The demonstration format, a kind of “show and tell,” has been a part of television since its very early days. It includes productions ranging from a food channel production that “shows and tells”
how to cook, to segments on late-night television where the host shows album covers, funny pictures, funny headlines, and so on. Much of the production in corporate videos is created using demonstration formats. Googling “how to” gets over a billion hits.
All how-to productions, which are show-and-tell in nature, are very direct in what they’re trying to accomplish. They tell a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. They’re video cookbooks, and they say, “Here are the ingredients. These are the steps needed to combine the ingredients. This is what it finally looks like.” Each step along the way requires the director/producer to arrange for the audience to see only the most relevant material—at just the right time—for just the right length of time needed to tell the story.
Until you become involved with an actual pro-duction, this seems like an easy program to produce and shoot. In fact, it is—but only if great focus and care are given to each detail in the preproduction stage. It’s just because it does seem so easy that so many problems can arise. It’s one of those cases where the devil is in the details. Rehearsing each lit-tle step of the program and being sure about the details may seem foolish, but it’s essential. It’s the same whether you’re working on the smallest scale with the simplest material or on a major production at a major facility.
DIRECTOR IN CONTROL
One of the first rules to be learned is that, wherever possible, the director should retain full control. This
may seem more aggressive than polite, but it’s critical.
“Taking control” means the director has to accept responsibility for the production and find the best way to get what’s needed to make the program a suc-cess. It doesn’t mean either “be tyrannical” or “be nice.” In fact, when directors try to “be” anything, they usually fail. It’s only when they try to make something happen, in the most straightforward way, that they achieve success. The chances of success are greatly enhanced if the director knows what needs to happen next and then takes control of it.
Just how necessary it is to retain control became clear to me when I directed a program in which a guest had a slide projector and explained a trip he had taken. (Today, he’d probably be using a com-puter with a PowerPoint demonstration.) He ran the slide projector from the set, and I had a camera on the screen. The audience saw each new slide when he thought it was best. The kindest way to phrase the result is to say that he and I had different ideas about timing, and he did love his slides. Thereafter, I insisted that guests with slides review the slides with me and then give the slides to me, after which I would give them to our projectionist and offer a monitor to the guests that showed nothing but the slides. I would change the slides on the air when I thought the story needed the next visual. The tempo picked up considerably, as did the interest of the audi-ence. The director’s need to control the action remains the same whether its slides or PowerPoint. Of course, on most late-night programs it’s the star who controls the tempo of showing items. Fortunately, most stars have a highly developed sense of timing.
It’s also important to keep control of the “show-ing part” of the demonstration program. The dreaded uncontrolled moment happens when a guest holds up some small item that demands a close-up. Invariably it’s held up in the air and waved around as the des-perate cameraperson tries vainly to find focus for the
Directing and Producing for Television. DOI:10.1016/B978-0-240-81293-9.00005-6 103
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close-up. Most of the directors and celebrities who work in the demonstration format have found spe-cific places on the set where items that are to be shown are placed. This allows the close-up camera to zoom in to that spot and find its focus even before the first item is put in place.
Whether it’s a program or a segment of a pro-gram, there must come a time when the director/
producer talks over what’s to happen during the production. If it’s a demonstration program, a “rou-tine” or “rundown” is created to outline what’s seen, when it’s seen, and how long each segment will appear on the air. There may be no written routine for the material within each segment, but the compo-nents are thoroughly worked out, and the outcome produces a firm idea of exactly what, where, and when each item will be shown. This will help the director/producer get appropriate wide shots to show all the action—and very specific shots in the close-up.
SHOW-AND-TELL MATERIAL: A GUIDELINE FOR CREATION
The following is a general guideline to creating show-and-tell material.
Preproduction
1. Coordinate pictures with ideas.
2. Create a routine.
a. A written long routine for the program b. A short routine, or outline, for showing
things within each segment. It should be based on some overriding idea: the order of construction, a chronological order, the size of objects to be shown, and so on.
3. Rehearse the demonstration at home or at the office and then again in the studio.
a. Create a format that limits the way in which material will be shown, and rehearse the demonstration. Take no shortcuts—
rehearse it all!
4. Use the real thing as often as possible, or use props that are very similar to the real thing.
5. Discover special needs.
a. For the camera: lenses, filters b. For audio: sound effects, music
c. For the stage: props, graphics
Production
1. Limit the area where material is to be shown.
2. Create strong time-cues.
3. Limit the focus of the talent—that is, “Look at camera 3, show to camera 2.”
4. Holding small objects in the air makes it impossible for the camera operator to
accurately focus on the object being shown, so show prearranged material in only one of the following ways:
a. Panning: Show prearranged material panning left to right (or right to left) b. Marked spot: Show preset objects on aOR
“marked” spot. Remove the first object and replace it with the next item to be seen.
Coordinate Pictures with Ideas
The most essential part of demonstration programs or segments is that they tell a story. Telling is the important thing. The showing is what makes the telling better. Organize the material. Start with an idea, and then illustrate it. Wonderful items with very little connective thread make for dull viewing.
I used to direct three shows every Monday for the National Educational Television channel in New York.
The program was called New Jersey Speaks for Itself.
It was designed to let people in the metropolitan area know about what was happening in New Jersey.
Invariably, one of those shows would feature a guest who was going to demonstrate something for us. If the guest was not prepared, it was difficult to create a half-hour production that was even adequate. The problems I encountered there continued to arise each time I worked in this format, whether it was on an infomer-cial, a game show segment, or with student production.
Guests on my program took on nightmare quali-ties when they arrived at the studio carrying every-thing they owned relating to the topic they would address. They had carloads of material for segments that were supposed to last a maximum of 12 minutes.
They had no idea how to show their material, what to say, or where to put it. Moreover, they usually came late, so they couldn’t rehearse, and they had been so busy they hadn’t had time to return phone calls to dis-cuss the project. Equally unpleasant were guests who arrived just as late, just as unprepared, and had no more than half a dozen vertical, unmounted pictures with which they expected to fill the same 12 minutes.
Clearly, the best guests, and thus the best pro-grams, were those with which there had been some communication and preparation. Better guests brought in objects that related to a story. Each item they intended to show would help the viewer under-stand more about the story.
If the story is a how-to piece, then each item that’s shown should build on the preceding one.
There should be a rehearsal, not just a “talk-through,” beforehand to work out exactly what visuals apply. If the piece is one in which varieties of the same thing are shown—hand-carved ducks, for example—then one ought to find a unifying theme that links each piece in a logical way—for example,
“Here are ducks from the East Coast; here are ducks from the West Coast” or “Here are big ducks; here are little ducks.” They might organize the material to
show the works of one artist and then the works of the next, or different schools of carving, or even ducks through the ages. Almost anything would be acceptable that coordinated an idea with the pictures.
Create a Routine
Whether directing a segment or a program, you need to create a routine. Imagine you’re working with me on that WNET production that used hand-carved ducks as a show-and-tell/demonstration segment. On that episode I was able to have a preproduction meeting with the guest. We arranged to show the ducks chronologically from the earliest carvings to the more modern ones, and since there were a large number of works, we organized them further by sculptor. The program had the following routine:
NEWJERSEYSPEAKS FORITSELF—DATE—EPISODE#
# Description & Location
Run Time
Cumulative Time
1. Opening animation @ Master Control :30
2. Host with Bob Zee re: N.J. Election @ Home Base
7:00 7:30
3. Host lead to PSA @ Home Base :30 8:00
4. PSA @ Master Control 1:00 9:00
5. Host and Duck Guest @ Home Base 1:00 10:00
6. Duck Display @ Display Area 7:00 17:00
7. Host thanks and Tease panel @ Home Base 1:00 18:00
8. PSA @ Master Control 1:00 19:00
9. Host and four re: Summer Fun @ Home Base 7:30 26:30
Annabel and Julian Cury Bea and Max Gorodetzki
10. Host wrap @ Home Base 1:30 28:00
11. Closing credits over duck display :30 28:30
Rehearsal
Items 1 through 5 were somewhat standardized and would be rehearsed later, following the example used to rehearse a panel program. Item 6, the duck display, is listed in the program routine as a simple line of copy; nevertheless, there was a kind of sub-routine that had to be constructed with the guest. It had to be a complete and repeatable outline of how things were going to be shown.
One of the first considerations in creating the routine is time. The allotted time for item 6 is 7 min-utes. That needs to be broken down. There’s a teach-ing trick that’s useful here: first you tell the students, or in this case the audience, what they’re going to see, then you show it to them, and then you tell them what they’ve seen. If you accept that, then 30 sec-onds are needed to introduce the way in which we’ll see the ducks, and at the end we’ll need another 30 seconds to summarize what we’ve seen. That leaves just 6 minutes for the actual demonstration. If things are rushed so each duck is seen and discussed for just 15 seconds, there’s enough time to see four ducks per minute. We have 6 minutes. Four ducks per minute, times 6 minutes equals 24 ducks—maximum. It would be prudent to have a few “standby” ducks in case the guest whizzed through the display, but there isn’t time for a lot more. Once you break that down for a guest, he or she can begin to arrange the mate-rial to suit the needs of the program.
Through our initial discussion, the guest was able to decide that the best way to show the duck carvings was in chronological order, showing one or two examples from selected artists, starting with antiques from the early 1900s.
Once guests are prepared, they can work out the specifics on their own. They should be encour-aged to go home and go through every step of the presentation, using all the props exactly as they intend to use them on the program. We don’t want them to write and memorize a script, because that might get stilted. We do want them to be very famil-iar with every part of the presentation and tell us what we have to know. Later they’ll bring the mate-rial to the studio or an office for a rehearsal.
The Real Thing
Once when I was directing a daytime drama, in the days when one taped as-if-live, and with just 10 minutes to go before we taped, I was told that the program was short. We needed to stall by
at least 2 minutes. The story line was that some of the regulars were leaving their old home to move on to a new place. I suggested that the stagehands put a bunch of old props in a box—things like old ice skates, a stethoscope, a lamp, and so on—and wrap the box. The actors would open the box and make up stories about the props for the required 2 min-utes. There was no time to rehearse.
So we tried it for the first time on the air.
Naturally, reality bit me. Everything worked fine except the wrapping paper. It sounded like a forest fire every time the actors touched the stuff. If there had been time to rehearse, I would have eliminated the wrapping paper. There usually is some little unimportant detail that reveals itself only as you work the piece under real conditions, even in a dem-onstration program.
Of course, there are big differences between rehearsing at home or at an office and rehearsing at the studio. Even if the guests are diligent and rehearse on their own, they still need a studio rehearsal. They need to become familiar with all the little changes that are part of the studio setup. The table will be different. The space they have to work in will be changed. Apart from their own contribu-tion to the program, they’ll have to know how the show runs. Will they walk from the discussion area to the production area on the air or during a com-mercial break? Where is the production area?
How will they know when to begin? What does the display area look like? Where can they store props? They may have discovered some of the things they’re going to need when they rehearsed at home.
Confronting the actual set and props makes a big difference. That can be done without an engineering crew, but someone from the crew should be avail-able to supply props that suddenly become needed—
a blue cloth to cover the gray countertop so there can be contrast with a gray duck, for example.
At the studio, the guest should be escorted to the set. Enough time should be scheduled for a rehearsal. The guest should be given a copy of the routine to see how he or she fits into the program.
It would be best if the guest sees the home base set and the presentation area and then sets up the needed demonstration props as soon as possible.
While the guest is setting up the ducks in the presen-tation area, you can explain the workings of the program. The guest needs to know that after the chat with the host, he or she will be invited to walk over to the display area and show some examples of duck carvings that have already been set up.
Once the display area is set up, you can begin a small “walk-through.” The director needs to arrange the move from one area to the next. It’s some-times difficult to spell out things you feel are obvi-ous, but this is one of those times where Murphy’s First Law prevails: “If it can go wrong, it will.”
Take nothing for granted. Everything should be spelled out for the guest. The less initiative the guest has to take, the more professional the program will look.
Start at the home base area. This is what the guest will do on the program. During taping, the host would invite the guest to show the ducks. The host would continue to talk as the guest stood up and walked over to the display area. During this rehearsal the director would set a path for the guest so the walk to the display area doesn’t interfere with the on-air shot of the host. Once the guest was in place, the stage manager would “okay” the host. That would be the cue for the host to say something like “Well, let’s see what you’ve brought us.” After that the guest would begin, with no further cue. It’s wiser to arrange for the guest to get a word cue to begin from the host rather than taking a cue from the stage man-ager. It should seem natural to the guest.
One time I had an awful moment in a program I directed when a stage manager threw the guest a cue to begin, only to have the guest whisper, on camera, “Now?”
Guests sometimes are embarrassed at how much time it takes to do something that seems so simple.
They can get the mistaken impression that you are unsure of them or even that you think they’re stupid—outcomes to be avoided. They become embarrassed about keeping the host waiting around for them. So it’s easier to rehearse the moves without the host and to create an atmosphere that conveys
“This is the way things are done in television.” Once the rehearsal begins, the director creates a lead-in line and makes sure the guest understands that those are the exact words that will be the cue to begin. It’s imperative that the host says only those words.
Guests will need to be rehearsed long enough to feel comfortable with all the new things that are happen-ing around them. Another rehearsal, this one with the host, will familiarize the guests with the host’s delivery instead of the director’s.
Display Area
The display area we used in New Jersey Speaks for Itself was a special table on wheels. It was very
much like the one that’s used by many network talk
much like the one that’s used by many network talk