Packaging the news
The test of the television reporter’s talents comes when separate news-gathering and production skills have to be fused together in the form of a news ‘package’, an allpicture report which appears on the screen complete in itself apart, invariably, from an introduction read by the presenter in the studio. The package will combine clips of interviews, good natural sound, the most appropriate pictures and the reporter’s own voice (usually called the voicetrack). Often graphics will also be included if the report has complex elements which require further explanation, or numbers and statistics.
Elsewhere in television journalism, the likelihood is that editorial responsibility for overseeing something so complex will be given to a producer or director, but in modern news, with its slim-line approach, adding another body to the team is simply not an option. News programmes of varying lengths have come to rely on ‘packaging’ as their staple diet, and expect reporters to provide it, often judging them on their ability to produce consistently effective examples of the genre. Live news also requires a package as a kind of introduction to a subject and is usually followed by several live interviews, either in the main studio with the presenter, in a separate studio, or both. This is most common in programmes like Channel 4 News or the BBC’s Newsnight.
The successful package calls for the aptitude to tell a story – not only the performing talents so apparent in the piece to camera or the stubborn persistence needed in some interviews. It demands conspicuous planning and organization, the ability to fit different pieces together to produce a coherent, continuous narrative, and a mastery of words and pictures. When all that is accomplished, the report must be capable of being assembled quickly, or enough information communicated to ensure it can be put together by other people, no matter how far away they are.
Packages do not have to be complicated just because they are invariably of substantial duration. Experienced reporters and camera teams, working closely towards a common goal, are well aware of the dangers of wild over-shooting and unnecessary complexity, while at the same time they ensure coverage is not skimped.
Broken into its separate elements, a typical package might appear to the viewer in the following order:
1. an opening picture sequence accompanied by the reporter’s out-of-vision commentary;
2. an interview;
3. more pictures and commentary linking into …
4. a piece to camera.
The chances are that the sequence in which they were completed was very different.
Some news services like to stamp their own individual styles on package formats, although these preferences might be only as straightforward as insisting they always begin with the reporter’s piece to camera (to establish presence and authority at once), or never ending with an interview, expecting the reporter to complete the report with a visual pay-off.
But these are really minor considerations. From the reporter’s point of view, the versatility of the package technique ranks high among its most satisfying aspects, with the separate ingredients capable of being cemented together in any number of ways, according to story demands. The one proviso is that during shooting reporter and camera-operator keep the eventual shape of their item firmly in mind, otherwise there is a strong possibility that there will be too much or too little material to go with a particular sequence. The latter fault may make it impossible for the picture editor to assemble the report without blatant disregard for visual grammar, or else become involved in the difficult, time-consuming, reporter reputation-wrecking operation known disparagingly as a ‘salvage job’.
For an example of the way a typical picture report might be constructed, take this routine, imaginary piece about the increasing economic pressures on small dairy farmers trying to make a living against European competition. Assume the item has been commissioned by the editor of a programme we will call The Five O’Clock Report to accompany a story about a meeting of EU agriculture ministers the same day. Arrangements will have been made well in advance to secure the cooperation of the farm owner who, while not anxious to publicize a predicament which could lead to the loss of his prize herd of Jersey cows, is prepared to represent others in a similar plight.
Although an unrepentant ‘townie’, Delia Ward the reporter, who is something of a specialist in business and industry matters, has briefed herself well enough on the subject of farming to be aware of the general ground the assignment is meant to cover. A short talk with the farmer immediately on arrival fills in the necessary detail. The camera-operator, meanwhile, takes the opportunity to spy out the land without the encumbrance of his equipment, and is already impressed with the potential for vivid pictures.
Friendly, helpful and articulate, the farmer nevertheless has a number of important duties to perform about the place, and is anxious to complete his own part in the proceedings as quickly as possible. The first ingredient, therefore, must be the interview, which the reporter and camera-operator originally envisaged taking place later on, set against a background of the prize herd being milked. But the farmer’s declared intentions have now forced a change of plan so, too early for the milking, they settle for an exterior view of the shed, with half a dozen milk churns clearly visible. Six questions and answers follow smoothly, rounded off with the obligatory two-shot and cutaway questions, all completed with under four minutes of tape on the digital counter. The reporter and camera-operator, now left to themselves following the farmer’s departure, decide after a brief discussion to concentrate on other buildings, activity, people and animals around the farm, working from the perimeter in towards the farmhouse. It is an attractive building and the camera-operator takes several shots of the exterior from several angles.
Next they move inside to the kitchen, where the sunlight filtering through the big windows is so strong the camera-operator needs no artificial light for shots of the farmer’s wife making her account books up to date. All that takes another two-and-a-quarter-minutes of tape.
Figure 10.1 Anatomy of a package.
Shooting sequence
1. Interview with farmer
2. General shots activity (1)
3. Piece to camera
4. General shots activity (2)
5. Recording of ‘wild’ sound
6. Recording of voice-over commentary
7. Final shots activity (3)
Edited sequence
1. Voice-over commentary
2. Interview
3. Voice-over continued
4. Piece to camera
5. Voice-over commentary pay off
Over a break for coffee, the reporter – now able to imagine how the rest of the item will go – writes and memorizes the script for a piece to camera, a little over 30 seconds summing up the dilemma for farmers of this type. Outside again, she asks to be framed in a fairly loose medium shot against the background of a haystack to emphasize a point about increased feeding costs. She is virtually at the end of the piece when an unseen tractor starts up noisily, drowning her voice. A second take is necessary. This is completed satisfactorily and so far less than eight minutes of tape have been used.
The camera-operator is just removing the camera from the tripod, ready for the move to a new location, when he becomes aware of activity in the nearby lower grazing field. Milking, which he did not expect to take place for at least another fifteen minutes, is clearly imminent. In fact, the herd can be seen already beginning to move. Slightly annoyed at the unexpected need to rush, the camera-operator grabs his camcorder and makes off at a brisk trot in the direction of the advancing herd, the reporter in pursuit. There is no time to put up the tripod, so the camera-operator balances the camera comfortably on his shoulder and points the built-in microphone towards cows and farmhands on the move. Within a few minutes he has recorded onto the tape a series of close and medium shots, together with the ambient sound for use as effects. Then, holding the camera by the handle, he sprints to a conveniently elevated vantage point to capture the long shot of the procession filing past on the way to the milking shed.
As the reporting team follow the cows they see the farmer emerge from an outhouse and engage another farmhand in animated conversation. On this scene they record another 30 seconds of pictures before the farmer makes off in another direction, and the camera-operator stands watching through the viewfinder as the figure recedes into the distance.
Inside the shed milking is in progress. The camera-operator sets up the tripod close to where the action is taking place, the clatter of machinery and the lowing of the cows making effective background sounds. The light is low but acceptable, and the automatic exposure mechanism within the camera has no difficulty coping with everything except a wide shot of the whole interior. After he has recorded about a minute of pictures, the camera-operator is satisfied.
At this point, before unlocking the camera from the tripod, he rewinds the tape and reviews the previous two minutes of pictures through the viewfinder, putting on headphones to check the sound recorded over the shots of the herd on the move. Listening carefully, he confirms his suspicion that it was patchy and inadequate, and tells the reporter he is going back into the field to record some ‘wild’ sound of country ambience, using the long rifle-microphone supplied as part of his equipment.
The reporter, meanwhile, has found a quiet spot away from all the activity, and has begun to replay her own audio-cassette recording of the interview with the farmer. After hearing it once all the way through she decides that the second and third answers are easily the most relevant, summing up the issues most succinctly. Timed on her wrist stop-watch, they account for a total of 1 minute 25 seconds. Too long, she considers, for a package she was told would be allocated no more than three minutes on the screen.
Listening even more carefully to a second replay of the tape, she decides that by coming in later on the first of the chosen answers, the interview can be pared down still further without destroying the core of the farmer’s argument, although one particularly colourful reference to government policy is lost. The interview is now down to 50 seconds, which is much better. Going back over the rest of the interview yet again, she makes notes about some of the other points raised, adding them to the references made during her original research. These are for possible use in the commentary she must now write to cover the rest of the pictures.
The reporter made sure to accompany the camera-operator throughout the entire process of picture-taking, and now she consults the detailed list she made as they went along. With the full knowledge of the content and duration of each shot, she can visualize how the edited pictures will eventually look on the screen when accompanied by the commentary. Without that essential information it would all have been down to guesswork, and would have shown as such.
The rough outline of the package is beginning to take shape as the reporter starts to weave her commentary around the pictures. Conscious of the need to identify the location as quickly as possible, she opens by setting the scene, trying to imagine the shots of the farm entrance, which will be taken as they leave:
‘As farms go, Topfield is very much in the miniature class, not even one hundred acres.’
Next she wants to sketch in the background as briefly as possible, to convey an idea of the type of farming being carried out. There were plenty of shots of general activity immediately after the farmer’s interview, and she rejects the phrase ‘pig-rearing’ as being too explicit, favouring the all-purpose ‘stock-breeding’ so the picture editor will be able to select the most suitable:
‘… but, thanks to a mixture of stock-breeding and milk production, every one of the past twenty years has produced a profit. Until this year, that is, when despite increased production and higher European subsidies, Topfield – like so many farms of similar size – is facing a loss. It’s potentially so crippling that whatever the politicians in Brussels may decide today it won’t be enough to save …’
At this point the commentary begins to approach the central issue of the prize Jerseys and their future. The reporter remembers the series of shots taken by the camera-operator as the cows were being moved from the lower grazing field, and she sees the sequence extending naturally to the noisy scenes in the milking shed. Although continuity must be maintained, she deliberately avoids too rigid a construction which would leave the picture editor no scope to put in extra shots without having to make drastic alterations to the sound track:
‘… the herd of seventy prize Jersey cows from being sold off. Since the first of the strain was bought five years ago, the farm’s average milk yield has more than doubled. Recent investment in a new, automated milking system seemed certain to increase production still further. Despite modernization, things have gone seriously wrong.’
The next paragraph leads into the interview with the farmer. For this the reporter expects the picture editor will want to use the two-shot, taken with the milk churns in full view. The last few words have to pose the question, phrasing it in a way which makes the chosen answer follow naturally:
‘Topfield’s owner, John Brown, has survived previous years of crisis. What’s so different about this one?’
Including the 50 seconds allocated to the interview, the reporter estimates that, depending on the way the milking sequence is eventually edited, between 1 minute 45 seconds and two minutes have so far been accounted for. Although she might actually get away with another 20 seconds or so on top of that, she prides herself on turning in her items to length, besides which she knows the programme editor on duty today gets extremely annoyed with reporters who go beyond their brief without good reason. So a maximum of 1 minute 15 seconds is all that is left for the remaining ingredients, including the piece to camera, which took 32 seconds. The reporter makes the most of the obvious link between the farmer and the pictures of his wife, and thinks the farmhouse exteriors make a neater transition to Mrs Brown than going straight to her after the interview:
‘The Browns bought Topfield when they married in the mid-eighties. At the time it was virtually run down, but Mrs Marjorie Brown, who used to spend weekends here helping out the previous owner, persuaded her husband it had potential.’
If necessary, the reporter reckons, the next line could be omitted to save space, although it would be a pity.
‘She has a degree in farm management and had strong ideas about how to put things right financially.’
The final two sentences, about the future, are important. Here the reporter is in two minds whether they are better illustrated by shots of the farmhands and general activity, or by the conversation between farmer and helper recorded just before the milking sequence. Her careful choice of words means the office can decide:
‘Now the Browns are considering that if the herd has to go they might as well sell up completely. If they’re hesitating, it’s because they’re in no doubt about what it would mean for their tiny workforce – redundancy in an area where unemployment is already high.’
The commentary leading on from the interview adds up to 35 seconds. Adding on the piece to camera brings the total length to a maximum of three minutes seven seconds. ‘Just right’, thinks the reporter. If the office is desperate to save space, six seconds can be trimmed back by taking out the additional reference to the farmer’s wife, and a few more by keeping a tight hold on the prize herd sequence. The whole scripting exercise has taken no more than 25 minutes.
Seeking out the camera-operator, who has now returned to the car, the reporter finds a place on the farm where no single sound is dominant, and reads her commentary, interspersed with editing instructions for the picture editor, into the microphone plugged into the back of the camera, the signals recorded onto the second of the two audio tracks on the videotape. She stumbles once, over the difficult phrase ‘here helping out’. After a deliberate pause she substitutes ‘working here for’ for the offending words and she repeats the whole paragraph.
With the commentary now successfully recorded, the crew take their leave of the farmer, the camera-operator remembering to stop briefly for his final shots before they drive out of the farm gates. The whole operation has taken a little over three hours for a total of well under 20 minutes of tape – less than a single full cassette.
The team now face the prospect of getting their story back to meet their lunchtime news deadline, just over two and a half hours from now. As Topfield Farm is located approximately 80 miles from base, there is no prospect of driving the tape back through town traffic and getting it edited in time for the newscast.
Fortunately, sensible plans were laid long before they set out. A facilities engineer has already been detailed to rendezvous with them five miles away, at a point chosen for its height and relative proximity to the site of another story for later in the day. By the time the team arrive the engineer has already raised the aerial on his field car and aligned a test microwave signal with that of the nearest telecommunications tower, 20 miles away, and from there to a receiver at home base: it is a simple ‘two-hop’ operation which takes only a few minutes to accomplish.
The camera-operator, having rewound the tape, hands the cassette to the engineer, who inserts it into his own video replay machine. A brief check is made to ensure sound and vision signals are being received at the other end, where they are being recorded onto another machine in the main videotape area. The picture editor and writer from the newsroom are also there, watching anxiously and making notes about content and quality as the rushes are played over.
As the writer has a question for the reporter about one aspect of the script, the two have a short conversation about it over the link. The videotape operator has meanwhile made a swift spot-check to ensure the recording has ‘taken’, and then hands the cassette to the picture editor, who rushes off to his editing suite.
Using the same link the reporter calls the assignments desk, explains that her mission has been completed, adding that unless anything else has cropped up for either of them, she and the camera-operator will soon start making their separate ways back to base.
One of the features of modern editing is that it offers a variety of options. Editing a package is a fairly slow process as a rule, but excellent results are possible as long as reporters have played their part by taking detailed notes of the pictures and preparing scripts with them in mind. The best reporters are always prepared to adjust their scripts to take account of interesting picture sequences for which they might not have originally made allowance.
The main drawback of any rushes-by-link is that conversations conducted at a distance are not always as enlightening as they should be. An item which arrived directly back in the office would usually be accompanied by a minimum of paperwork: in some cases, particularly with overseas assignments sent home by air, a detailed script and shot-list. The use of portable and office-based newsroom computer systems has made an impact in this area, too, but this time, without the benefit of anything else, our ‘Topfield’ picture editor has to waste precious minutes in the edit suite listening to the commentary to get the proper ‘feel’ of the report, although he does have the notes he scribbled during transmission of the rushes, and the time-code on the bottom of the picture will be invaluable in helping him locate shots.
After another viewing of the pictures and listening to the interview with farmer Brown, the picture editor goes into ‘fast forward’ mode. He might be in an edit suite, or in front of a computer-based editing system inside a newsroom area. Wherever editing takes place attention must be given to the sound just as much as the vision. The editor reaches the time-code marking the beginning of the reporter’s recorded sound. This includes a spoken guide to the way the edit should be carried out.
‘This is the Delia Ward commentary for the Topfield Farm story for The Five-O’Clock Report for June the thirteenth. Beginning in five seconds from now.’ (Pause)
‘As farms go Topfield is very much in the miniature class – not even a hundred acres. But thanks to a mixture of stock-breeding and milk production, every one of the past twenty years has produced a profit. Until this year, that is, when despite increased production and higher European subsidies, Topfield – like so many farms of a similar size – is facing a loss. It’s potentially so crippling that whatever the politicians in Brussels may decide today it won’t be enough to save the herd of seventy prize Jersey cows from being sold off. Since the first of the strain was bought five years ago, the farm’s average milk yield has doubled. Recent investment in a new, automated milking system seemed certain to increase production still further. Despite modernization, things have gone seriously wrong. Topfield’s owner, John Brown, has survived previous years of crisis. What’s so different about this one?
‘The interview with farmer Brown should come in at this point. I suggest you use the second answer beginning ‘This time, we’ve not been able …’ which lasts about fifty seconds. The out words are ‘whatever the government says’. Commentary continues:
‘The Browns bought Topfield when they married in the early eighties. At the time it was virtually run down, but Mrs Marjorie Brown, who used to spend weekends here … um … er … helping out …
‘Oops! Going again with that paragraph in five.’ (Pause)
‘The Browns bought Topfield when they married in the early eighties. At the time it was virtually run down, but Mrs Marjorie Brown, who used to spend weekends here working for the previous owner, persuaded her husband it had potential. She has a degree in farm management and had strong ideas about how to put things right financially. Now the Browns are considering that if the herd has to go they might as well sell up completely. If they’re hesitating it’s because they’re in no doubt about what it would mean for their tiny workforce – redundancy in an area where unemployment is already high.
‘The piece to camera comes in here. Use the second take. It lasts about thirty seconds. There’s one obvious trim if needed. That’s in the paragraph after the reference to Mrs Brown working for the previous owner.’
The picture editor starts his assembly by re-recording Delia Ward’s scene-setting paragraphs onto one of the two audio tracks on the tape he has loaded into his recorder. Then he spins through the tape on the player until he reaches the time-code marking the matching shots of the farm entrance and general activity. He considers the camera-operator has done well to capture the air of bustle about the place, and wants to make sure that this is reflected in the final assembly. When the picture editor edits those scenes to the reporter’s opening words he also records the natural sound effects onto the tape’s remaining audio track at a level which ensures the commentary will still be heard comfortably above the noise. When the reporter pauses in the narrative the editor increases the volume of the background sound.
In this way the completed story will have the commentary recorded at maximum level on one sound track and the ‘actuality’ on the other, the level of this one rising and falling. When the item is transmitted the two sound tracks will be played simultaneously, reproducing the ‘mix’ at levels of volume the picture editor has created at his machine.
If he had opted to edit the pictures first and add the commentary later, the picture editor would not have been able to record the actuality sound with these delicate rises and falls because he would not have been able to judge where the gaps in the commentary were going to occur. This onus would have been on the reporter to shot-list the item after editing to make sure the words fitted the pictures, pausing where it was necessary to accommodate the actuality sound. A sound mix would still have been required, and this would have been achieved by putting the edited cassette into the playback machine and recording it onto another tape, mixing the tracks at the same time.
On the occasion of our fictitious Topfield Farm story, the picture editor’s task has been made fairly easy because reporter and camera-operator have done a full, competent job – partly because they had the time to consider what they were going to do before they did it.
The main problem is that on viewing the rushes, the picture editor and the writer are not impressed with the milking scenes which were slightly underexposed and out of focus, and they would have preferred to leave them out, cutting the reporter’s reference to the ‘new, automated milking system’, and keeping the next sentence: ‘Despite this modernization, things have gone seriously wrong’, which would have stood in its own right. But having already recorded the commentary onto his assembly tape and built up the first 40 seconds or so of the pictures, the picture editor is reluctant to start all over again, as any ‘surgery’ to remove the offending words would otherwise be impossible.
As the item also looks like being over length, they are therefore left with the option of trimming back the interview with farmer Brown or chopping the piece to camera by a few seconds: the picture editor prefers the second alternative, because it is simpler to execute, but the writer believes that because the reporter has chosen to construct the item in this way, losing the final words would make the report incomplete. As for the interview, this has already been pared to the limit and would scarcely be comprehensible if cut back still more. It is a dilemma the two have faced many times in the past, and they solve it now by listening again to the piece to camera and deciding that, at a pinch, they can lose the opening sentence without affecting the overall sense. That saves ten seconds, bringing the total duration of the package to 3 minutes 2 seconds – just about acceptable.
Getting the story right in the first place and organizing the coverage so it can reach the screen with the minimum delay is not the limit of the reporter’s responsibilities. Just as much effort is needed to ensure that even before it reaches the transmission stage the package is not made out of date, either by a commentary which fails to make allowance for the delay between gathering the material and its screening, or by ignoring any possibility that it might be overtaken by events. ENG has helped shrink that time gap, but the reporter still has to be aware of the possibility that events outside her control might yet take place.
For that reason Delia Ward’s Topfield Farm script has deliberately made no more than a passing reference to the ministerial meeting in Brussels, even though this was the basis on which the report was originally envisaged. Her phrase, ‘and whatever the politicians in Brussels may decide’, will remain relevant until much later in the day, when she will be back at base and in a position to rework it if the report makes it into a later newscast. Delia Ward has also made the sensible assumption that an introduction based on the latest information from Brussels will be prepared by the writer for the programme presenter to read:
‘The problems of European farmers are back on the agenda. Agriculture ministers meeting in Brussels are deciding today if small farms within the EU can be helped to survive in the current financial climate and at a time when production targets have already been met. British farmers are not convinced that any action now will be effective enough to prevent bankruptcies among those who have barely kept their heads above water for years. Delia Ward has been finding out about the worries of one farmer in the heart of England.’
How the ‘hard’ facts of a news story are normally shared between reporter and studio presenter is a matter for item-by-item assessment, perhaps more than ever since journalist-anchors began writing more of the programmes they present. Nothing is more irritating to the viewer than to hear a report begin with exactly the same words or facts which the studio reader has used only seconds earlier. Without a formal system of ‘sharing’ the available information, which would be impractical, the prime objective is to ensure studio introduction and following report complement each other.
Although the temptation to take in all the details is at times practically overwhelming, the reporter has an inescapable obligation to the newsroom to leave at least some of them for the introduction. The choice open to those at the output end would otherwise rest between the evils of a bland, uninformative introduction (which no programme editor would willingly tolerate) and surgery, the carving out of some of the facts from the report itself for use in the introduction.
Fortunately, the need for such drastic action is usually unnecessary. After a sharp lesson or two, most reporters soon learn an acceptable level of self-discipline. Some achieve it by writing a full introduction of perhaps three sentences, and beginning the commentary proper with the third. The other two are then sent off with the script details or passed on in some other way to provide cue material for the presenter.
This admirably simple technique is capable of being used by any reporter in any situation. Yet it still manages to create difficulties for those whose imaginations are not as sharp as they might be. Deprived of the two most obvious opening sentences, some reporters are reduced to beginning the third in a form which, instead of helping the viewer pick up the thread formed by the introduction, has become a cliché:
‘It/The explosion/accident … happened …’
For all the modern refinements which have accompanied welcome improvements in technology and the expansion of continuous rolling TV news services, the average three-or four-minute news ‘package’ as the staple journalistic tool remained fundamentally the same through the late 1990s. A vague feeling of staleness has begun to emerge. The principle is not in doubt. What is in question is the somewhat formulaic approach to construction adopted by many reporters, together with an absence of what might best be described as ‘filmic’ qualities in packages made under no great pressure.
For sure, some stories require nothing other than straightforward, uncomplicated treatment, and no one wants journalists and camera crews to get their heads shot off indulging a predilection for fancy camera work in dangerous locations, but elsewhere reporters should be looking for the more imaginative pictures which will add something extra to otherwise standard subjects. A single sequence lightened by creative positioning of the camera – perhaps simply no more than an elevation above the action – and imaginative picture composition may be all that is necessary to transform a mundane package into a ‘film’.