The Write Stuff

Informing, motivating, instructing, and enlightening. It's challenging.

Scriptwriting begins the integration of the assorted techniques and crafts of videomaking-camera, sound, lighting, set design, graphics, editing.

Be it for a family reunion, an industrial training tape, or an investigation of schoolyard pollution, a script that's overwritten, unclear, disorganized, or unfocused will yield videomaking with similar qualities-or worse.

For these reasons, a good scriptwriter is a strange hybrid, able to combine a thorough understanding of the process of videomaking with the skills of an effective writer.

Working like a journalist, the scriptwriter begins with research. What's the project? Who's it for? What's it about? What do I need to know? How do I find it out? Like a gatherer of herbs, the scriptwriter roves the fields assembling the necessary elements, knowing the properties of each.

The scriptwriter must understand the material in depth, and determine how best to translate and package it for audience consumption. The steps are three: Analyze. Simplify. Visualize.

Once material is assembled, analyzed, and simplified, it's time to turn off the monkey and open the mind. Lie down, breathe deep, look inside, roll tape. What do you see? What seems most important? What struggles to stay in focus? What occurs, reoccurs?

Sit up. Remember. Write it down. Rank information-interviews, locations, characters, props, effects-in order of importance. Group according to video format.

Focus clearly on the beginning, middle, and end. From your outline write a treatment, or summary of the outline. This summary should provide a program description that gives a sense of color as well as content.

The structure of the video will depend on the subject and audience. Scenes shot at the alligator farm may be kept in sequence. Or you may choose to intercut hospital shots with the Moment of …