Breaking into Factual TV

Breaking into Factual TV
Author: Zenia Selby
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2023-05-05
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1000876624

Successfully entering the TV industry can be difficult to navigate. Breaking into Factual TV will guide you through the process from how to get your first job to how to make it at the top. Written in a clear and accessible way, author Zenia Selby demystifies the TV industry for new entrants and covers all the key roles including runner, researcher, assistant producer, producer and director. Selby reveals what no one ever tells you when you start working at a TV production company – the chain of hierarchy, the most effective ways to network, and the best way to structure your work. The book will travel with you up your career ladder: as you progress from runner to researcher to producer to director, each section provides you with the blueprint you need to excel with every promotion and warns you of the pitfalls to avoid. Perspectives from industry professionals are provided throughout, with interviews with Mitchell Langcaster-James (The Only Way is Essex, QI, and Celebs Go Dating), Jeremy Turner (Edward Snowden: Whistleblower or Spy?, and Women in Prison), Alec Lindsell (Inside the Factory, and The One Show), and Sophie Smith (Albert: The Power Behind Victoria, and Digging for Britain) to offer insight into the reality of their roles. The book is ideal for emerging professionals and graduates of television courses looking to take their first step in the TV industry.

The Insiders' Guide to Factual Filmmaking

The Insiders' Guide to Factual Filmmaking
Author: Tony Stark
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 513
Release: 2020-08-13
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1351251449

The Insiders’ Guide to Factual Filmmaking is an accessible and comprehensive ‘how to’ guide about the craft of making documentaries for TV, online or social media. Filmmaker Tony Stark distils a long career at the BBC and as an independent producer to explain the conceptual, visual, editorial and organisational skills needed to make impactful and stylish factual films. Interviews with top industry professionals in the UK and US - commissioners, executive producers, filmmakers, strand editors and media lawyers – add valuable insight and authority to this book. For more experienced filmmakers The Insiders’ Guide tells you how to get the green light for undercover investigations, how to tell film stories online and on social media, and how to budget a factual film. This is a key text for anyone who wants to succeed in the rapidly changing, competitive freelance markets in Britain and America. It provides expert guidance to students on filmmaking courses, journalists wanting to move from print to video and non-professionals with an interest in film-making. Whatever the final destination of your film – and whatever the budget - The Insiders’ Guide provides a vital roadmap. The book’s accompanying website is a ‘show-me’ resource for new directors: with 24 specially-shot film clips illustrating the key rules of filmic grammar and sequence shooting – together with downloadable versions of essential production forms.

The Tube Has Spoken

The Tube Has Spoken
Author: Julie Taddeo
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2010-09-12
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0813129419

Featuring ordinary people, celebrities, game shows, hidden cameras, everyday situations, and humorous or dramatic situations, reality TV is one of the fastest growing and important popular culture trends of the past decade, with roots reaching back to the days of radio. The Tube Has Spoken provides an analysis of the growing phenomenon of reality TV, its evolution as a genre, and how it has been shaped by cultural history. This collection of essays looks at a wide spectrum of shows airing from the 1950s to the present, addressing some of the most popular programs including Alan Funt’s Candid Camera, Big Brother, Wife Swap, Kid Nation, and The Biggest Loser. It offers both a multidisciplinary approach and a cross-cultural perspective, considering Australian, Canadian, British, and American programs. In addition, the book explores how popular culture shapes modern western values; for example, both An American Family and its British counterpart, The Family, showcase the decline of the nuclear family in response to materialistic pressures and the modern ethos of individualism. This collection highlights how reality TV has altered the tastes and values of audiences in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It analyzes how reality TV programs reflect the tensions between the individual and the community, the transformative power of technology, the creation of the celebrity, and the breakdown of public and private spheres.

Understanding Reality Television

Understanding Reality Television
Author: Su Holmes
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2004
Genre: Reality TV
ISBN: 9780415317955

Tracing the history of reality TV from Candid Camera to The Osbournes, Understanding Reality Television examines a range of programmes which claim to depict 'real life'.

Television and the Second Screen

Television and the Second Screen
Author: James Blake
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2016-11-10
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 131742851X

Television is changing almost beyond recognition. In the battle for consumers, social media sites, smart phones and tablets have become rivals to traditional linear TV. However, audiences and producers are also embracing mobile platforms to enhance TV viewing itself. This book examines the emerging phenomenon of the second screen: where users are increasingly engaging with content on two screens concurrently. The practice is transforming television into an interactive, participatory and social experience. James Blake examines interactive television from three crucial angles: audience motivation and agency, advances in TV production and the monetisation of second screen content. He also tracks its evolution by bringing together interviews with more than 25 television industry professionals - across the major UK channels - including commissioning editors, digital directors, producers and advertising executives. These reveal the successes and failures of recent experiments and the innovations in second screen projects. As the second screen becomes second nature for viewers and producers, the risks and opportunities for the future of television are slowly beginning to emerge. Television and the Second Screen will offer students and scholars of television theory, industry professionals and anyone with an abiding interest in television and technology, an accessible and illuminating guide to this important cultural shift.

Time on TV

Time on TV
Author: Lorna Jowett
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2016-06-22
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1838609717

From early examples such as Star Trek and Sapphire and Steel to more contemporary shows including Life on Mars and The Vampire Diaries, time has frequently been used as a device to allow programme makers to experiment stylistically and challenge established ways of thinking. Time on TV provides a range of exciting, accessible, yet intellectually rigorous essays that consider the many and varied ways in which telefantasy shows have explored this subject, providing the reader with a greater understanding of the importance of time to the success of genre on the small screen.

Reality TV

Reality TV
Author: Anita Biressi
Publisher: Wallflower Press
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2005
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781904764045

"Through detailed case studies this book breaks new ground by linking together two major themes: the production of realism and its relationship to revelation. It addresses 'truth telling', confession and the production of knowledges about the self and its place in the world".--BOOKJACKET.

Syndicated Television

Syndicated Television
Author: Hal Erickson
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2024-10-09
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1476613818

Here is an excellent reference book on "first run" syndication--the distribution of programs either made exclusively for non-network play, or of programs intended for network telecasts but ultimately making their debuts in syndication. Bringing together information not easily found, this work covers the classics such as Sea Hunt, Highway Patrol, The Merv Griffin Show and the Muppet Show, as well as such once-popular but now obscure productions as China Smith, Ripcord and The Littlest Hobo. Coverage goes back to 1947 and the book includes a number of series ignored in other works. The first section is an overview of the concept of syndication from its earliest application in the newspaper world to the attempt by Fox Television to become a fourth network. The next four sections each cover ten years of syndication, listing the shows (with full background--who produced them and why, who liked them and why, etc.) alphabetically by title under the following genres: Adventure/Mystery, Children's, Comedy, Drama, Game/Quiz, Informational, Music/Variety, Religious, Sports, Talk/Interview, Travel/Documentary, Westerns, and Women's.

The Talent Industry

The Talent Industry
Author: Raymond Boyle
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2018-07-28
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 3319943790

​This book explores how the digital multiplatform delivery of television is affecting the role performed by cultural intermediaries responsible for talent identification and development. Drawing on original research from key stakeholders across the television and social video sectors such as broadcasters, commissioning editors and talent agents, it investigates whether the process of digitization is offering new pathways to capture and nurture a diverse talent base within the UK television industry. It also provides an in-depth study of how the term ‘talent’ has historically been interpreted and understood within the UK television industry through the BBC and commercial PSB’s, such as ITV and Channel 4. The Talent Industry investigates how the traditional gatekeepers of talent in television are changing and examines the key role of talent agencies in managing and promoting contemporary on and off-screen talent in the digital age.

A Handbook of Media and Communication Research

A Handbook of Media and Communication Research
Author: Klaus Bruhn Jensen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 512
Release: 2020-12-30
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1351029371

Thoroughly revised and updated, this third edition integrates perspectives from the social sciences and the humanities, focusing on methodology as a strategic level of analysis that joins practical applications with theoretical issues. The Handbook comprises three main elements: historical accounts of the development of key concepts and research traditions; systematic reviews of media organizations, discourses, and users, as well as of the wider social and cultural contexts of communication; and practical guidelines with sample studies, taking readers through the different stages of a research process and reflecting on the social uses and consequences of research. Updates to this edition include: An overview of the interrelations between networked, mass, and interpersonal communication. A new chapter on digital methods. Three chapters illustrating different varieties of media and communication research, including industry–academic collaboration and participatory action research. Presentation and discussion of public issues such as surveillance and the reconfiguration of local and global media institutions. This book is an invaluable reference work for students and researchers in the fields of media, communication, and cultural studies.