that 13 per cent of all freelances work for
indies compared with 10 per cent working for TV broadcasters and 11 per cent
working for radio broadcasters.

Commercial production is the biggest single provider of freelance work in the

audio-visual industry. It accounts for 20 per cent of all freelance employment, and
within the sector, 80 per cent of work is carried out by freelances.

Freelance journalists play an important role in the audio-visual industry. It is

perhaps too easy to see the journalist only in the role of reporter. This is
understandable because news gathering is such an important and highly visible
function in broadcast radio and television. Yet journalists are to be found in many
other roles too. In production and editorial roles in factual programmes, for
example, a journalistic training or background can provide an excellent range of
highly sought after skills. Because journalism is a large and complex activity with
its own trade union, codes of practice and working methods, a consideration of
freelance opportunities for journalists falls outside the scope of this book. It is,
however, fully covered in a companion volume in this series.

9.6 Let Us Sum Up

9.7 Unit End Exercises

9.8 Points for Discussion

9.9 Answers to check your progress

9.10 Suggested Readings

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1. Contracts of Employment – Employment Law Handbook (IDS) 2001.

2. Presenting on TV & Radio – An Insider’s Guide, Janet Trewin (Focal Press) 2003.

3. Starting Your Own Business: How to Plan, Build and Manage, Jim Green (How to
Books) 2002.

4. Multiskilling for Television Production, Peter Ward et al. (Focal Press) 2000

5. Freelancing for Television and Radio, Leslie Mitchell, Routledge 2005

6. http://www.fastcocreate.com/1681611/how-to-be-a-happy-and-successful-
creative-freelancer-or-work-with-one

7. https://www.brightknowledge.org/knowledge-bank/media/careers-in-
media/what-is-freelancing

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 UNIT 5
LESSON 10

Video and Programme Outsourcing

INTRODUCTION

Outsourcing is the business practice of hiring people outside a

company to perform services that traditionally were performed within the
company, by the business‘s own employees. Companies typically do this to save
money, since it is often less expensive to pay a third-party provider than hire a
full-time employee.

UNIT OBJECTIVES

From this section you can learn

 What is Video Outsourcing

 What is Programme Outsourcing

 Animation Outsourcing in India.

UNIT STRUCTURE

10.1 Video Outsourcing

10.2 Pros and Cons of Outsourcing Video Production

10.3 Outsourcing Talent for Video Production

10.4 Production Outsourcing and the Globalization of Hollywood

10.5 Animation: India as a outsourcing Hub

10.6 Let Us Sum Up

10.7 Unit End Exercises

10.8 Points for Discussion

10.9 Answers to check your progress

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 10.10 Suggested Readings

10.1 Video Outsourcing

In an age of information overload, videos that strengthen brand image,

create a lasting impact on the audience, and depict information in a captivating
way, are in great demand. Videos have become an integral component of online
marketing and HR strategy for growing organizations. Shooting a video is just one
part of the job; editing and packaging play equally important roles. Video needs to
be edited in such a way that it captures the interest of the target audience while
uplifting a brand's image. The goal is to launch successful video content that
generates strong results in terms of online views, clicks, and TV viewership.

High Definition Video Editing Services:

These agencies are established for video editing company with the
capabilities and infrastructure needed to edit and transform any raw footage into
crisp and contemporary art; be it:

 Corporate Videos

 Client Testimonial Videos

 Training Videos

 Event Videos

 TV Commercials

 TV Shows

 Documentaries

 Short Films

 Educational Videos

 Corporate Presentations for Online Use

 YouTube Videos

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  Wedding Videos

 Real Estate Drone Video

 Explainer Videos, etc.

10.2 Pros and Cons of Outsourcing Video Production

OUTSOURCING PROS

High-quality video production – A professional video production

company has both experience and resources. A video company has experience
with so many different types of projects that they should have access to the
latest/greatest high quality video production equipment and techniques. A video
production company is also always looking to build their video portfolio and
improve their craft.

Access to professional actors and voice-over artists – Actors and voice-

over artists are constantly reaching out to video production companies so they
should have access to lots of talent and know where to look.

Access to the latest equipment – A typical company might get excited

by video and invest some money in equipment but they are unlikely to do so year
after year as a video production is forced to do in order to compete.

It frees up the in-house staff – What is NOT getting done because your
employees are messing around with video production. Super basic video editing
is fairly easy – anything beyond that has a fairly steep learning curve and can
easily suck up days or weeks of productivity. Does your company want to pay
your employees to learn on the job – are you confident the employee will work on
video projects for years to come at your company so there is a return on the
investment?

A strong choice for brand campaigns or commercials – We agree.

Nike, McDonalds and Target probably don‘t own in-house video camera
equipment for external videos. You can guess why not.

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 OUTSOURCING CONS

Lack of agility, since it takes more time to make changes – There is

truth to this point of view. A video production company is probably working on
multiple projects and won‘t be able to jump on a change instantly. It is important
to find a video production company that is interested in more than the single
project and is interested in being a longterm partner. You might pay a little more
but it is worth it to have a video production company that acts more like a
department in your company and is constantly looking to earn more business. If
that is the case, you will likely have a pretty agile partner.

Not good for timely or spontaneous work, such as videos playing off a
trending story – No comment from us on this one as this is not an issue for our
typical customer.

Limited quantity, since you only get the number of videos you pay
for. – The truth is your internal video production team will also have limits and
you will need to add more video production people as the demand for videos
increase.

The producers will be less knowledgeable about your brand, products,

and customers – This one could not be more true. That is why it is super
important to find a video production company that takes a consultative approach.
A good video production company should start the work of understanding your
brand and your audience from the first time you speak with them. They will
probably never know your brand, products and customers as well as you do but
that can be a good thing because they will have a ―fresh set of eyes‖.

Expensive – You only pay a video production company when you need
them and don‘t pay for health insurance, 401k , vacations etc. If you want to
produce quality corporate videos, a full time employee will cost your company
around $100,000 including benefits. A budget of $50,000 for outsourced video
production would get you some pretty amazing video content!

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10.3 Outsourcing Talent for Video Production

When your company is faced with producing a video communications

project, outsourcing creative talent is a sensible and efficient solution. Crews
Control provides the expertise, strategy support and execution to seamlessly
integrate your preproduction planning with the production team needed to deliver
a professional video.

Outsourcing crew talent allows you to focus on your operational objectives

with the confidence that the specialized experts we‘ve matched you with are
giving your production the detailed attention it requires. A specialized production
agency is a centralized source of talent where you can create the exact on-location
team you need specific to your video project. The major benefit for Crews
Controlclients is the limitless access to corporate video production expertise. Your
existing staff provides the project‘s strategies and logistics for your production
and focuses on other projects you have in development to retain momentum.

Another benefit to outsourcing is getting a deeper understanding of your

business through a fresh perspective. Knowing your communications department
inside and out is more than living and breathing it each day. Relaying your
message to your audience creatively and intently means knowing what it‘s like to
be your own customer. Creative outsourcing delivers this dynamic enabling you a
view of your business, brand, and image from your audience‘s perspective. The
greatest impact you can have in communicating with your audience and in
expanding your reach is to see your business from that fresh perspective.

Outsourcing is a lot less expensive once you‘ve factored in indirect costs

to produce your project. You don‘t have to pay for flights, per diems (i.e. meals
and lodging) and travel time to get the outsourced local production team on
location. The cost of time and energy to arrange travel, comply with customs,
arrange carnet, apply for visa‘s etc, is spared when you use a local crew.

By partnering with Crews Control to outfit your production talent, you

gain the support of our twenty-plus years experience. We deliver DP‘swith a
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minimum of 10 years behind the camera and a verified repertoire of expertise.
Whether your shoot focus is a multi-camera switched shoot, traditional well-light
interviews, surgical, industrial, commercial, underwater or sports we can deliver
the professionals your project calls for.

The best approach to hiring through an agency is to understand the

dynamics of your project and communicating those objectives. The best way to
initialize your project discussion with an agency is by completing a call sheet.
This is where you‘ll specify all logistics to produce your video. Knowing this
information in advance will simplify the process of identifying your specific talent
requirements and help you plan for from pre to post production. We use this
information to match you with the talent, shooting style, and gear in the location
you need. You just provide the details; we‘ll equip your project with the right
talent.

Outsourcing is how our clients keep their communications capabilities at

the forefront of progressively-changing media trends. Whenever and wherever
you need video production resources, call the experts at Crews Control.

10.4 Production Outsourcing and the Globalization of Hollywood

Outsourcing from Hollywood has contributed to the emergence of a

variety of ―satellite‖ production centers in the United States, Canada and
elsewhere (Lukinbeal 2004; Scott 2005). Satellites are the lowest levels of an
interna tional hierarchy of media cities ranked according to the geographical
location of decision-making capabilities in film, television, digital media,
advertising and corporate media (Krätke 2003; Krätke and Taylor 2004). Some of
these centers also perform indigenous film and television production activities and
so may be considered hybrids or secondary centers (Coe 2001).

International production outsourcing in manufacturing, and more recently

in software and services, has helped latecomer industrializing countries,
particularly in Asia, to catch up to international practices, enter export markets
and eventually establish themselves as leaders in selected industries, segments of
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the value chain or product groups (Ernst and Kim 2002; Mathews 2006).
Offshoring in the motion picture and television industry provides analogous
opportunities to a host jurisdiction to improve capabilities and learn to produce
according to prevailing industry standards and aesthetic conventions. Hollywood
production outsourcing was greatly accelerated by disruptions in the film industry
in the years following the Second World War.

In the United States, the 1948 Paramount antitrust ruling required the
studios to divest themselves of their exhibition business. The advent of television
in the 1950s undercut demand for theatrical entertainment, leading to the closure
of thousands of theaters in the US; at the same time, European countries imposed
screen quotas and constraints on the repatriation of profits from film exhibition,
inducing US studios to shoot in Europe. The Hollywood studios responded to
these disruptions by structuring themselves as system houses, contracting out
many of their production activities to independent producers. It was in this period
that the term runaway production first appeared (Dawson 2006). The American
film industry became the paradigmatic case of vertical disintegration and
restructuring into a post-Fordist ―flexible specialization‖ mode of production, in
which networks of small firms come together on a project-by-project basis to
produce complex products (Christopherson and Storper 1986; Storper and
Christopherson 1987).

Project-based practices remain a key feature of the film and television

industry in the United States and many other countries, and have been adopted in
many creative and professional service industries fulfilling idiosyncratic customer
needs, as well as in industries producing complex product systems (Ferriani,
Corrado and Boschetti 2005; Manning and Sydow 2007; Mossig 2004; Sydow,
Lindkvist and DeFillippi 2004; Sydow and Staber 2002). In the 1980s and 1990s,
as antitrust legislation was relaxed or ignored in the United States, the Hollywood-
based filmed entertainment industry underwent reintegration, and studios regained
control over exhibition. Acquisition of the Hollywood studios by transnational
media conglomerates increased the significance of a business model relying on
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theatrical blockbusters supported by important ancillary revenue streams from
non-theatrical media channels and merchandizing (Schatz 2008).

Outsourcing, which has become an important structural feature of the

Hollywood-based transnational media industry, is driven by a relentless search for
lower production costs. The introduction of labor tax incentives in Canada in 1997
led to rapid growth in service production there, especially in Vancouver. The
growing trend of production offshoring in Canada has triggered a bitter debate
between representatives of Hollywood labor and Southern California economic
development interests on one hand and Canadian interests on the other. The
former argue that production outsourcing undermines the competitiveness of a
supposedly quintessential American industry and that tax incentives violate
international trade agreements (Monitor 1999; Wright 2006). The Canadian
position notes the billions of dollars in Canadian box-office receipts repatriated to
the United States (Neil Craig Associates 2004) and frames foreign location
production as a form of globalization that can have beneficial as well as
detrimental effects on everyone (Johnson-Yale 2008).

Efforts to restrain proliferating intra-US place-based competition for

production have not been successful (Christopherson 2008), nor have efforts to
curtail foreign governments‘ incentives through threats of international trade
sanctions. Often citing the Canadian example, many national and subnational
jurisdictions are aggressively pursuing outsourcing opportunities with subsidies,
tax incentives, contributions to the production infrastructure (especially
soundstages) and provision of various services (Christopherson and Rightor 2009;
Wright 2006). The immediate objective is to attract film and television production
activities in order to capture economic multiplier effects believed to exceed the
cost of foregone tax income by a factor of two or three.

Other frequently mentioned positive outcomes from the capture of

runaway productions include upgraded production crew capabilities, induced
invest ment in production infrastructure and the halo effect created by the

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presence of Hollywood celebrities in the local cultural economy. Rather than
undermining Hollywood‘s predominance, outsourcing and other forms of
transnational film and television production have stimulated the emergence of an
altered international geography of the industry in a ―New International Division of
Cultural Labor‖ (NIDCL) (Miller et al. 2005) led by the Hollywood-based filmed
entertainment cartel.

The Hollywood media conglomerates appreciate and profit from fierce

competition for their production business. Hollywood-based firms, or more
accurately their parent corporations, function as flagships in global media
production networks (Coe and Johns 2004; Ernst and Kim 2002). To Hollywood
incumbents, outsourcing provides ways to reduce costs, increase flexibility, enter
new markets, and shift risks onto less powerful players without loss of control
over the key creative, financial, distribution and marketing decisions, which
remain in Hollywood (Aksoy and Robins 1992; Schatz 2008).

Under what conditions might satellite or secondary production centers

develop sufficiently to become ―creative agglomerations in their own right‖ (Scott
and Pope 2007)? The answer depends entirely on the nature of the production and
higher-order business capabilities that can be developed locally. As we show
below, outsourcing may be expected to induce the development of local
production capabilities and raise them to prevailing craft standards, but it is
unlikely, by itself, to induce the development of the full range of business,
management, creative and organizational capabilities necessary to create, produce
and distribute film and television products competitively and profitably.

Outsourcing usually begins with routine, low-skill activities, and engages

mainly so-called ―humdrum‖ inputs, particularly below-the-line labor, but also
logistics, catering, transportation, equipment and studio rentals, and set
construction. The activity of an entry-level satellite production center consists of
performing clearly delimited tasks according to customers‘ specifications.

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Engagement in industry leading production requires that services meet prevailing
international quality standards at a competitive cost.

The competitive advantage of an entry-level, satellite production center

lies in its supply of low-cost, sufficiently skilled audiovisual labor, supplemented
by tax credits and publicly subsidized infrastructure. As experience accumulates
in the local supplier industry, service providers can take on increasingly complex
and sophisticated tasks. This pattern of development is evident in the industry,
where the mix of outsourced activities from Hollywood currently spans lower-
budget films, cable productions, television movies, some blockbusters, and high
value-added services such as postproduction services, business processes such as
payroll administration and country-specific business services concerning taxes,
contracts, insurance and project financing.

The number of American domestic theatrical releases shot outside the

country increased from 35 percent in 1998 to 51 percent in 2005, with the greatest
shift occurring in productions with budgets greater than $50 million (CEIDR
2006). The studios locate an increasingly wide range of production away from
Hollywood, not just the simplest or lowest cost activities (Christopherson 2008,
2006, 2005). This is evidence of the diffusion and deepening of production
capabilities outside Hollywood in some satellite or secondary production centers.

10.5 Animation: India as a outsourcing Hub

India‘s animation sector is growing at a rapid pace. Indian animation

companies and studios have been moving up the value chain to create their own
intellectual property rights. Global giants such as Walt Disney, Warner brothers
and Sony have been outsourcing animation characters and special effects to Indian
firms. Though the animation industry has often been clubbed under the technology
sector, entrepreneurs say the business is 70 per cent art and only 30 per cent
technology. This is why small enterprises driven by the passion of art-loving are
bagging notable deals.

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 With the emerging of the animation industry and outsourcing demands,
various animation companies have emerged across India. Cities such as Mumbai,
Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Trivandrum are becoming the country‘s
major animation hubs. These companies own high-tech studios, employ high-
quality and highly-skilled engineers and are backed by state-of-the-art equipment.
These companies offer a full range of services from 2D animation, 3D animation,
storyboards, medical animation and animatics to product demos, viral videos,
illustrations, logos, banners, portraits and caricatures. They also provide special
animation services customized to the clients‘ needs.

The reasons why global entertainment firms are flocking to India are as
follows:
a) The cost of animation production in India is one fourth of North America and
about 35 per cent lower than countries such as Korea and the Philippines. The key
countries outsourcing animation production work to India include the US, the UK,
France, Italy and Spain, states a report.

b) India has the second largest entertainment industry in the world.

Animation studios in the country provide a large pool of low-cost, high-quality
software engineers. A number of Indian animation companies have set up hi-tech
studios (equipped with state-of-the-art hardware and software) to execute overseas
projects.

c) Large English speaking workforce which effectively overcomes the

language barrier. A number of animation companies in the country are also
creating skilled manpower for the animation market through various training
programs.

d) Numerous individual training programs are available from leading advertising

and media institutes in the country. These institutes offer various programs in
animation and digital production.

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 India‘s animation entertainment sector has experienced a major boom over
the last few years. The current size of the industry is estimated at US$ 247 million
and expected to grow at 15-20% per annum. The Indian animation industry
employs over 80,000 people. The cost of outsourcing one of 2D animation work
to India is about US$ 71,000. Demand for animation production services from
India is growing with the emergence of an organized animation production sector,
with state-of-the-art of work required for international TV program production, at
substantially lower costs.

Growth in the sector will be further achieved on the back of increased

outsourcing contract work, higher content in movies, more 2D/3D conversion
projects, demand for animated TV serials, licensing and merchandising of popular
characters. The trend also intrigues the establishment of numerous new animation
companies and animation-related training courses in schools and outside. All these
developments will drive significant growth, both in terms of revenue and
participation in the value chain and will position India as a leading country in
animation production and outsourcing.

10.6 Let Us Sum Up

10.7 Unit End Exercises

10.8 Points for Discussion

10.9 Answers to check your progress

10.10 Suggested Readings

1. http://www.animation-boss.com/India_as_outsourcing.html

2. http://www.ryerson.ca/~c5davis/publications/Davis-Kaye%20-
%20International%20Film%20and%20TV%20Production%20Outs
ourcing.pdf

3. http://crewscontrol.com/blog-central/the-benefits-of-outsourcing-
talent-for-video-production/

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4. http://www.rewatchable.com/outsourced-video-production-vs-in-
house-video-production/

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