- Generation of Idea
Concept Formulation
Everything you see and hear on television started with an idea, or a concept. As simple as this may sound, developing good and especially workable ideas on a regular basis is not always easy. As a television producer, you cannot wait for the occasional divine inspiration, but must draw on your creativity on demand. Whether you think of the ideas or whether the ideas are given to you, you must then translate them into effective video and audio messages-he television programmes. This translation process is what producing is all about. It demands the coordination of many diverse elements – people, money, machines, space, and time.
Getting Ideas
Despite the volumes of studies written on the creative process, how exactly ideas are generated, remains a mystery. Sometimes you will find that you have one great idea after another; at other times, you cannot think of anything exciting, regardless of how hard you try. In any case, you should engage several people in this ideas stage, even if you have not yet assigned a specific writer.
One of the old, yet proven, methods of generating ideas is brainstorming. The key to successful brainstorming is to accept initially all ideas without subjecting them to any value judgments.
Organizing the Ideas
There is no single or correct way of organizing the ideas and translating them into an effective television program. Because production involves a great number of diverse, yet connected, activities, we learn its function most profitably by considering it as an interlinking process. The process helps you determine which people you require, what they should do, and what equipment is necessary to produce a specific program.
Content Approach
We have traditionally approached television production from a content point of view. The program idea is selected by the content expert and medium expert . You are then required to turn this idea into an effective television experience.
As widespread as this content approach may be, it has problems. The separation of content expert and medium expert immediately suggests a division of interest and goals, although both parties have – or at least should have – a common goal: the successful communication of the content to the target audience. Even if mutual trust and respect exists between the content expert and the producer, there is still a conflict of interests. The content expert is principally concerned with the integrity of subject matter – about what should be communicated; the producer is more concerned as to how it can best be shown on television.
- Objectives Before doing any television program, you should know what you are doing and why you are doing it. As simple as this sounds, define your specific program objectives. Whom, specifically, do you want to reach with your message? The objective may be even less clear when you want to do a pure entertainment program, such as a situation comedy or a drama, because the content can deliver messages as well as entertainment.
- A good way to identify specific program objectives, and ultimately, production requirements, is to analyze the audience rather than the program content. What, exactly do you want the viewer to feel, think, and do while watching your program.
Other important medium aspects are budgets, personnel, available time, and quality of equipment. In the translation process, the content will inevitably change to some extent and, thereby, appear distorted to the content expert.
Writing the Program Proposal
A program proposal is a written document that shows what you want to do. It briefly explains the process message and the major aspects of your television presentation. There is no single format for a program proposal. However, every proposal should include this minimum information:
- Show or program series title,
- Objective (process message),
- Target audience,
- Show treatment,
- Ideal broadcast period (programming quarter)
- Tentative budget. If you propose a program series, attach a sample script for one of the shows and the titles of the other shows in the series.
Program Title: Keep the program title short but memorable.
Target Audience: Simply indicate which people you would like to have watched the show: the elderly, preschoolers, teenagers, homemakers, or general audience.
You can define your target audience by general demographic descriptors, such as sex, education, income, ethnic heritage, household size, religious preference, and location.
Preparing a Budget
As an independent producer, you need to figure the cost not only for obvious items, such as script, talent and production personnel, studio and equipment rental, and postproduction editing, but also for items that may not be so apparent, such as videotape, special props, food, lodging, entertaining, transportation of talent and production personnel, parking, insurance and special clearance or user fees for location shooting.
Studio productions are obviously free from weather and other location conditions. When working in the studio, you have full access to all the available production facilities and production and maintenance personnel.
Whenever you prepare a budget, be realistic. Do not make it small just to get your project approved. It is psychologically, as well as financially, easier to agree to a budget cut than to ask for more money later on. On the other hand, do not inflate your budget in order to get by even after severe cuts.
Presenting the Proposal
Now you are ready to present your proposal. If you are working in a station, you give your proposal to the executive producer or directly to the program manager. Make sure that your proposal is free of spelling errors and its is packaged attractively.
Production Methods
Before you can engage in sensible and fruitful pre-production and production planning, you must have some idea about what production methods might best, accomplish your process message.
Quite generally, a production can be done in the studio or outside of it, called “on location”. The production can be live or videotaped and shot with a single camera or multiple cameras. Some productions are shot continuously in the sequence of the actual even. Others are discontinuous, that is, they are videotaped in segments.