Last night we started reading the book Sound and Look Professional on TV and the Internet. It seems like it might have a lot of interesting information in it, but I suspect that it was not written for rocket scientist. It irritatingly uses the word “talent” to describe people who stand in front of the camera and talk. Even if that is the word comely used in the industry to describe people who stand in front of the camera and talk, we are pretty much unwilling to use it to describe the likes of Katie Couric, Peter Jennings, Walter Conkrite and Dan Rather. Still, it is not too good to speak pejoratively about anyone, so we use the word “talkers” instead. The good news is that the book appears to be a good introduction to the basics of video broadcast performance. The bad news is that I do not think we have a good book about video content preparation, so I am on the outlook for that. We do have a book on voice, but I think we will wait on that until after we finish our current book and one on writing for news or commentary broadcasts. I will keep you posted on whatever book we find for that.
