Today’s image: Road in the mist, Almeria, Spain.
Where is this Going?
When I was beginning to write more of my own scripts, a seasoned producer gave me some good advice.
It’s not what to put in that you’ll struggle with – it’s what to leave out.
He was right. In all the years of prepping for interviews and researching documentaries I always had far more in the files than we could ever include in the final timed-to-the-second slots.
The ever-present fascination of learning something new, of getting to know the story behind a story, the person inside a person, made it more like fun than work, and I could happily lose myself in a subject for hours and days. Plus which, extra information could prove useful as a back-up, an emergency exit if the best-laid plans of a program direction went off – or way off – track.
Which they quite frequently did, because we were dealing with people in live situations not scripted dialogue on a soap opera set.
Put In or Leave Out
Well, I’m having to apply that producer’s maxim here. There is proving to be a great deal of information on the Broadbents, and so much of it is well-documented and preserved already that to repeat it could be an exercise in superfluity. And I haven’t even started on the Keighleys!
So the plan of action right now is to revert to being a newsperson, extracting the highlights and the headlines from some rather amazing lives.
That doesn’t mean I won’t return to those lives, and write out their stories as I discover them over the months to come. But it does mean that I must discipline my fascination with every detail and construct the larger scaffolding first.
For this, I am looking to use as many images as I can find, and to work within my own particular niche of visual-textual reporting.
Let’s see how it goes – remembering that as with live interviews, all is subject to change at a split second’s notice! 🙂
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