Writing to pictures
This had been the big weapon in every television journalist’s armoury for many years. No matter how much style you might have on screen, no matter how many ideas you have at the editorial meeting, no matter how fast and inventive you are in navigating the web, if you cannot write, you’ll be in trouble. The mechanics of writing any sort of commentary to pictures can be explained and understood in about an hour. To apply them well requires a special ability to appreciate the value that moving images have in relation to the words necessary to complement them. Writing to news pictures is a distillation of that special skill which some journalists, despite a genuine feeling for words and an empathy with pictures, never quite develop.
Exactly what distinguishes the excellent from the merely acceptable is virtually impossible to explain without the impact of the pictures themselves. Looking at the written script by itself will provide no clue. The purists would shudder at the use of the two-word, verbless, inverted sentences and the apparently casual regard for punctuation. The test is to ignore the script and to sit back, listen and watch as the commentary adds a delicate counterpoint to the pictures.
Probably the first mistake the novice writer makes is to try to cram into every second of the available screen time the maximum number of facts previous journalistic experience has taught as being essential. The result is chaos. The words take little or no notice of the pictures they were meant to accompany; the style is heavy, as written for the printed page and, most likely, the reader will come a poor second in the oral sprint to finish the commentary before the tape runs out.
At three words a second, a sequence of pictures lasting, for example, 30 seconds, gives the writer a maximum of 90 words to play with. No matter how cleverly they are used, there is no way in which it is possible to squeeze in more and still expect the commentary to make sense to those hearing it. From the outset, the writer must learn to exercise a ruthless economy of words, first so that the pictures are able to do their work properly and, second, to avoid the ultimate sin of having them finish while the reader is still speaking. It is far safer to under-write and leave a few seconds of pictures unscripted.
Most beginners’ commentaries tend to refer in great detail to people, places and events which do not appear at all. This, in many ways, is an understandable fault, but one which must be corrected at once. Over the years viewers have come to recognize such references as signposts leading to what they are about to see, and they are bound to feel cheated if, in the end, those signs lead nowhere.
Too much detail has, equally, the effect of drawing attention to what may be missing from news coverage. A blow-by-blow account of cars screaming to a halt, armed men tumbling out and shots being fired during a jewel robbery should be avoided when all the camera is able to record in the aftermath is a solitary police constable walking over broken glass from a window, a few specks of blood on the floor and tyre marks on the road. The atmosphere can be conveyed just as effectively without using words which make the viewer feel let down that the action is not taking place on the screen.
Similarly with sound: ‘cheering’ crowds, ‘screaming’ jet engines, the ‘crackle’ of small-arms fire – all conjure up definite mental pictures. If the viewer does not hear what is generally accepted as a cheer, scream or crackle, the suspicion may be born that the television people do not really know what they are about. Exactly the same response will be evoked by talk of the ‘booming’ of artillery, when what can be heard quite clearly on the sound track is indeed the crackle of small-arms fire. In such cases the writer is well advised to use general words less capable of misinterpretation. After all, ‘gunfire’ is a term capable of being applied to virtually anything between a few pistol shots and a full-scale battle.
Having learned these early lessons, the new writer’s next mistake will be to write a commentary which reads like a series of newspaper captions. With every change of shot the viewer is treated to nothing more or less than a verbal repetition of the sights and sounds unfolding on the television screen a few feet away. Thus the writer’s influence is as good as meaningless, especially where the script includes phrases intended to ensure that the viewer does not escape even the most obvious:
‘As you can see here …’
‘The Prime Minister, on the right …’
True, there are occasions when it is necessary to take the viewer metaphorically by the scruff of the neck:
‘The Smiths knew nothing of the explosion until they returned home a week later. Then, all they found … was this.’
But it is a device to be used sparingly.
In most cases, to repeat exactly what is happening on the screen is to waste a great opportunity to tell the viewer something worthwhile. The writer’s skill lies in being able to convey what is not clear from the pictures.
Take almost any international conference. Ten minutes after the routine photocall, during which delegates are seen talking and joking and filling glasses with mineral water, a furious row breaks out in the privacy of the closed session. Probably all the writer will ever have to work with are pictures suggesting that all was sweetness and light. Instead of throwing away the apparently irrelevant, the writer should be able to make almost a virtue of the scenes of accord, using them to point up the contrast between events occurring before and during the conference:
‘… but the spirit of cooperation didn’t last long. Almost as soon as the conference started …’
The use of archive material when no other illustration is available poses a similar test of ingenuity. Then the writer may be faced with the daunting prospect of matching the apparently unmatchable – out-of-date pictures with up-to-date facts. The temptation here is probably to ‘talk against picture’, in other words to ignore what the tape shows in order to get the story across. This can be done for very brief periods in a commentary, but the technique needs careful judgement to ensure that words and pictures meet often enough to avoid confusion.
Here’s an example. News breaks that the civilian government of an important South American country has been overthrown in a military coup. No pictures are expected until later in the day, and the only material immediately available in the archives consists of a few (unused) shots of the President reviewing troops when he took office on Independence Day a few months earlier.
Armed with the latest information provided by the wire services, a few background cuttings and a carefully made shot-list, the writer should be able to give the viewer a credible preliminary idea of the current state of events. In about 30 seconds the story is told simply enough, even though the pictures and the words accompanying them do not have to be anything special.
Imagine that some of the details of the coup, together with a map and the first political reactions at home have already been given in the studio introduction: the words ‘library pictures’ will be superimposed on the screen so the viewer is not misled:
One of the best tips about scripting good pictures is don’t. The more the action, the greater the need to say less. The same principle applies to good sound: let the band play, the cheers ring out. When words are needed in quantity it is important to use them to their best advantage. Too many experienced writers use up all their most interesting facts to cover the early shots and leave themselves short of anything else to say at the finish. Even the commentary to cover a routine 30-second item of local news can be structured to ensure a proper opening, middle and end, instead of being allowed to dribble weakly to a close.
When it is necessary to convey general points, do so over non-specific shots. Learn to recognize how pictures can be made to do their work for you by choosing the most appropriate words to cover them: a reference to millions of pounds being cut from the army equipment budget sits far more happily over a wide shot showing a column of tanks than over a close-up of a soldier on guard duty.
As has already been made clear, compiling a shot-list is the only sure method by which the writer is able to identify with any accuracy the separate scenes making up an edited news item.
Applying the formula of three words a second, it would take 54 words to reach the beginning of the shot where the party leader emerges from his car in the earlier example. But this does not allow for the fact there may be some good ‘natural’ sound to be heard, the writer may not wish to cover all 18 seconds with commentary or, indeed, there may not be enough to say that is relevant or worthwhile.
Added to these factors is the possibility that a hesitation or ‘fluff’ may make the reader’s speed vary, so by the time those 18 seconds have elapsed, words may be significantly out of step with pictures. What is needed, therefore, is some measure of control over the reader while the item is being transmitted live.
The example which follows is a variation on The Party Leader Arrives. This time it is The Foreign Minister of A Friendly Country.
The minister is about to conclude a big trade deal which includes the sale of military equipment for defence against an unspecified external threat. Others fear it may be used to quell internal unrest. Outside the building where the signing ceremony is to take place, police struggle to hold back a group of demonstrators who are waving banners and shouting loudly ‘Food not guns!’ As he arrives, the minister ignores the crowd and goes straight into his meeting.
| Shot-list | |
| General view minister’s car and escort | 3 sec |
| Medium shot police link arms to restrain crowd | 7 sec |
| Close-up minister out of car, waving | 11 sec |
| Medium shot group with banners shouting ‘Food not guns!’ | 16 sec |
| Minister walks straight past, up stairs into building | 22 sec |
Consulting this shot-list back in the newsroom, the writer decides the most interesting part of the story comes in the third shot, between 11 and 16 seconds, when the demonstrators make their presence felt. To emphasize the point it is essential the chants of ‘Food not guns!’ should be heard without the accompanying distraction of the reader’s voice. The aim, then, is to hold the reader back for the five seconds of the chanting, and then to give a signal to restart the commentary immediately afterwards.
Figure 7.1 Building in the pauses in the ‘Arms Deal’ script. OOV is news shorthand for Out Of Vision. This means the presenter keeps talking but his or her face is out of vision and the screen is filled with sound and vision. It would take a professional reader 10 seconds from the beginning of the video to cover the shots of the minister arriving and getting out of his car. The word ‘cue’ is the sign for the reader to pause while the chant ‘Food not guns’ is heard. Once 15 seconds have elapsed the reader is signalled to resume the commentary.
The secret lies in part in the format of the written script. If handwritten it might be best if laid out with technical and production instructions on the left-hand side and text on the right. If written directly into the electronic computer system technical instructions may be in a different colour and font, usually red.
Often it is the writer who ‘cues’ himself to start talking:
‘As the Minister arrived, large numbers of police were kept busy holding back groups of left-wing demonstrators determined to make it known what they thought of the arms deal.’
In this case the reader will have reached the words ‘… thought of the arms deal’ in exactly 10 seconds. He or she pauses. At 11 seconds the point is reached where demonstrators begin chanting. The shot has changed during the one second it takes for the reader to respond and smoothly pick up the thread of the commentary, so by the time the words
‘but even if he heard them, the Minister didn’t appear to notice the protests’
are heard the VIP is starting to walk up the stairs. (In planning the script it is essential for the writer always to remember a nominal one second between the change of shot or action and resumption of commentary. Experience will tell whether that is a long enough gap.) It is generally recognized that only the writer knows intimately what the pictures contain and is in a position to make minor adjustments to the time to speak.
Writers vary in the way they set out to construct their scripts. The method favoured by many is to begin by writing the words around one key shot, not necessarily at the start of the story, and then building up the commentary before and after it, fitting in the cues as necessary.
At this stage, unless pressure of time is great, it is wise to put down more or less anything which sounds right, leaving any polishing of words and phrases until the first draft is complete. This method is further helped by writing only three words on a line, whether on paper or on the screen, so making it simple to add up the number of seconds of commentary already written. The words can be typed three to a line on a blank or customized page, and pasted into the computer system script format later.
However it is done, the rule remains the same – accurate storytelling in news can be achieved consistently only as a result of writing when the shots to be used are known at the time of writing. It is disappointing to discover newsrooms where no demands at all are made on writers to ‘hit the shots’ as a matter of routine. Pictures are allowed to run their course while the words simply wash over them, meeting (if they ever do) more by luck than judgement. What the poor viewer is meant to make of it all is hard to tell.
Finally, if things do go awry, far better the script anticipates what is about to happen than lags behind what has already taken place. The viewer ought never to be left in limbo, staring at a brand new shot, and wondering whether he or she is not hearing the commentary because something has gone wrong with the television set.
It really is quite surprising how many experienced television journalists who have no difficulty in explaining the most complicated or abstract issues are completely lost when scripting news about sport. But it is a fairly safe bet to say that large numbers of people in the audience probably know more about sport than they do any other subject. Get the name of a politician wrong on air and for sure some people will be bound to notice: mispronounce some sporting celebrity and the telephones won’t stop ringing for days.
What we are considering here has nothing to do with the live broadcasts or other sports programmes which are usually the preserve of specialist departments, but the brief edits for inclusion as part of routine news programmes, as there are times when sport is news and deserves to be treated as such.
Every sport is a subject in its own right, but unless a television news service enjoys the luxury of having its own resident experts, there are bound to be occasions when the writer who is happiest dealing with international crises is suddenly called upon to script a tennis final or a soccer match. Sport has a language of its own, with accepted terms and phrases recognized by the aficionados but which are inapplicable, inexplicable even, out of their own context.
Simple things: teams take the collective noun. It may be more grammatically correct to say ‘England is …’ but anyone who is the least bit familiar with sports coverage of team games will pour scorn on any organization which allows that to be broadcast in place of the accepted ‘England are …’.
The second, and much more difficult problem, concerns the construction of the script itself, because the action in most sports is telescoped into a very short space of time. Long before any accompanying script can explain what has happened, the golfer has sunk a winning putt, the tennis player has served an ace, the batsman has been cleanbowled. So the most sensible approach to scripting virtually any sport is to remember that the action is far better ‘set up’ before it takes place, with any additional information immediately a suitable pause occurs – as the golfer picks the ball out of the hole, the tennis player winds up for the next service, the batsman starts to walk back to the pavilion.
The edited opening 13 seconds of a report on an England soccer match should give an idea. The script is simple, straightforward and economical. Note how the shot-list splits the action into very short scenes to ensure maximum accuracy in the commentary writing:
Note how the opening words set the scene and at the same time warn the audience that something important is about to happen. They also straddle the second shot, identifying the player who has been tackled illegally, and there is still enough time to squeeze in the information about the taker of the free-kick before the commentary pauses at nine seconds to let the action take place.
During the next four seconds the free-kick is taken, Owen leaps into the air and heads the ball past the goalkeeper. It is only after that, at 11 seconds, as the scorer turns to celebrate, that the commentary is allowed to resume, completing the sequence while confirming in words what the pictures have shown.
It is a treatment which probably works equally as efficiently with other sports, the essential point being that the script always helps to build up the expectation of important action and does not swamp it with unnecessary words.
Finally, it is also true that some good journalists who do know about sport somehow go over all glassy-eyed when they are writing about it. Because it is a subject they love and know intimately, they allow themselves to relax, and one result is that many of the safety devices they have invented for themselves get ignored, standards drop – and suddenly more clichés. More tame and predictable phrasing appears in sports writing than in any other part of the newscast. It is essential for the enthusiasts to remind themselves they are writing for a general audience who have every right to expect sports news to be treated as skilfully as any other subject.
Some of the problems associated with cueing natural sound effects within a news story have already been touched on. A whole new set of difficulties present themselves when the sound is that of human speech.
Much of what is spoken within television news reports comes from two categories of people – reporters or those being interviewed by them. In either case, the aim of the writer must be to construct any additional commentary for transmission in a way which links most naturally into the words already recorded on to the sound track.
Where this comes within the body of the item rather than at the beginning, the onus rests even more heavily on the editorial team to ensure that speech arrives a decent breath’s pause after the commentary introducing it. Failure results in either an embarrassingly long delay between the two or, worse, what is known in the United States as ‘upcutting’, the ugly overlap of live commentary and recorded sound.
Accuracy is achieved fairly easily by positioning a cue paragraph immediately before the sound extract. The wording itself is of importance, and the writer is taking unnecessary risks if a planned lead-in to a section of speech demands timing to the split second:
‘Turning to the latest round of trade talks, the Foreign Minister told the conference …’
(Foreign Minister speaks)
will be impressive if the sound is heard without delay, but
‘The Foreign Minister told the conference about the latest round of trade talks …’
(Foreign Minister speaks)
would be much wiser, for it would still make sense if the recorded speech were delayed for a few seconds or did not arrive at all because of some technical fault. The whole principle is based on the fact that flexibility rests with the writer’s words and not on the speech fixed at an immovable point on the edited sound track.
With interviews in which the reporter’s first or only question has been edited out, the words leading up to the answer must be carefully phrased to produce a response which matches and makes sense, otherwise there is a clear danger that the writer will be guilty of distortion. It is equally important to ensure that if the viewer is about to be shown an interviewee in close-up preparing to answer a question, the commentary leading up to it should leave no doubt about who is to speak. This is achieved by referring to the first speaker last. So it is:
‘Tania Bailey asked the Foreign Minister for his reaction …’
(Foreign Minister answers)
and not
‘The Foreign Minister talked to Tania Bailey …’
(Foreign Minister answers)
All introductions should follow similar principles.
‘We’ve just received this report from Delia Ward …’
as the final sentence leading into a story about farm subsidies is acceptable only if Our Reporter is visible or audible at once. But if the opening shot shows an impressive herd of prize-winning cows Ms Ward is unlikely to be best pleased by the inevitable audience reaction. A less general scene, perhaps of a field or farm entrance, would reduce the disparity.
It is also worth bearing in mind the use to which final introductory sentences can be put as a way of alerting the viewer to what is coming next. The flat statement:
‘Delia Ward reports …’
is factual but adds nothing.
‘Delia Ward has been finding out why the withdrawal of farm subsidies could have such devastating effects …’
has, at least, the merit of suggesting to the audience that it might be worth keeping awake for the report about to follow.
The selection of one or more extracts from a lengthy recorded interview obviously depends on the amount of space the item has been allocated within a newscast. As it is fairly unusual for any interview to be shot to its exactly prescribed duration, however experienced the principals taking part, a certain amount of choice will inevitably be necessary. Given time, the programme editor or producer may wish to make this part of their normal duties, especially when sensitive issues are at stake, but just as frequently it is the newsroom-based writer who will be faced with the task, sometimes ‘guided’ by the interviewer to the most appropriate quotes. In some news organizations the reporter is expected to ‘cut’ his or her own interviews without any supervision.
But as every interview is unique, it is impossible to set down rigid rules. On some occasions, the single one-minute answer out of six will stand out. On others it will be difficult to quarry a twenty-second bite from fluff-ridden ramblings.
The firmest general guidelines to any selector probably go no further than a suggestion that the ultimate value of any news interview rests more in ‘colour’, opinion and interpretation than in the presentation of facts, especially those which may become quickly out of date or easily challenged. What the audience wants to know from officials interviewed at the scene of a fatal accident an hour before the newscast is how it might have happened and not the number of deaths and injuries – which could be liable to change. That information is best left for the studio introduction or updated at the last moment for inclusion within the overall report.
In making the choice, there should also be awareness that much more is involved than suitability of duration and content, important though they might be. The editing into, or out of, any recorded speech at precisely the required point editorially may, at the same time, not be feasible technically. So even at the expense of a few, extra, unwanted seconds of screen time, the aim should always be to cut at the most natural points: ends of answers, or where the selection consists of only part of a sound passage, a stop or breath pause during which the inflection of the voice is downwards.
Although most people are fully aware that editing takes place, it is always much better to avoid any cut which will appear both ugly and obvious.
Two temptations to avoid are puns and clichés.
Experienced writers usually consider a really important, well-shot news story virtually tells itself, the task becoming one of assembling facts in an order dictated by the quality and sequence of the accompanying pictures. Much more testing are the down-bulletin items, often weekend fillers or ‘soft’ stories for which little information is readily available. With these, the temptation is for the writer to produce a stream of generalities or a series of puns, the aim in either case being to lower a curtain of words through which the lack of facts will not be noticed. There are occasions when, used sparingly, this technique does work. But, for example, a balloon race which wrings out such lines as ‘soaring reputations’ or ‘rising hopes’ will quickly have the discerning viewer zapping channels in disgust.
For any unwary writer, the cliché presents another booby trap, and in television news it is a double-edged one at that, since trite pictures are just as likely to find their way on air as are trite phrases. Probably every viewer of every television newscast in the world has had to suffer the local equivalent of the following British examples, from which not even the most lauded, high-minded news programmes are immune:
• exteriors of courthouses or other public buildings, used to avoid reporter pieces to camera;
• any politician sitting at a desk signing documents or reading letters;
• Cabinet ministers filing through/coming out of the door of No. 10 Downing Street;
• any VIP descending/ascending any aircraft steps anywhere;
• camera crews or security men on rooftops, used to telescope the action between aircraft steps and official car;
• crowd ‘reaction’.
As for the words, it seems almost impossible for some writers to avoid trotting out the stock phrase to satisfy the stock situation:
• The Big Fire
• ‘Fifty/a hundred fire-fighters fought/battled the blaze/flames’
‘Smoke could be seen five/ten/fifty miles/kilometres away’
‘Fire-fighters/ambulances rushed …’ (what else would they do?)
• The Explosion/Earthquake
‘Wreckage was scattered over a wide area’
‘Rescuers tore at the wreckage with their bare hands’
‘Damage is estimated at …’
• The Injured
‘… undergoing emergency treatment’ (see ‘Fire-fighters/ambulances rushed’)
• The Great Escape
‘Police with tracker dogs …’
‘A massive hunt/search …’
‘Road blocks have been set up’
• The VIP Visit
‘Security was strict/tight’
• The Long Drawn-Out Negotiation
‘The lights are burning late tonight …’
• The Holiday Snarl-up
‘Traffic was bumper-to-bumper’
• The Appeal
‘Unless the Government provides more money/changes its mind/a donor is found/comes forward, the department/hospital/project/child will close/have to move/die.’
And that is not to forget my own particular favourite, usually attributed to an elderly eyewitness to any violent incident in the south of England:
‘It was just like the blitz.’
To be fair, it is perfectly understandable that when time is short and the pressure great, it is the familiar line rather than the elegant phrase which suggests itself to the writer, besides which the overriding priority must always be to get the commentary on air, however much it might lack in originality.
But that ought to be reserved for the last resort. Where second thoughts are possible, the tired old standby must be shunned. As experienced journalists like to put it: ‘Avoid clichés … like the plague.’
The golden rules of writing to pictures
Writing to pictures presents journalists with a genuine opportunity to extend their experience into a completely new area. Yet, paradoxically, it remains one with limits which some regard as too restrictive. In accepting the first principle that there can be no scripted words totally unrelated to the pictures accompanying them, the writer may feel a straitjacket is being fashioned from the very material it was believed would usher the viewer to new heights of understanding.
Among some professional writers, and especially those making the transition from print or radio without adequate training, this feeling is sincere, the gap seemingly unbridgeable. It need not be, provided that what is an apparent weakness in the whole foundation of television news is seen as a means of refining news sense to a point where every single word is carefully chosen before being put to work.
As confidence improves, the dedicated convert to television news discovers that within the boundaries of content and duration the treatment of words and pictures as complementary in character makes it possible to convey deeper understanding of both.
To begin moving towards that goal, the writer must take time and care to apply, ultimately by instinct, what can only be described in summary as the golden rules of writing to pictures:
1. Words and pictures must go together. Fight the pictures and you will lose.
2. Don’t repeat in detail what the viewer is able to see and hear for him or herself. This is television, not radio.
3. Don’t describe in detail what the viewer is not able to see and hear for him or herself.
The audience will feel cheated otherwise.
4. Don’t overwrite. The best script is often the one with the fewest words.
And, to repeat:
Match your words to the pictures, not vice versa.