A Good Producing Tape

[CorkySherwood]

I need to make a good producing tape to start sending out. How have other producers organized their tapes and had luck with it?

[Suri Cruise]

Just start it off with a recent, good, clean show. Try to make sure it's a good representation of your day to day work. Some breaking news is always good, but don't send off the really *****in' emmy winning show that happened six months ago. On the other end, if your last show was kind of on the dull end of things (slow news day, short staffed on reporters, whatever) pull something better from the past week or so unless the station you're applying to asks otherwise. Make sure the commercials are edited out and have one of your graphics friends make a slate for you to put at the beginning with you name and number.

After that first show, feel free to include perhaps some anchor packages that you wrote or maybe a montage of strong tease writing. But again, a solid representation of your day to day work is really all that's expected and all that's going to be looked at. It will get your foot in the door if it's good enough and then they might ask you follow up by sending a tape of your most recent newscast. That's when you cross your fingers and hope for no bad camera takes, messed up graphics or wrong video in your show.

Good luck!

[overthehill]

Suri's right on.

A recent (within the last week) newscast, minus all commercials, is what they'll want. Probably run about 20-23 minutes total. Leave in sports and weather, bumps, teases, etc. Especially bumps and teases because YOU probably wrote those.

Let's hope your sample shows good lead showcasing, story flow, parceling of VOs, vo-SOTs, pkgs and read/tell stories throughout the news blocks.

I often suggest you also include a one page, single spaced self-critique of the newscast you send. Justify the way you arranged the newscast...your lead, live shot selection, etc. Try not to make excuses, but play up the positives in your sample.

Good luck.