At NAB this year it became very clear that reality television is changing the tool sets used in video production. In scripted programming, the ratio of shot footage to used footage was traditionally fairly closely alignedl. With a script, one would generally only need a few takes of any given scene and it was fairly obvious which of the takes would be used in the final production. Reality programming has flipped the scales on that model. Hours upon hours of footage is now recorded in order to squeeze out a singe episode of 30 to 60 minutes. Likewise, where the script was once the blueprint of a program, now the footage often dictates the script that gets written.
When any model is turned on its head, opportunities arise to create new tools. Many of these tools emerged at NAB this year. Content management systems that allow for logging, scripting, annotating and categorizing footage came out of the woodwork from most of the big players. An interesting demonstration by Avid showed off some tools designed to help script writers organize footage in manners that allow them to appy the shot content to a traditional story arc (hook, conflict, resolution, etc.).
Traditional methods of writing and telling a story… “You’re Fired!”