15

A Picture is Worth a
Thousand Words

 

What You’ll Learn_________________________

The popular maxim (attributed to Fred R. Barnard) in this chapter’s title sums up what you learned in the last chapter. Pictures are an integral part of television news.

If you end up in television news, you’ll either shoot video, edit video, or work with someone who does. So it’s important to understand the basics of shooting and editing video tape. That way, even if you don’t know how to turn on the camera or the editing equipment, you’ll know a little bit about what can (and should) be done with them, once somebody else turns them on.

That’s why, while not highly technical, this chapter will deal with some of the fundamental mechanical requirements of television news. Like so much of the business, shooting and editing are not governed by hard and fast rules. But because of the limits of our viewers’ eyes and ears, these rules are wise to follow, most of the time, anyway.

The first thing to remember is, you are not creating music videos; you are creating news stories. They must be fair and accurate, simple, credible, and clear. Equally important, remember that they usually go by the audience just once. So any kind of camera move or abrupt edit that jolts your viewers does them a disservice. Any kind of story that’s dull when it could be dynamic does them a disservice too.

In this chapter, you’ll learn a few simple techniques about how to shoot and how to edit. I’ll talk about how to make your video construction dynamic and how to make your audio transitions seamless.

Practice makes perfect, and while you won’t necessarily be practicing these creative skills in this course, you’ll have a few fundamentals in your head about what to practice!

The Terms of the Story_________________________

Zoom Lens A single lens that permits the cameraperson to press an electronic button, making the shot evolve from a wide shot to a medium shot to a closeup, or vice versa.

Video Pad Several seconds of a shot held static both before and after activating the zoom lens and before and after panning.

Dissolve The transition from one shot to another in which the end of the first shot slowly (over half a second, a second, two seconds, whatever feels right) fades from view as the beginning of the second shot comes into view.

Pan Moving the camera from left to right, or right to left, to follow some action (like a plane landing) or to reveal, for example, the front of something when you started on the back.

Jump Cut The transition between consecutive shots where the same person or the same action is in both shots but without a logical sequence (for example, she’s walking at the end of the first shot, then abruptly standing still at the beginning of the second shot).

Cutaway (cut shot) A shot used for just a few seconds to cover a jump cut, typically some other scene in close proximity to the person or the action in the jump cut.

Zooming to Dizzying Heights

Motion picture film and video cameras really weren’t meant to have zoom lenses. In fact originally they didn’t. Instead, they had three different lenses mounted in a triangular pattern on a metal plate (called a “turret”): a telephoto lens to bring distant objects closer (the closeup), a wide angle lens to capture a panoramic view (the wide shot), and a third lens in between (the medium shot). If you were using the telephoto lens and you wanted to switch to wide angle, you manually rotated the plate.

Eventually someone came up with the idea of eliminating the manual rotation by enabling the film maker instead to “zoom” from one focal point to another. That was its sole original purpose. However, film makers started using the “zoom” also in the body of their shots, so that they could start with, say, a wide shot of a political demonstration, then “zoom in” to a closeup of one demonstrator’s sign. Or vice versa, starting with the closeup.

It wasn’t long before they began to abuse their new tool. Some used the “zoom” to push into or pull out of something in just about every wobbly shot, which then had to be edited into the story (because the cameraperson gave the editor no choice). For the viewer, the result was slightly less dizzying than a roller coaster ride.

There’s nothing wrong with pushing into or pulling out of something if it serves a purpose. The president speaking from a stage to a huge rally of excited supporters in an auditorium (start on the president and pull out to reveal the crowd, or start on the crowd and push in to the president). A terrorist holding a hostage in a window (wide shot of the terrorist holding a gun to the hostage’s head, then push into a closeup of the frightened hostage, or, start on the hostage closeup, then pull out to a wide shot to reveal the terrorist holding the gun to her head). You might want to push in from a medium shot to a closeup when the person you’re interviewing starts to cry. Or from a wide shot of demonstrators to a closeup when a single protestor starts shouting.

But something is wrong with using the zoom lens when it doesn’t add anything: zooming from a closeup to a medium shot of the president giving an economic speech, or from a panoramic view of the desert to a single cactus, or from a wide shot of a building to a closeup of its front door. In each of these examples, your shots usually will be more effective if you use the zoom to capture both, but in the editing process, you cut from a wide shot to a closeup or from a closeup to a wide shot or from a medium shot to anything else. In other words, utilize the zoom all you like, but only to change your focal point. Used sparingly, it can enhance the drama or mystery of a story. Used commonly, it can give the viewer a headache.

What’s the Point?

Just because you have a zoom lens doesn’t mean you always have to use it. Viewers don’t want to be taken to dizzying heights. A steady static shot still is the easiest shot to watch.

Zooming Cuts Both Ways

Now that you know not to make your viewers go insane with a zoom lens, here are two tips to keep you sane when you do use it.

What’s the Point?

What may make sense while you’re shooting a story may not make sense when you’re editing it. So give yourself insurance. Insurance means flexibility.

Panning for Gold

Panning means moving the camera from left to right, or right to left. If you’re videotaping a tractor plowing a field from right to left, you’ll pan from right to left to keep it in the frame. Or maybe it’s demonstrators running past the front of the White House, in either direction. Or, the subject might not be moving, but there’s reason to pan anyway. If you have the justices of the Supreme Court lined up in front of you for example, you might want to pan across their nine faces, from one end to the other, even though they themselves are stone still.

Now, this might be the shortest section of the book. Why? Because the rules that you’ve already learned about zooming also apply to panning:

• Pan when it serves a purpose, but too many pans can be dizzying.

• If it’s worth panning from left to right (for instance, the example of the Supreme Court justices), then it’s worth panning from right to left too, because it maximizes your options during the edit.

• Because you want the viewer’s eye to settle on the subject, and because you might want to go into or get out of a shot with a special effect, hold every pan steady for a few seconds at both the beginning and the end.

What’s the Point?

Although sometimes the subject of your story demands movement, movement for movement’s sake alone serves no purpose. If you’re panning, only pan for gold. This is true when you shoot and equally true when you edit.

Now, one exception to everything you’ve just read. Sometimes, particularly on a feature story, the senior producer or news director will want you to create a lot of movement— maybe pans and zooms, maybe a “walking” shot where the cameraperson is walking while shooting or the reporter is walking while talking—and maybe he’ll even want shaky shots, which give the impression of “real time,” and which can capture the viewer’s eye specifically because they’re different from the norm.

The Story’s in the Background

When a reporter covers a story for television, the final package usually has a standup, which some people call the “on-camera” part. Whatever is said, wherever it is done, something has to be in the background, behind the reporter. Likewise, if it’s a live shot, the reporter has to be standing in front of something (the one and only exception is coverage in a blizzard).

Choosing your background is important. Not only because you want something interesting, but because you want something relevant. If you’ve covered a bad traffic accident, you want the accident behind the reporter. If it’s a protest march, you want the marchers behind the reporter. If it’s a candidate campaigning for election, you want the candidate speaking, or chatting, or shaking hands in the background. The point is, you want the background to reinforce the theme of the story, a reminder to the viewer of what the story is about.

A great background isn’t always available though. If you cover a news conference with the mayor, you may have to put the dull (and predictable) background of city hall behind you, and sometimes you may have no choice. This is where you get creative. What was the mayor talking about? Cutting down dead trees in the city park? Then go out to the park and do the standup there, which puts the subject of the story behind the reporter. Doubling the charge at downtown parking meters? Go downtown and lean on a parking meter for the standup. Use your imagination, so the viewers won’t have to use theirs.

 

 

You have to think about backgrounds far more often than just when the reporter is on camera. You also have to decide what to put in the background of an interview. Typically, if it’s with a politician, the city or state or American flag serves the purpose. If it’s an economist, a computer screen. An athlete? The playing field. A factory worker? The assembly line.

Many interviews are done indoors, which is limiting, and many are done at the convenience of the interviewee. But whenever possible, apply the same principle to interview backgrounds as you do to standup backgrounds: use the background to reinforce the theme of the story.

What’s the Point?

It’s worth repeating: whether an interview or a standup, choose a background whenever you can that reminds viewers of the story’s theme.

I Was Framed!

Here’s something that’s true whether you’re taking still photographs or video tape, in fact it’s true for painters too. How you frame your picture might make the difference between something mediocre and something extraordinary.

Do you remember the rose from the previous chapter, the rose that stood after the tornado tore through South Dakota? Here are three ways that rose might have been framed in the story’s opening shot:

There is no formula to tell you which of these is best. But there is common sense. The first one has the rose squeezed way off to the edge, with nothing but empty space filling the rest of the frame. Not good, because the viewer’s eye won’t automatically go to the edge of the frame first. The second has the rose near the middle, but so small that its significance is lost; the viewer has too much else to look at. The third frame is most likely to catch the viewer’s eye and maintain his interest. The rose is front and center, and when the shot pulls out to either a medium or a wide shot, revealing destruction all around the rose, its very survival is all the more amazing.

This applies no matter what you’re shooting. It may be a beautiful new civic auditorium that’s being built. If so, you probably want to frame it to exclude the construction dumpster sitting just off to one side. It may be a range of mountains. Frame it so you don’t cut off the highest peaks.

The worst framing I ever saw was in a standup from Washington D.C. Pretty clearly, the cameraman wasn’t fond of the correspondent. With the United States Capitol as a backdrop, the correspondent was commenting on a big debate in Congress, but because of how he was framed, few viewers could have paid much attention to what he was saying.

Simply put, the cameraman had disembodied the reporter. Instead of shooting him the usual way, pretty much from the belt up, he shot only his head above the bottom of the frame and, what’s more, didn’t fill the screen with it. The correspondent’s head was down at the bottom of the screen, like a soccer ball waiting to be kicked. It was like a skit from Saturday Night Live, but it wasn’t funny. It was distracting.

What’s the Point?

Just because something in front of you looks good to your naked eye, it doesn’t automatically look good on video tape. Your job is to place it in the best part of the frame, so the viewer’s eye goes straight to it, and so the background—basically, anything else in the shot—doesn’t overwhelm it.

Cut Away for a Cutaway

When you’re editing a speech, a news conference or an interview, never take the speaker’s words out of context.

Having said that, sometimes the speaker says something meaningful, then something meaningless, then something meaningful again, and you have to edit out the meaningless part and join the meaningful parts together to make them comprehensive and clear.

You may remember this from Chapter 5. You’re covering a murder, and a detective has just told you this:

Well, the fact of the matter is, we can’t really, uh, I mean, we can’t find the gun, which we need to nail our suspect, so even though we’ve got him behind bars right now, we’re gonna have to let the guy go. But believe you me, and I was telling my wife this very thing earlier this morning, or maybe it was yesterday, but the one thing for sure is, we’re going to keep looking for that weapon and when we find it, you can bet your life we’re going to arrest the guy again and put him away for life so he will never again roam the streets.

There’s some meat in there somewhere, but there’s a lot of trash, too. Wouldn’t it be better if he had said it this way, which doesn’t change his meaning but makes it shorter and more interesting to hear?

We can’t find the gun, which we need to nail our suspect, so even though we’ve got him behind bars right now, we’re gonna have to let the guy go. But we’re going to keep looking for that weapon and when we find it, you can bet your life we’re going to arrest the guy again and put him away for life so he will never again roam the streets.

Unfortunately that’s not how he said it, but you can fix it. Go back and compare the first version with the second. What you’ll see is, only two sections have been eliminated:

At the top:

Well, the fact of the matter is, we can’t really, uh, I mean …

From the middle:

… believe you me, and I was telling my wife this very thing earlier this morning, or maybe it was yesterday, but the one thing for sure is …

Both of these sections are wasted and meaningless. You haven’t changed the context or meaning of the detective’s statement by taking them out.

From a pictorial point of view though, you have had to edit his video. It doesn’t make a difference at the top; you just begin the sound bite later. But in the middle, it’ll be obvious to the viewer that you have edited the sound bite; they’ll see what’s called a jump cut. This means, for example, on his final word from the first shot, “go,” his head may be facing slightly to the left, or he might be gesturing with his hands, while on the initial word from the second shot, “but,” his head may be facing slightly right, or his hands might be at his sides.

There are two simple ways to deal with this:

1. Dissolve from the first shot to the second. This is a signal to the viewer that you’ve made an edit and aren’t trying to hide anything.

2. A cutaway shot (some just call it a “cut shot”). What’s a cutaway? Typically it’s a shot of the audience at the speech or news conference, or of the reporter listening during the interview (even if the shot of the reporter is taken by turning the camera toward the him and recording the cutaway after the end of the interview itself).

3. Illustrative video. If the mayor is talking about dead trees in the city park, and you want to cover an edit of sound bites, show the mayor for a few seconds, then dissolve into video of the dead trees. Maybe you return to a shot of the mayor a few seconds before she finishes speaking, although if the video’s good enough, maybe you don’t. Either way, you have covered the edit, and made the story more visually interesting.

The jump cut will show up in another context too. Let’s say you’re videotaping an airplane coming in at the airport. It’s a jump cut if one shot shows the plane just touching down on the runway, then the next shot shows it taxiing to a stop. That’s not a natural sequence. So you use a cutaway between the two shots: possibly someone watching the plane, the ground crew signaling the plane, or the control tower.

What’s the Point?

When you shoot stories, especially when they include news conferences, speeches, and interviews, shoot cutaways. There are other ways to cover jump cuts, including just dissolving between them, but have a cutaway in your pocket in case nothing else works well.

Proving the Reporter Is There

The piece of the TV package where the reporter appears on camera usually is called either the “on-camera” or the “standup.” “Standup” is what I’ve used in this book. A standup is shot for a few reasons:

1. Protection. Saying something in a standup (shot while you’re still at the scene of the story) that you may not have good pictures to cover.

2. Familiarity. This is how the station can bring the “personality” of its reporters into viewers’ homes. It’s important because television is a personality-driven business.

3. Credibility. It proves that the reporter really covered the story (or at least showed up before it was over).

When the story package is sandwiched between live standups, which are used more and more these days, the pre-taped standup isn’t an issue.

But when the whole package is going to be edited before the show, the question you face is, do you do your standup for the top of the piece (a “standup open”), for the middle (a “standup bridge,” which bridges from one part of the story to another), or for the close (a “standup close”)? The answer is, it depends! Four factors help you decide.

1. The formula. Do you, and all reporters at your station, usually do a standup close? If so, mix things up in the next story you produce with a standup bridge, or a standup open. Or vice versa. Be unpredictable, if your news director gives you that kind of discretion. If not, do it the way the news director wants it done.

2. The video. Do you have good video for everything but your close? Then make it a standup close. Do you have a key point to make somewhere in the middle of your story, but lousy video to cover it? Make it a standup bridge. Is it a picture–challenged story from top to bottom? Is it important, for that matter, to show the audience at the very top that the reporter was right there at the scene of the story? Then maybe you want a standup open.

The standup bridge is harder to figure out how to do (before you’ve written the rest of the story) than the standup open or close. For the open, you only have to know how you want to start your story. For the close, you only have to know what comes before the standup. For the bridge, you have to know what comes both before it and after it. In other words, you have to plan a key part of the story’s structure in advance.

3. The background. Sometimes you end up doing the standup at the first stop you make while covering the story, simply because you know it’s the best background you’re going to see all day. For example, you might be covering an auto accident, and that’s your first stop. Maybe you’re still going to go to the hospital, the home of the victim, and the police department. But you want the accident behind the standup. Depending on how you think you’ll build your story, this helps determine whether you do a standup bridge or a standup close.

4. The sound. Wherever you’re doing a standup, there might be sound in the background, like an airplane flying overhead, or traffic passing by, or children screaming in a nearby schoolyard. That’s known by the remarkably high-tech term, “noise!” The issue isn’t whether it drowns out the reporter because if it does, you shouldn’t shoot the standup there.

No, the issue is how it’s going to sound edited up against the narration, which has been recorded in a nice quiet studio (and probably with a different microphone that produces different tonal qualities). Remember, the standup bridge has to be edited to narration on both ends, often meaning significantly different sound quality as you go from narration to standup to narration. The standup open or close has to be edited to narration only once.

The good news is, there is a way to mitigate that awkward audio transition. Whenever possible, don’t just butt your narration right up against your standup (whether it’s a bridge, an open or a close). Rather, at the end of the narration, open up your audio track for one or two seconds of NAT SOT (its duration depending on how interesting it is). The music from the parade, the birds chirping in the trees, the airplane taking off from the runway. Or, if it makes sense in the telling of the story, insert a sound bite where the audio’s altogether different. Then when you get to the standup (or also, in a bridge, back to the narration), the audio difference isn’t nearly so blatant.

What’s the Point?

Usually, if there’s halfway decent video for your story, the standup is not going to be the most important part, because it’s best to start and end with good picture. That’s one reason why bridges make sense. But because of audio issues, sometimes closes sound better. Of course if your station has a policy dictating what kind of standup to do, alternatives might be moot.

And don’t forget this lesson from Chapter 9: if it’s a standup close, then it should wrap up the story, or tell the viewer where the story goes next, or summarize what it all means.

Where You Make It or Break It

No matter how good the video from the field, lousy editing means a lousy story. But good editing can make even lousy video shine (well, sort of). Anyway, editing is more than just an afterthought. Earlier parts of this chapter have dealt with some editing issues. There are more.

As you read in Chapter 6 there are two schools of thought about how to choose your first shot. One says, choose something interesting but save your best stuff so you can build to a climax. So what might the opening shot be? An “establishing” shot; for example, a wide shot of the building, or the parking lot, or the hillside on which the story takes place. The other school of thought says (and personally I prefer this one), start with your best stuff. Grab the audience’s attention. Snag your viewers. Make them hope for more. I think choosing your lead shot is like writing your lead sentence: if it’s an attention grabber, you’re more likely to succeed.

From the top of the piece to the bottom, every shot you insert also requires a decision about timing. Sometimes a shot shows continuing action, like a demonstration. If so, leave it up as long as it tells the story. But when a shot is more static, sit on it only long enough for the viewer to absorb what there is to see, but not long enough to turn boring. If there’s something to read in the shot (like a demonstrator’s protest sign), make sure you leave it up long enough to be read.

You’ll usually end up with long shots (I use the terms “wide shots” and “long shots” interchangeably), medium shots, and closeup shots. Mix them up. Nothing but medium shots, for instance, would become a tedious formula for the viewer’s eye. However, don’t change shots and shot composition arbitrarily; if you go from a long shot to a closeup of something in the long shot, make sure the long shot and the closeup match. In other words, if the quarterback is waving his hands in the long shot, you can’t cut to a closeup where his hands are at his sides.

In the last section, I told you about using interesting video to cover sound bite edits. What I didn’t tell you is, sometimes it’s a good technique even if you don’t have an edit to cover. For instance, to use the example one more time of the mayor talking about dead trees, you can let the mayor start speaking on camera, but once the viewer has established that it is the mayor, cover the rest of the sound bite with video of the trees. Once the viewer has established that it’s the coach talking about the team, or it’s the snowplow driver talking about the blizzard, or it’s the police officer talking about the accident, cut or dissolve to the team, or the blizzard, or the accident.

Finally, the subject of music. The rules about music are very clear: it belongs in a news story only if it’s an integral part of the story. Obviously if you’re reporting on a rock band, there’ll be music throughout. If you’re covering a parade, we expect to hear the marching bands. But not music from some other source. Do not insert music from another source, just to spice up a story. Leave that to Hollywood.

Does this mean you’ll never hear unrelated music in someone’s news story? No. But just because some newsrooms do it doesn’t make it right.

What’s the Point?

Editing can make or break a television news story. It’s a visual medium. Use every tool you have.

Exercises to Put Pizazz in the Picture_________________