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Watch any newscast, local or network, and you will see that most of the video they use falls in one of a fairly small number of categories. There's the talking heads of the news readers in the studio. There's the talking heads of field reporters, spokespeople, eyewitnesses or interviewees. There are the graphic shots of the site, occurrence or result of the news story. All of these are generally shown along with their native sound.
There are also shots that are either unaccompanied by sound or for which the sound is quite secondary. These are shots of people, places or things that the news producer uses to help video-illustrate a story. (One of the maxims of TV news is that talking heads are boring).
This is called B roll video. It has become the video equivalent of clip art for newscasts.
The term "B roll" has its roots in film making, from theatrical cinema to newsreels and TV news film. Producers and/or cameramen would first shoot an "A" roll with the most crucial elements, generally including dialog and natural sound. Once that was "in the can" they would shoot a "B" roll, often without sound, to be cut into the finished product during editing. B roll content might include establishing wide shots of a location, cutaway shots of props or products or scenery elements, etc. One of the standards of old Westerns was to shoot B roll of dogs on the dusty streets of an Old West town; it helped reduce costs by having those on hand as cutaways when the actors flubbed and editor had to cut among multiple partial takes.
Given the ways in which a TV news operation uses B roll video, new B roll clips may see air immediately, 3-6 months later or never.
PR VIA B ROLL
There are several kinds of B roll video that a PR operation can provide that TV news operations are most likely to find useful.
When the B roll opportunity is driven by an event, like a trade show, then simple, short "show & tell" clips (like those we shoot of the Newstips Cherry Picks) of the most significant, most representative or coolest products at the show are very attractive to TV news. (Among other things, it lets the station cover a distant event as if it had a crew there). This kind of B roll needs to have some way for the news operation to know & talk about what's in each shot; we use a combination of slates, audio captions and the "Cherry Pick" pages on the Newstips Web site.
When the B roll opportunity is being driven by a product, it's better to provide a portfolio of specific kinds of shots, each well-lighted and shot under controlled circumstances and with neutral (think: sweep table) backgrounds. There should be several kinds of slow-moving "glamour" shots of the product, separate close-up shots of its most noteworthy features (especially in use), and close-ups to illustrate the interaction of the product and its users (including such things as what a user might see on a PC screen, when that's appropriate).
A B roll opportunity may also occasionally be driven by significant people. If there are newsmakers within a company, it is also helpful to provide video of them when they are involved in appropriate activities in a corporate context but not talking. One of the standards in this category is shooting that executive when walking from the HQ building with signs visible to name the company; another is walking through a production line, with either signs or distinctive products in view.
PRODUCTION VERSUS DISTRIBUTION
If you had usable B roll in your hands right now, what would you do with it? Would you put a note about it at the bottom of a press release and wait for responses? Would you book satellite time and hope that somebody somewhere would take a downlink? Would you send it blind to news operations?
These choices run the spectrum from useless to unnecessarily expensive, even to counterproductive (since too much of the wrong stuff from any one place can so quickly wear out a welcome).
Because of the shelf life of B roll video, we recommend sending it out on tape (advice that may change as newer technologies pervade newsrooms), accompanied by both a descriptive label and a cut sheet (in this case, a sheet naming the separate video cuts, their offset into the tape and their duration).
We are deliberately not going to provide more details on to whom or where you'll want to ship these tapes, nor on how or when or whether to make advance arrangements. It's easy to read between the lines on that: doing so takes some understanding, some finesse and an appreciable amount of work (and we are loath to poison the well of B roll distribution to the extent that e-mail and the press wires have poisoned the well of news release distribution (not even addressing the anticipated quality of either).
On the other hand, we will be quite deliberate in identifying that the quality of production and the quality of distribution are both major factors in determining the effectiveness (and ultimately the ROI) of using B roll video in pursuit of PR agendas.
LIMITATIONS AND TRADEOFFS
Had any truly free lunches lately?
B roll video is no more of a shoe-in than any other PR tool.
If you need to control when and where it runs, buy ad time. As in anything that reaches major news media, there is absolutely no guarantee that it will run at all, and absolutely no control over when it will run. On the other hand, depending on intangible factors (like cute, hot, funny, cool or maybe bizarre), it's altogether possible that hundreds of stations will end up using it almost immediately, run it multiple times for the first several days, run it some more the following weekend, and run it again from time to time over the next few months.
That's an entirely familiar set of circumstances for most PR pros and most PR tools. It doesn't make the choice to use B roll video inherently better or worse than other choices, though for many PR operations, it is for a time an under-used alternative.
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