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Full download Writing for Visual Media, 4th Edition – Ebook PDF Version file pdf all chapter on 2024
Full download Writing for Visual Media, 4th Edition – Ebook PDF Version file pdf all chapter on 2024
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Contents vii
PART 2
Solving Communication Problems with Visual Media 85
PART 3
Entertaining with Visual Media 169
PART 4
Writing for Interactive and Mobile Media 273
PART 5
Anticipating Professional Issues 357
Appendix 387
Bibliography 407
Glossary 413
Index 431
Acknowledgments
Authors of this kind of book are almost always indebted to others for advice, help, and corrections. I
want to thank Daniel Tibbets, Senior Vice President at Bunim-Murray Productions in Hollywood, for-
merly Vice-President and Studio Chief at GoTV Networks, for information and material that enabled
me to understand the development of mobile media formats in which he pioneered. His new work
in second screen production continues to innovate in a fast moving industry, which we are trying to
explain even as it changes. Without this contact, many phone conversations, and emails, Chapter 14
would be less authentic and be less up to date.
Since I use Writing for Visual Media to teach introductory courses in scriptwriting, I learn a lot from
students and their struggle to master visual writing. They have sometimes shown me by their honest
mistakes the shortcomings of certain passages that needed either more or clearer explanation.
I am particularly grateful for the support and detailed feedback given me by Kathryn Morrissey,
my editor at Focal Press, without whose suggestions, many good revisions, and new features might
not have come to pass.
xv
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Praise
“Worth its weight in gold . . . ! It doesn’t get any better than this: Here we have a master teacher—
Anthony Friedman, bringing 21 years of writing, producing and directing experience to bear writing
the third edition of this very impressive text . . . An impressive book that delivers what it promises . . .
an essential purchase for anyone interested in writing for the visual media.”
R. Neil Scott, Author, Former Professor & User Services
Librarian at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU)
“An engaging textbook that trains, entertains and concentrates on contemporary writing issues in an
accessible way. This book delivers a treasure trove of valuable, well-written information aspiring writ-
ers can use to familiarize themselves with the challenges of visual media.”
Jared Castle, marketing and public relations consultant, writer
“A comprehensive, well-structured, and well-written introduction to writing for electronic and digital
screens wherever they might be found.”
Nathaniel Kohn, University of Georgia
“. . . a critical text that is accessible for students. This textbook provides comprehensive examples and
exercises to push students to engage with real-world examples that will be needed once they become
professionals. Broken down into five parts, this book allows lecturers to focus on critical concepts
either in order, or in smaller chunks. The section on Interactive and Mobile Media is a welcome addi-
tion to a mediated world that is going global with the use of a Smartphone!”
Dr. Ann Luce, University of Portsmouth, UK
“Anthony Friedman is a master at his craft for writing for a variety of media. He is also a master when
it comes to explaining his methods to the average lay man. I thought the book was brilliantly put
together . . . I feel this book is well worth the purchase price, and the time spent reading.”
Stephanie Manley, editor of CopyKat.com
“If my journalism students could only have three textbooks during their journalism academic career,
I’d be pleased to know that “Writing for Visual Media” was one of them. From producing PSAs to
defining target audiences to writing for interactive and mobile media, and finally, marketing oneself
in this ever-changing media landscape, this text has the tools that journalism and new media stu-
dents need now and tomorrow.”
Deidra Jackson, Instructor of Journalism, University of
Mississippi Meek School of Journalism and New Media
xvii
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Preface to the Fourth Edition
Once again, it is time for a new edition thanks to those readers and writers who have expressed con-
fidence in the content of this book by buying the third edition and to those instructors who adopted
it as a textbook. It has always been the author’s ambition to bridge the world of a pure textbook and
a trade book about writing that would appeal to all writers and would-be writers everywhere who
are not already experienced professionals in media writing. Even professionals might benefit from a
refresher or from looking at a different kind of visual writing than the one they know. Although some
elements like exercises concede to the needs of instructors and students, the style and approach are
not exclusively academic. Sometimes the academic gets in the way of learning.
A new edition is a kind of reprieve. You see mistakes; you see opportunities not only to improve
the prose, even though it seemed to read alright before, but also to re-order the exposition of ideas
within chapters to achieve greater intelligibility as well as develop new ideas. Reviewers invited by
the publisher to comment on the previous edition often oblige me to re-examine my approach, some-
times leading to changes but sometimes confirming for me that I needed to stick to the convictions
that underlie the book and that inspired me to write it in the first place. With each successive edition,
I have been encouraged to preserve most of the content and the order of many chapters, retaining the
approach that presumably accounts for the relative success of previous editions. At the same time, I
have been keen to find new ways of getting certain ideas across and embarrassed to find passages that
could be considerably improved in clarity and style.
The order in which key ideas are transmitted matters to the success of the transmission and the
consequent assimilation of those ideas. One way is better than another even though, in the end, a
writer must assimilate them all and possess an integrated understanding of the whole. Hence the new
order of chapters in the third edition has been preserved, although internally chapters benefit from
some rearrangement of the contents and headings. Some sections and headings have been moved
between chapters where, on critical examination, they seemed to belong. Discussing the method
of analysis, brainstorming, and thinking that precedes actual script writing now comes earlier than
explaining the problem of describing sight and sound and the necessary stages of script development.
I decided to rewrite Chapter 8 and move the list of genres that cluttered up the chapter to an Appen-
dix. This allows for a deeper, more complete discussion of storytelling and dramatic theory together
with an analysis of films that illustrate story structures. I have also expanded some other chapters and
dealt with new developments in media and their impact on writing.
Every instructor structuring a writing course around this book will have an individual approach,
and no doubt no order or exposition will suit everyone. The convenience of the linear layout of books
is that users can edit and re-order the sequence of chapters to their own preference although I do
make a strong plea to try it my way.
xix
xx Preface to the Fourth Edition
The website had errors, which have been corrected. Perhaps more important, the interactive con-
tent has been expanded to include more video clips, links, and scripts. The website will be updated
regularly. It is difficult, impossible, or simply too expensive to get rights to entertainment video clips,
which explains why I continue to use examples of films and television for which I already have rich
materials when more contemporary production might be more desirable. Publishers insist that the
author pay for the rights. Sorry, I can’t afford them. I believe that film, television, and video should,
like print media, be subject to the “fair use” provision of copyright law. However, publishers do not
seem prepared to pioneer and defend this in a court of law. So I have to rely on scraps, trailers, and
whatever can be found on websites and on YouTube.
With the passing of time, examples from many ads and PSAs inevitably become dated. Some
of these I need and want to retain because they are either classic or because I have the scripts and
video clips for the website and face restrictions of copyright for material that is desirable in an ideal
world but unobtainable in a real one. I have updated many examples and references where possible,
thanks again mainly to YouTube, which has flourished to become a major resource for all since the
last edition.
Some readers didn’t like the printing of key terms in bold throughout chapters that was intro-
duced in the third edition. The problem is that we do not know how many did like that change. I
believe identifying key terms helps readers. Bolding them for every occurrence in the chapter pro-
duced clutter. By way of compromise, we have kept the list of key terms at the beginning of every
chapter and removed the printing of those terms in bold in the body of the chapter. These terms form
part of the glossary and are still set apart from other terminology by bold type so as to make them
more readily identifiable and accessible. Key terms are specific to a chapter as far as possible. This does
not exclude repetition where useful and germane to the chapter heading.
Although the premise of the book that is expressed in its title must control the content, the audio
component of the visual medium remains largely unchanged from the third edition. Since we have to
describe both sight and sound in visual media, writing for the voice is a component of visual writing
even though audio is heard not seen. Nevertheless, it supports the visual. Writing for radio, which is
sound only, receives some attention particularly in connection with writing PSAs. This cognate dis-
cipline that we can explore to help us define more clearly what is meant by visual writing therefore
remains unchanged from the third edition. However, audio values as a component of the PSA sound
track receive more attention.
The argument of the premise of the book is that writing broadcast news is not visual writing
equivalent to other forms of scriptwriting. Despite the clear argument in the Introduction, some con-
tinue to object to the exclusion of broadcast journalism. Some curricula are organized in such a way
that media writing includes broadcast journalism and are taught from a foundation in journalism that
sets it apart from other forms of writing for media. Such a foundation course is broader and served by
another kind of textbook with a different premise. Several good textbooks of this kind exist and take
a different approach. Likewise, copywriting is yet another writing discipline that is only treated in the
context of the visual writing that is demanded by ads and PSAs. Such writing is strongly visual and rich
in visual metaphor and needs to be included.
Another misunderstanding that some users have relates to writing for the internet. This is not
a book about new journalism just as it is not a book about broadcast journalism. Although writ-
ers creating web content often rely on still images, video clips, and perhaps even audio clips, they
are not visual writers as such. Web pages or blogs consist mostly of text meant to be read not to be
produced. Although the style changes from print, there is no visual writing as such. If video of any
length is going to be produced, the video segment depends on the methods expounded in this book.
Video clips or stills do not generally need scripting as separate elements. They are short unedited
clips or plucked out of archives. In addition, the visual experience of a website, its design, its look,
Preface to the Fourth Edition xxi
and functionality result from graphic design. Writing concepts and treatment for websites that might
precede graphic design are, however, grist for our mill. In this context, writing for the web for the
purpose of this book means conceptualizing functionality, look, and navigation, not writing the text
that is read in blocks or in sidebars. That is prose exposition.
The chapter devoted to writing for mobile media platforms, which was new to the third edition,
reflects the way digital media and mobile platforms have evolved over the intervening years and
changed how content is created and written to account for the second screen experience and the
emergence of new formats that encompass multiple media distribution.
I have realized, partly in retrospect, that this is not just a book about how to write for visual
media; it is also by turns, a reflection about the history, evolution, and origins of a medium and the
kind of writing on which it depends. Media writers have to understand the forces that are changing
the very media they write for. Nowhere is this more critical than for new mobile media platforms.
This is not just a writing manual. It is also a book about the economic, production, and social con-
texts in which writing for visual media occurs.
I do believe this is a better book, a better website, and will reward its readers.
anthony.friedmann@gmail.com
Lake Conroe, Texas
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What’s on the Companion Website?
This text is designed to work in tandem with a website. Interactive online media provide us with a new
opportunity, hitherto impossible to achieve in a writing textbook, to link script blueprint and resultant
image in the visual medium in which it is produced. Reading a screenplay or PSA script and connecting
them to finished, produced media closes a gap in most people’s imagination. This should help everyone
grasp how visual writing works by seeing this critical link. Although the printed book contains some
examples of scripts, the website provides many more and also more complete scripts.
An interactive visual glossary of script vocabulary for camera shots and movements enables the
reader to see live action or still media that correspond to the term and hear audio that corresponds to
the audio terminology. This in fact was the germinal idea for a companion CD-ROM that was bound
into the first edition.
There are many links to useful websites about scriptwriting, movies, television, games, and social
media. All this and more would be impossible to include in a standalone printed book.
HOW IT WORKS
Throughout the text words and phrases have been highlighted in bold against a background when-
ever the website contains supplementary material to consult. This is a prompt to the reader to open
the website and explore the content cognate to the chapter being read. In the e-book, this should be
an active hyperlink and allow immediate access in another tab. Many URLs cited in the printed text
become active links in the e-book avoiding the tedium of typing the URL into the browser.
In previous editions, many footnotes and other references mentioned the web address for imdb.
com inviting the reader to look for background information about a film. Everybody in this field
knows this website and with a few exceptions, we have now adopted a policy of assuming that any
reader who needs production information or to watch a trailer can and will consult that website if
need be.
The companion website provides an interactive menu that corresponds to the chapters of the
book. The interactive navigation is modeled on the chapter outline so that all the links for a given
chapter are accessible under the heading for that chapter. All supplementary materials referenced in
the printed text can be accessed via this menu. There are also other options for interactive navigation
that follow useful themes or topics so that readers can consult the website content independently of
the chapter navigation:
xxiii
xxiv What’s on the Companion Website?
Over time, some URLs become invalid because the World Wide Web is a changing environ-
ment in which many websites are not permanent or undergo revision. The companion website will
undergo revision from time to time to supplement material or remove links that are no longer active,
typically when the book is reprinted. New content and new links will be added to the website during
the life of this edition so that the site can be consulted continuously for material that may not be
flagged in the text.
Readers should understand that the website contains material, especially video clips that can take
several minutes to download depending on the speed of the Internet connection, the clock speed of
the computer processor being used, and the available RAM. The URL of the companion website is:
www.focalpress.com/cw/friedmann.
Materials such as tests, lesson plans, and a syllabus are provided on the Focal Press website for this
book. Instructors are required to complete an online form to request access.
Introduction
THE PURPOSE
Although this book is intended mainly for students in colleges and universities who are taking
introductory courses in writing scripts for media, it is also meant for all writers navigating the
transition from writing for the printed page to writing for visual media. It assumes that the reader
begins with minimal understanding of the nature of writing for visual media. The mechanisms for
creating video content and setting it before an audience is open to all in the era of YouTube. Many
people can shoot digital video, whether on a portable point-and-shoot camera or on a cell phone.
You can even make money uploading videos because Google will pay you for viewers’ impressions.
The greater the number of impressions, the larger the audience for their contextual advertising!
These videos, however, are rarely scripted. If you want to be the next Jenna Marbles and live off
self-shot viral videos, you probably do not need this book. This comment is not meant in any way
to belittle these witty and stylish mini-productions that have a large audience. However, if you wish
to earn a living as a writer of commercial media content, you have to investigate how it’s done and
learn some craft skills.
Most beginners have had a large number of experiences viewing visual media: films, television,
and video. They probably contemplate the originating creative act that lies behind such programs
without much idea of how it’s done. They may not understand visual thinking, or if they do, they
don’t know how to set it down. They don’t know formats. In short, they don’t quite know where or
how to start. This book is designed to get the beginner started. It is not intended to make fully fledged
professionals out of beginners, but it does deal with every type of media writing, and it does cover all
the material a beginner will need to write viable scripts in the main media formats.
Other books dedicated to specific genres offer more exhaustive and more specialized information
about how to work at a professional level writing for film, television, corporate video, or interactive
media. Broadcast journalism for current affairs and sports is another discipline that is well covered
in more specialized works. A selected bibliography at the end of this book lists many of these more
advanced books that focus more narrowly on writing for a single medium; the bibliography also
includes more general works and the sources quoted or referenced in this book.
This book is based on the premise that the fundamental challenge of writing for visual media arises
from learning to think and write visually, that a script is a plan for production, and that visual media
are identifiably different from print media. Granted, the production medium of television is visual,
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