Chapter 6: Corporate Communications: Selling, Telling, Training, and Promoting
Additional Content
Click to download or view the following content.
American Travel in Europe
Play Movie
Copyright 1987 American Express Europe Ltd. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of American Express.
The Right Direction
Watch Movie
Reproduced by permission of Peter Cutler. Copyright John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance and John Hancock Distributiors.
Visual Metaphor
The steel worker trying the rebar rods compares to the player of a single instrument in an orchestra. Both works are achieved by coordination and teamwork.
Charley Wheeler's Big Week
Watch Movie
Reproduced by permission of Peter Cutler. Copyright John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance and John Hancock Distributiors.
AT&T Connections
Copyright AT&T. Reproduced with Permission of AT&T.
Midi-Pyrénnées
Reproduced by permission of © Le Conseil Regional de Midi-Pyrennees
First Union
- Sharks
- Download Storyboard
- Play Video
- Cityscape
- Download Storyboard
- Play Video (mergers.mov)
Copyright First Union. Reproduced by Permission.
DISCLOSURE: Derivative products offered by First Union National Bank. Merger and acquisition advisory services, loan syndications, distribution of securitization and high yield debt are investment banking services offered by First Union Capital Markets Corp., member NYSE, SIPC and NASD. First Union National Bank and First Union Capital Markets Corp. are corporate affiliates of First Union Corporation.
Sea Change
Watch Movie
Reproduced by permission of Peter Cutler. Copyright EMC Corporation.
Creating a Loyal Client
Watch Movie
Reproduced by permission of Peter Cutler and John Hancock
Script Treatment
Treatment
After the concept comes the treatment. Both these terms are universally used and understood. A writer must know what they are and how to write them. Writing the treatment involves expanding the concept to reveal the complete structure of the program with the basic content or storyline arranged in the order that will prevail in the final script. All characters and principal scenes should be introduced. Although this document is still written in normal prose, it frequently introduces key moments of voice narration or dramatic dialogue. Some writers substitute a scene outline or base the treatment on a scene outline.
A Treatment for “Smoked to Death”
Interior kitchen, a young man has lit up a cigarette with his girlfriend. He offers her a beer. He goes to the fridge and opens the door. Suddenly, he finds himself opening the door of a body refrigerator in the interior of a morgue. A white-coated assistant pulls out a draw from the freezer. Back to the kitchen. He is visibly shaken, dismisses it, opens the beer for himself and her, hands his attractive date the beer. Putting on a grin, he starts to make seductive small talk. We see her inhale and as the camera pulls back, a special effect reveals the inside of her lungs like an X-ray. Cut to his worried look. Zoom in. Zoom out to the same woman morphing into a much older woman with wrinkles brought on by smoking and a cough. His face registers alarm. The next vision is of the girl morphed into an older woman with emphysema in a hospital bed, on oxygen. The couple in the kitchen clink beer bottles. His line: “Your health.” We cut to a cemetery then a quick track to a headstone. Close-up of inscription: Died from smoking-related disease. Cut to another headstone showing the same inscription. Died from smoking-related disease. And another and another in more rapid succession. In the kitchen, she puts out her cigarette and coughs once. Cut to text: Smoking kills 450,000 Americans every year!
Dual Column Format
It is probably fair to say that the most common format for corporate video is dual-column format (see Appendix in book). To remind you—the visual description of what appears on screen is written down in the left-hand column, and the audio description of what is heard on the sound track is written down on the right-hand column. Each scene is written down in two parts which have to be read together to assimilate all the information needed to produce the scene. It is the easiest way to write for video once you get over the beginner's tendency to mix up the two categories of audio and visual.