The Television Medium.

Television was the first mass medium to combine sight, sound, movement and color. Broadcast television (both network and local) has traditionally been a very broad-based medium allowing advertisers to reach a very wide demographic range with a single spot.

The medium as a whole has the following strengths and weaknesses:

Strengths.

1. Persuasive- especially because of its ability to demonstrate
2. Credible- possibly because viewers connect all programming with news
3. Intrusive- programs designed to hold viewers through commercial breaks
4. Glamorous- some advertisers feel they have to be on TV

Weaknesses.

1. Expensive- broadcast airtime is expensive compared to radio or cable, but video production is no longer prohibitively expensive for most clients
2. Cluttered- the standard TV spot has been 30 seconds for years and now 10 second spots are becoming popular, leading to more individual spots per commercial break

Broadcast Television.

Network:

1 Only about 600 companies can afford to advertise regularly on prime-time network TV.

2. Spots are sold almost exclusively through 15 national ad agencies, which then prepare the copy and storyboards and contract with production companies to produce the spots.

3. While the cost per spot can be astronomical, the ability to reach a large and diverse audience with little effort has made possible a consumer-driven economy that is the envy of the world.

4. Adjacencies (spots between programs) traditionally cost less than participations (spots within the body of the program). In recent years the networks have all but eliminated adjacencies in prime-time, merging the closing credits for one show (often with network promos digitally added) into the opening teaser for the next show.

5. The majority of network television spots are shot on 35 mm film, transferred to video, and edited on non-linear editors where all titles and special effects (abbreviated FX) are added. Virtually all clients who were willing to compromise on 16 mm film have now moved to high definition video, often shot at 24 frames per second, progressive scan (24p) for a film look. This may someday replace 35 mm film as well.

6. While networks will sell 60 second spots, these are very rare. The 30 second spot is the norm, and with the high cost of air time, 10 second spots are cropping up, often as abbreviated versions of the 30s to remind the viewer of the longer version.

Local Station:

1. Stations affiliated with national networks get to sell a very limited number of spots within the body of the network programs they carry. These spots are usually their most expensive and are frequently sold to national companies who either couldn't afford the network's rate or who missed out on the deadline to purchase the network's scarce availabilities (called avails and referring to any national or local spot that has yet to be sold). The station employs a rep firm (usually one of four major companies with offices on Madison Ave. in NYC) which bargains with ad agencies to sell time on several hundred stations. The spots aired are usually the same ones produced for the network.

2. Larger stations will have a Regional Sales Manager who will deal primarily with regional ad agencies (there are 4 in Allentown for example). In many cases these ad agencies will handle the copywriting and storyboards, and work with production houses to provide the station with completed spots.

3. For small, local clients, the station's account executives provide many of the functions of an ad agency, helping with the creation of the spots and suggesting the most effective placement.

4. Since most TV stations have studios for news and other programming, they can often produce a spot quickly and inexpensively using these facilities, especially when the spot can be shot "live on tape" (what I call real-time video production).

5. TV stations have also moved toward all-digital production, and many have production departments that serve as profit centers, producing commercials for airing not only on their own station, but on others in the same market and around the country. They often produce station promos and even short industrial videos. These departments can provide field video crews and elaborate post-production at very competitive rates.

Network:

1. There are a vast number of advertiser-supported cable networks (usually available on satellite as well), most associated in some way with one of the major broadcast networks. This segment is much wider than is suggested by the text and both programming and spots are shared with their broadcast cousins. This has resulted in the average viewer making virtually no distinction between the two.

2. While some of the cable networks have very diverse programming and wide demographic appeal, many are more targeted and are therefore attractive to advertisers whose products have a narrow demographic appeal.

3. The cost per spot on cable networks is much less than on the broadcast networks, but unfortunately our methods of measuring the cable audience are still less reliable than those used for broadcasting. For this reason some clients are getting tremendous values and some are wasting their money.

4. While the pool of clients who can afford network cable is larger than for the broadcast networks, the process of purchasing time is virtually identical. The advertiser is represented by a national or regional ad agency which selects the appropriate avails, purchases the time and handles the creation and production of the spots. In many cases spots already produced for the broadcast networks are also aired on cable.

Local:

1. While satellite delivery is just beginning to develop the technology to target programming and advertising to local markets, cable television began as a local service and some local cable systems produce a significant amount of local news and other programming, for which they sell advertising much like a local broadcast station.

2. Whether or not any local programming is provided, local cable systems are provided a limited number of avails within all of the advertiser-supported network programming. Larger cable companies have created their own sales divisions to sell these spots to local clients, produce the spots and to insert them into the cable network programming. These sales divisions provide all the services of a broadcast TV station, often to clients in several markets.

3. Smaller cable systems are often served by a cable broker, a company that performs all these services for a percentage of the gross sales.

4. As mentioned in the text, local spots (even more in cable than in broadcast), whether produced by a cable system or cable broker, appear alongside slick spots produced by national ad agencies and costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. For this reason, copywriters and art directors who can create effective spots that can be produced on a shoestring are in demand by these companies.

1. The shot. The text uses the terms "shot" and "scene" interchangeably, but they are quite different. A shot is traditionally defined as "one run of film or tape" although with video cameras having zoom lenses, today we need to qualify that as "one run of film or tape with essentially the same elements in the frame." Zooming or panning to follow a talent is not a change of shot, but zooming or panning to reveal a new character is a change of shot. Shots are the basic time elements in shooting scripts.

2. The scene. This is a description of a location and often a series of actions that take place within a defined length of time. This is the basic unit of the teleplay, a general description of the plot from which the director creates the final production with great latitude as to how it will look and sound.

3. The single-camera script template devised for this course is designed for what is often called a shooting script, in other words the actual script the director takes into the field and the editing room to produce the finished spot. Timing these shots as they are filmed or taped is critical, hence the center time column listing the length of each shot.

3. Storyboards are most often created by the art director, working closely with the copywriter. They are commonly used at the ad agency level to get the client's approval on a creative approach before any expensive 35 mm film is exposed. At the local level, a storyboard may be omitted, or may be scribbled in the margins of the script by the director.

4. Shot sizes commonly used in video scripts include:

a. Extreme long shot (XLS or ELS)- a panoramic view of a skyline or a whole studio set
b. Long shot (LS) also called a wide shot (WS)- a shot including the talent head to foot
c. Medium shot (MS)- a shot from approx. the waist up, allowing for hand gestures
d. Medium close-up (MCU)- the news anchor shot, mid-chest to head
e. Close-up (CU)- a head and shoulders shot, showing emotion
f. Extreme close-up (XCU or ECU)- a very tight shot to show details

Note that the terms long shot (LS) and wide shot (WS) are used interchangeably in the industry, although I think LS is more common in video production.

5. Camera movements are all designated by the direction the lens moves. Hence a pan right is accomplished by pushing left on the back of the camera and the image in the frame will appear to move to the left.

6. Transitions have developed meanings most of which have been inherited from their use by early motion picture directors. While the text sometimes abbreviates the names of transitions, this is not a good practice, as a tired or pressured editor may overlook one and the spot will not end up as the scriptwriter intended (and as the client envisioned).

a. cut- An instantaneous transition, most closely approximating the way the eye and brain work together to allow us to see only what we want to concentrate on. The most natural and commonly used transition in film and video.

b. dissolve- A soft transition where one image fades to transparency and another image fades up to become opaque. This is used to indicate a passage of time, a dream sequence, or to accompany dance or ice skating when slow music is used.

c. fade- Like a dissolve, but always to or from black. In the US we use this only to begin or end a program, as it has been used to separate commercials from programs and will break the viewer's concentration. As network time has become more valuable, fades have shortened, but if you look closely, networks still insert a 6 frame (1/5 sec.) fade between commercials and programming. Some local stations cut directly to commercials which can be confusing.

d. wipe- This is a flashy transition that calls attention to itself. One solid image wipes over the top of another, often is a geometric pattern. Used in commercials to attract attention.

e. digital video effects- A wide range of usually attention-getting transitions such as page turns. These can be overused, but can also create very dramatic effects on the viewer.

7. B-roll. This is video usually shot without sound (MOS) and used to illustrate information conveyed by an off-camera, voice-over (V/O) announcer.

8. Montage. This is a series of short shots usually cut together, often with music, to convey an abstract concept.

9. Graphics are almost always produced in Photoshop and may incorporate text, logos and full motion video. Programs like After Effects allow for these graphics to be animated and incorporated seamlessly into the body of a spot. Note that Photoshop and After Effects are available on KU's non-linear editors, so the power of these programs is not limited to upscale production houses.

Mechanics of Real-Time Video Production.

1. The transitions and shot descriptions mentioned above can all be created in a modern TV studio live on tape.

2. Shooting scripts for studio productions differ from those for field productions in that numbering the shots is usually irrelevant and the time column is usually back timed so that the director can adjust the pace of the taping to end at the correct time. Each shot description will have not only a transition and description of the content of the frame, but will also have a source, a button on the video switcher which will activate the desired visual.

3. While many small products can be easily displayed in a studio, most commercials work better visually if there is some field video to show the outside of the store, happy customers, etc. This video clip is indicated on the video side of the script by a transition, the number of the video recorder or file from a video server, and a brief description of the clip (take VCR #2, exterior of Sims Ford).

4. On the audio side, a clip with its own pre-recorded audio is designated by the term sound on tape, usually written SOT. If the clip is B-roll and the announcer will talk over it, the term voice-over, usually written V/O is used.

Some Guidelines for Crafting Video Commercials.

1. Concentrate on one main message about the product or service.

2. Use intriguing audio or video to gain the viewer's attention.

3. Clearly identify the client with audio and video and give the location or contact information near the end of the spot.

4. Balance the audio and the video. Both should contribute to the message, and they should not contradict each other. In a famous advertising failure, a 30 second spot for a lipstick that was supposed to last all day showed a model applying it 4 times.

5. Don't get overly clever to the extent that your words or images are remembered to the exclusion of the product.

6. End with a logo or memorable shot clearly connected in the viewer's mind with the client.

7. Read your copy to yourself and see if a rival company could be substituted for your client (i.e., Joe's Pontiac for Sims Ford) without changing the copy. If so, you haven't said anything unique and you need to try again.

The Copy Platform.

The model developed in Unit #7 provides a good approach for television as well as radio spots. While the text emphasizes the need for more information about the client and competition, this is usually provided by the account executive and is not generally part of the copywriter's responsibility. As a reminder the model includes:

1. Client and Product or Service.
2. Objective.
3. Target Audience.
4. Message (Sales Theme).
5. Secondary Message(s) (Bonus Item).
6. Positioning.
7. Format (Approach).

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