TV NEWS REPORT: COMBINING PICTURES AND SOUNDS
TV NEWS REPORT: COMBINING PICTURES AND SOUNDS

Summary/Abstract: The TV information does not deliver a true part of reality, but evokes it through a system of connotations which suggest ideas. The elements of a TV report are mainly pictures and sounds, and not words and their illustrations. Pictures are going successively on the TV screen; meanwhile sounds are coming to us as words (dialogues and commentaries), noise and music. In this perspective, the production of the audiovisual informative message requires putting and working together in a specific way the two components: pictures and sounds. In the real language of television, words and illustrations will have to be left behind and you will have to think in terms of pictures and sounds. Each shot can go far beyond its literal meaning or denotation. Like any sign, a picture generates what semiologists call connotations. For example, the red and green of the peppers in an advertisement for “Panzani” pasta directly evokes the color of fresh vegetables, as well as the notion of things Italian. (Barthes 1964). When filming, you are not recording a slice of real life. From the very first frame, your choice of close-ups or wide shots, of depth of field, of how you organize the frames in your shot, all these elements create a system of connotations which suggests ideas. The role of the reporter, cameraman and editor will be to reduce any extraneous meanings to a minimum, so that they can be channeled into as simple and straightforward an interpretation as possible. The picture will have to be pinned down by the commentary to avoid its being left open to too many possible interpretations; its rhetoric will have to be mastered in order to put its evocative power to proper use. The use of rhetoric will enable you to find ideas which are at once richer but also sufficiently precise to refine the commentary as much as possible. “Rhetoric is, in the end, a catalogue of the different ways of being original. This creative process could therefore probably be made easier and richer if the creators of a work were consciously aware of a system which they usually use only intuitively.” (Durand 1970). Videojournalism – how to use the “ingredients”? A good television report consists of communicating information through pictures and sounds, and achieving a balance between them. An interview may be extremely interesting but no-one will listen to it if there is someone gesticulating behind the interviewee; the most exceptional pictures can be massacred by a verbose commentary, just as pictures which have too great an impact can prevent one from listening to the commentary which would give them their full meaning. A shot which draws too much attention to itself, an ambiguous phrase or a technical term will disturb and distract the audience. Except in the case of a live interview or broadcast, nothing must be improvised. If you neglect any one of the different elements of communication which make up the report, you will jeop

• Details
• Contents