VO/SOT Scripting

When typing up a story in NewsRoom, there are specific details you need to follow for your scripts. It is important to follow these specific details exactly as follows because the news anchors read these same scripts off of a teleprompter. Any errors you make in scripting are potential errors the anchors could make on the air. Your production instructions must e correct and easily understood so that the director and production crew understand them at a glance. The fewer errors you make means the fewer errors they’ll make. WARNING: When inserting comment boxes be sure you DO NOT create one comment box inside another one. This causes major scripting problems when printing scripts.

1. The first thing you need to do is enter THE `ANCHOR ON CAM` comment box. Click on the comment box icon. A blank comment box will pop up at the top of your story page.

2. Simply type ANCHOR ON CAM in the blank comment box.

3. Outside of the comment box hit return and type `[ANCHOR]`. This tells the anchor when to start reading your story. The producer for your day will go through all of the stories and swap all of the instances of the word anchor with the name of the anchor assigned to read each story.

4. After typing `[ANCHOR]`, hit return again and type a one or two sentence lead in to your video that the anchor will read while on camera. When you put this together it should look like this…

5. After the one to two sentence lead in to the video you need to insert two comment boxes that tell the director to begin playing your VO. In the first comment box type `VTR/VO  ? EDIT ROOM ????` with the question marks after VTR/VO replaced with the length of your video B-roll and the question marks after ROOM replaced with the number of the room where you edited your video.

6. In the second comment box you need to put a locater chyron. Type `CHYRON @ :02 General/Specific`. The :02 means the director will bring your chyron up after the video has played for two seconds. For locater chyrons the top line is always a general location and the bottom line is always more specific than the general line. For help with locater chyrons check out the style guide.

7. After the two comment boxes hit return and type the portion of your script the anchor will read while your video is playing. Make sure your video is long enough to cover the script you have written, plus AT LEAST five seconds extra. Read you script aloud and time it. If you don’t have enough video to cover the script, edit the script.

8. When you come to the part of your script where you want your soundbite to play, you must type `###`. This is a visual cue telling the anchor to stop reading. If you don’t put in the three pound symbols, the anchor will continue to read while the soundbite is playing. When you have your two VO comment boxes inserted, your VO script, and your three pounds symbols it should look like this…

9. Immediately after the pound keys you will need to enter your soundbite time length, an identifying chyron, and thecomplete soundbite transcript. First you will add the soundbite time length by clicking the Comment Box icon again.

10. Inside of the blank comment box type `VTR/SOT {:??} EDIT ROOM ????` with the question marks inside the brackets replaced with the length of your soundbite and the question marks after EDIT ROOM replaced with the number of the room where you edited your soundbite. For example, a 13 second soundbite edited in room 2085 would look like…

11. After you have your soundbite length box complete, click your cursor outside of the soundbite length box and click the comment box icon again to insert a new blank comment box. In the blank comment box type `CHYRON @ :02 Name/Title` with the interviewee’s name and title. The `:02` means the director will bring the chyron on to the screen two seconds after the soundbite starts playing. For example…

12. After you have your chyron box complete, click your cursor outside of the chyron box and click the comment box icon again to insert a new blank comment box. In the blank comment box type `TRANS {???}` with the question marks replaced by the complete transcript of the interviewee’s soundbite. For example…

13. After the soundbite, you should script a one to two second anchor outro. This will be read by the anchor while on camera. This means you need to put another comment box with ANCHOR ON CAM inside. And another [ANCHOR] after the comment box. Followed by the one to two sentences the anchor will read. So the final portion of your VO/SOT script will look like this…