Producer, Director and Writer: Sheldon Renan
Photographer /Editor: Rick Wise Production
Designer: Natascha Nicholson

Host: Leonard Nimoy

Hello, I am Leonard Nimoy. You know me probably from the acting in front of television cameras, but this time I'm gonna be behind the camera and you are coming with me to se how television is produced.

- Scenes from shooting a TV broadcast are shown -

Let's say there are two kinds of production: big budget television and little budget television. Big budget television is the kind for most broadcast television: Big studios, big cameras and big crews.

Little budget television is little cameras, little facilities and small groups of people working together. Little budget television is the kind of production used for education, industry, law-enforcement, sales work – just about any field you can name.

Who does what?
In big budget television there are large crews starting with the producer. That's the person who supervises production, bringing people together and making it all happen. And you have writers and production assistants. Then there is the director who directs the camera people and chooses what to show on the screen. Sitting next to the director you usually find the technical director who actually pushes the buttons and supervises the technical work. Out on the studio floor is the floor director who stands beside the camera and relays the directions to the people in front of the camera. And then there are the engineers. They set the lights, the run the cameras, they supervise the video or picture and the audio or sound, they run the videotape recorders and later they work with the producer's staff to edit the video tape.

No matter how you produce the television, whether little or big, the steps are the same beginning with the pre-production. You may start with the treatment, a short outline of your idea... the script usually has picture directions on one side and sound directions on the other. A storyboard, another kind of script, has pictures and directions and above them drawings which indicate the shots to be used. – Examples of a long shot (wide shot), a medium shot, a medium close-up and a close-up are shown. A panning shot is when the camera pans to the left or the right. A till shot – when the camera tills up or down. A dolly-shot: The camera dollies towards the subject or dollies back. A tracking shot is when the camera moves along with the subject. Shots can also be identified by function. An establishing shot is used to capture the surroundings or the mood of the object. An insert shot is taped to be inserted into previously taped material. Shot also are described by what they show.

Production: Air production is either live or taped... All production is either studio production or location production. A remote truck or video van is used for outside production with several cameras. The director will have a video switcher to cut from camera to camera. The character generator electronically creates letters and numbers. All film ends up on video tape... Post production: The tapes are edited. A dissolve is a space between a shot fading out and another fading in.