Chapter 7 Planning Shows and Writing Scripts

Planning your show to the nth detail is not necessary. In general, the value of detailed planning increases with the scale and scope of the project as well as the number of people involved. For example, with a show of only moderate length and complexity but a loosely organized team of collaboratorssay a class projectplanning and the clear communication of the plan help to focus the objective, lay out the process, and divide up the work. This chapter offers some general tips on how to prepare a video project. While none of these suggestions are specic to Visual Communicator, we hope theyll help you polish your process and produce better videos with less workand with more hair remaining when its all done.

Planning your Show

1. Scratch your head and think for a bit
If you havent already done so, take some time to think about what you want your show to say. Develop the message or objective until its entirely clear. Keep the objective in mind as you develop your show so that the point of your show does not stray off track.

2. All great things start with a list

List the scenes in order of appearance along with the media or inputs youll use for each. This will be your list of ingredients for making a great, effective show. For example if you are doing a sales show, you might want to include the following: 1. Opening music 2. Opening Title Slate and image 3. Live video of the person announcing product 4. Product photo 5. Video clip of someone using the product 6. PowerPoint slide listing benets of the product 7. Closing comments from salesperson 8. Closing image and music

3. Collect your ingredients

Go out and create or collect any of the ingredients that dont come with Visual Communicator such as PowerPoint slides, person(s) to act in the video, photos of product, etc.

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Making an Outline of Your Show

A show outline is like the blueprint for your video. Its a great way to communicate your vision of the video, to keep track of what ingredients are required, and to make sure that every detail is assigned to someone on the production team. Here is an example of an outline for the Gravity Demo project, one of the VC shows in the Demos folder of the Projects Library. Scene Description
Opening Title: Gravity and You, with background music Live video of Mark reading script Transition to picture of Sir Isaac as Mark continues reading Display PowerPoint slide of gravity formula

Media
Intro Music Title Graphic Camera 1: Mark Microphone Image le of Isaac PowerPoint slide

Video Effect
Dissolve Dissolve OTS Kid Power GoldFramed_TV Tumble In Upper Left

Whos Responsible
John Jill Emily & John on script Jill on camera setup Suzy Mark

Describing What Happens in Each Scene

Scene descriptions help each team member know how exactly his or her contribution ts into the larger project.

Creating a Quick Sketch of Your Scenes

We all know what a picture is worth, and with Visual Communicator those thousand words can become exponentially greater. Moving pictures convey powerful messages. The images in your show are arguably more important than the words in your script. Whether you use the images that come with VC or decide to create your own, sketching out a quick storyboard can help you get a preview of how the scenes in your video will ow. Create some simple sketches of each event in your show. Again, if you are part of a creative team, sharing ideas in this way is invaluable.

Making a List of What You Will Need

Once the basic scenes have been framed out, getting a handle on the required component parts is typically pretty straightforward. Having a list of ingredients will help you assign the members of your team to particular jobs.

Assigning Tasks and Responsibilities

If two or more people will share a task, designate one of them to have the nal word.

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Chapter 7 Planning Shows & Writing Scripts

Writing Your Script

If youve never fancied yourself a writer and get writers block just thinking about writing a script, reading this section may help you clear the block and hit the keyboard running.

Understand Your Audience

The rst rule of communication is to know your audience. This will help you manage the tone and level of detail for the presentation. Be sure the general vocabulary and topicspecic terminology is appropriate for your intended audience.

Keep It Simple
Always be clear and concise when delivering your presentation. Write your script so that your information ows smoothly from one topic to the next. Try not to over embellish your script. If you spend too much time on a topic you may lose your audience. The average TV news story is about a minute long. Watch some network television newscasts, paying particular attention to the way the newscasters convey the information. Everything they say is scripted, clear, and to the point. Youll also notice that the news shows try to avoid being stuck on a talking head for too long. They insert graphics, video effects, and over-theshoulder visual elements to illustrate whats being said and keep things interesting.

Leverage the Power of the Medium

Hollywood writers know that great books cant usually be translated directly into great movies because they are dramatically different mediums with very different strengths. Books and other printed text are ideal for communicating a great amount of detailed information. Video can deliver information, but where it really excels is effectively conveying feelings and the innate sense of something. Resist the temptation to cut and paste the text of your entire employee manual into the Teleprompter to make an employee orientation video. You would be wasting the most powerful aspects of the medium now at your disposal (as well as possibly boring your audience into a deep coma). Video can have much more intellectual and emotional impact than text, but to gain this impact you must distill your message to its most essential points. If you dont keep your audience interested, they will tune you out and your message will not get through. The biggest mistake in many videos, especially corporate and educational videos, is that they contain too much detail. If you want your audience to digest a lot of technical information, better to feed it to them in written form. If your goal is to communicate the essentials, convey a feeling, generate support, and inspire action, then make a video.

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Remember, while your audience may have varying levels of knowledge, education, and sophistication regarding your subject, almost everyone is an expert at watching TV. We all have expectations about how it should look. A good exercise is to watch some television shows and analyze the content and pacing. Notice how they are put together scene by scene. You will see that the best television programming usually has a lot of visual action and that the messages are kept fairly simple and easy to understand. Now try to create a script or outline on your subject or message that has similar pacing and content.

Ease of Reading and Comprehension Its All in the Flow & Rhythm
Where two words are equally effective, the shorter one is generally preferable. Consider that in the Gettysburg Address, only 19 of 278 words (6.8%) were three or more syllables. In John F. Kennedys inaugural address, the ratio was 108 out of 1372 words (7.9%). You can do worse than to follow the lead of these two enthralling orators.

Bite-Sized Chunks: If you have a very long video, break the content up into chapters or
segments. Delivering too much information in an unbroken stretch can turn your audience off. If you have VC Studio, you can use Chapter Markers (page 109) to provide easy access to the sections.

Sending the Script Through Your Teams Approval Process: If you are writing a
script for your company, its easy to distribute scripts via email or other electronic means for nal approval from management, marketing, and other groups.

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