Writing a script for a video is like running for an 80-yard touchdown after repeated penalties. It’s nice to be able to say you did it—better still to have others say you did it—but deep inside you know that it was possible only because of what other people did. That and some luck.
When I scripted a recruitment video for a government agency, it was the agency’s first attempt at recruitment marketing. Management wanted to train recruiters and also show the video at trade shows and job fairs, as well as hand out the CD.
Based on what they told me, I wrote a one-page treatment. (A “treatment” is just a prose description of the story a video or movie will tell.) The clients approved it after only three rewrites! Then I wrote the script. It was approved after only seven or eight rounds of review and revision (I lost count), and we proceeded to the video shoot.
In the middle of the shoot, the frantic director called and asked me to change all the words starting with “s.” It turned out that the narrator chosen by the client—the “talent,” it’s called—had a distracting speech defect that was obvious in close-up shots. Some words she couldn’t pronounce at all.
Most of the close-ups ended up on the cutting room floor. We filled the gaps with background shots from B-roll (that is, supplemental video footage) and graphics with text to emphasize key points as the narrator spoke in voiceover.
In the end we got a more engaging video than planned. There were more quick cuts from scene to scene and less “talking head.” The client loved it, and the video won a respected Telly, a national telecommunications award. The production team never let on.
My advice for scriptwriting? Be imaginative. Be flexible. Be patient. And never overlook the opportunity to turn lemons into lemonade.
Bill Harrison is a professional business writer and editor and the president of Harrison Consulting Group. You can see more of his work at www.harrison-group.com.
