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B-Roll

by Bingle on Apr.18, 2008, under Richard Bingle

It happens everyday, and maybe you don’t even notice it, but I sure do, and it drives me nuts.

The local news, the network news, even the cable news all do it… Fail to provide enough B-roll for whatever story they are running. B-roll is that “filler” video that is used during voice-overs in news stories, either when the reporting is rambling on about whatever or when someone decides that we really don’t want to stare at the talking heads debating some topic or the anchor reading off the teleprompter any longer than necessary.

So what do I mean by failing to shoot enough B-roll? Well, if you pay attention at all, you’ll notice that for the minutes that a story or topic goes on for, they keep showing the same seconds of video over and over and over and over. Just how many times in a 5 minute story can we see the same 10 second “artistic” shot of a police cruiser followed by a 5 second shot of crime scene tape fluttering in the breeze followed by the 5 second shot of investigators removing a box of evidence from a building? Even worse is when that same 20 seconds is used a week/month/year later when there is some update to the story!

I understand that television is a visual medium and we really do get tired of staring at the anchor staring back at us reading off the telepromter and that there can be interesting visuals that represent or add to a story, but this is ridiculous. How hard can it be for the videographers either to shoot several minutes of material that could be used for B-roll, for editors to choose more than 20 seconds to cut together, and for news directors/producers/reporters to revert to using B-roll less?

– Rich


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