Catch the Premiere of “The Skipjacks”

A new Chesapeake Bay Week Special
produced by Susanne C. Stahley
for Maryland Public Television

airs SUNDAY, APRIL 18, 2010 8:00PM
repeats: Saturday, April 24, 6:00pm

on Maryland Public Television

(Check your local cable or satellite listings for channel)

Other previously produced productions by Susanne Stahley featured in MPT’s CHESAPEAKE BAY WEEK, 2010 include:

Sat, 4/18:  10:30pm: “Blindspots” includes Susanne’s story about pharmaceuticals in the Bay

Sat, 4/18:  11:00pm: “On the Trail of Captain John Smith,” a special following re-enactors of Captain John Smith’s 1608 sailing trip around Chesapeake Bay

Tues, 4/20: 7:30pm: “Outdoors Maryland,” features Susanne’s segment about the endangered cliff dwelling Tiger Beetle

Tues, 4/20: 10:30pm: “Sprawl,” a special looking at development in the Bay watershed

Thurs, 4/22: 11:00p: “Chesapeake Stories,” features 2 segments: “Bay Minister,” and “Bard of the Chesapeake,” about Tom Wisner

Fri, 4/23: 10:00pm: “Covered Bridges,” a special featuring a road trip to Covered Bridges in MD, PA, WVA and VA

Sat, 4/24: 6:00pm: Repeat: “The Skipjacks,”
 
ALSO WATCH:

“Chesapeake Bay by Air” by John Paulson
Tues, 4/20, 9:00pm

“Watermen” by Holly Fisher
Wed, 4/21, 8:00pm

I’ve been filming – or attempting to film – red foxes in my neighborhood for one of my new independently-produced segments for Maryland Public Television’s weekly series, Outdoors Maryland. It occurred to me during my stalking endeavors that pursuing foxes is not unlike pursuing viewers of a media production, whether documentary or corporate, video or website.

In both cases you have a “quarry” who is preoccupied with their industrious lives. Finding a way to grab their attention – and winning consent to your themes or messages – requires ongoing research.

In other words, know your prospective audience. I’ve walked up and down the street day after day talking to neighbors about the habits of our fox family – where the male and female and two pups roam and when they seem to be most active. Many have a theory about where the foxes have a den. Others have seen them carrying hapless squirrels.

Researching your viewers means more than simply knowing their principle products or general interests. Find out the current issues specific to that enterprise, including struggles, successes and goals – get to know the neighborhood.

Surfing the web is a good way to start. Read news accounts about the industry or association. Scrutinize their publications. Most importantly, talk to people on the ground. If you can, visit the offices or organization to get a sense of the culture.

Incorporate technology and jargon, but don’t overload and outdate your production with passing fads. I’ve learned that the yard the fox runs through today may not be the yard he or she runs through tomorrow. You need to figure out the range of your target audience’s interests.

Keep in mind, these concerns are not necessarily the same thing as the key messages or themes your client or funding agency want delivered. The interests of both client and audience need to be reflected if you are to engage your quarry productively.

In other words, don’t assume that the viewer will be interested enough to act just because you’re out there with an urgent message vaguely related to their field.

One mistake I made early in the pursuit of foxes was staking them out in areas where I thought, after diligent research, that the foxes had a den. I spent hours and hours waiting in a camouflaged hunting blind, alone with a camera or with a second cameraperson. During this endeavor, I captured not one frame of video of a fox. I did get one or two shots of squirrels and a deer.

The footage I do have so far was captured by driving or walking around — camera ready — and rolling when we spotted our moving target. Don’t expect your audience to come to you.

Happy hunting. I’m still on the trail….

You may reach Susanne Stahley, Writing Consultant, at scstahley@verizon.net

Read about Susanne’s recent Emmy award: http://davidryanmediasolutions.com/davids-website-picks/

I don’t even remember the topic of the script anymore, but this was an actual conversation I had with a client that still echoes in memory.  I do recall that the manager was determined to cram as much data into the video as he could, and either didn’t realize, or didn’t care, that his intended audience would tune it out, overloaded into apathy. Important messages would be lost in an unrelenting deluge of instruction, whether the audience – his company’s employees – was required to view the video or not.

As a television writer and producer, I grapple with the problem of how much information is too much information all the time, and it’s a dilemma whether you’re writing documentaries or instructional how-to’s.

I believe that I’m thought of as a quick study and a meticulous fact-checker, great credentials to be sure in a documentary producer or a corporate video writer.  And having a consuming curiosity is always an essential trait in any creative endeavor.  For me the hard part is not grasping the material, but finding a balance between what the audience needs to know and wants to know.  As a writer, producer, or manager hiring such talent, it’s important to remember the need to engage both the intellect and imagination.

Here are a couple of techniques for keeping your production both engaging and informative:

Maintain an organic process of brainstorming and structuring throughout the process.  Outline the flow of the information or the unfolding narrative, and keep the momentum moving along that through-line, but don’t allow that structure to pre-empt new concepts or creative ways of visualizing the material.

It’s essential, and yet sometimes near impossible, to maintain this kind of flexibility when you are working on a project by committee, especially if new members join the advisory group mid-way.  There’s a tendency – quick study and responsible “creative” that you are – to internalize all those voices so that finding your way back to the basics can be difficult.  Remind yourself, and your supervisor or the consultants, that the ultimate committee is the audience.  If the intended viewer needs to know something, you need to make them want to know it by piquing their curiosity, engaging their emotions, and making clear what’s at stake if they don’t have this information.  Simply seating someone in front of a television or computer screen does not automatically lead to understanding. 

Trust your instincts – what catches your interest or stirs your emotions will probably do the same for the audience. To be sure, you can get sidetracked by arcane detail that will bore your audience, or you may need to present arcane detail that you fear will bore.

If you’re awash in research or detail, try laying out all the minutia in rough form, then look for repetitious sentiments or data, and choose the quote or piece of information that is most potent.  Set yourself a goal of reducing the content in this way by thirty percent or even fifty percent.  Give yourself limited time to do this – ten minutes for a ten minute script, for instance.  You’re relying now on gut instinct and experience.

Then set aside the long-winded and the compact versions for a time, even if it’s only for a lunch break.  When you return, read or view the short version first – you are putting yourself back in the position of the audience who is seeing it for the first time. Chances are you won’t remember what’s missing — though your client might.  Add back only what is too vital to lose and be sure you covered the client’s key themes.  Remember that with video and other visual media productions, information and emotional cues are also powerfully conveyed by visuals and sound effects, including appropriate music.

Keeping creative within the constraints of deadlines is always a challenge.  It helps to begin honing the closing statements early on – maybe not before you write the open but soon after.  You’ll be more efficient in organizing the rest of the material toward that grand finale – and you won’t be too tired to inspire by the end. 

Susanne Stahley can be contacted at scstahley@comcast.net

One surefire way to make your style more dynamic is to use the active rather than the passive voice in your sentence structure. Yes, this sounds old school, but it actually works. Simply explained, in the active voice the subject of the sentence performs the action of the verb. So, the subject is emphasized, becomes the star of the sentence. This makes a difference if you want you or your product to shine.

Active voice: Our new software program compresses vast amounts of data in seconds.
(“Our new software program” is the key player.)

Passive voice: Vast amounts of data are compressed by our software program in seconds.
(“Vast amounts of data” is the subject that is acted upon by the software program, which takes second billing)

Here’s a link to more fine examples of passive and active voice: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_actpass.html

Another quick, but not necessarily painless, way to sharpen your sentences is to read your writing out loud. Often you can pick up awkward phrasing that interrupts the flow or confuses the reader. So, in the first sentence of this paragraph, I would drop the phrase: “not necessarily painless.” Note that this is not the same as making your language totally, like, conversational or full of slang, whatever. Not unless you’re looking to insert humor… but that’s the subject for another day.

I invite you to share your comments below.

Susanne can be reached at scstahley@comcast.net