This Is The Weirdest New Thing In Modern Politics.
Making freely available plenty of B-roll is a new phenomenon in which candidates discreetly court the attention of SuperPACs that might be considering boosting their campaign. Simply put, it gives SuperPACs free footage of the candidates, chosen by their campaign, without the pesky charges of “coordinating.”
So, what is “B-roll”? Wikipedia defines it:
B-roll, B roll, or Broll is the supplemental or alternative footage intercut with the main shot in an interview or documentary.
The term “B-roll” is now limited to secondary footage that adds meaning to a sequence or disguises the elimination of unwanted content. This technique of using the cutaway is common to hide zooms in documentary films: the visuals may cut away to B-roll footage of what the person is talking about while the A camera zooms in, then cut back after the zoom is complete. The cutaway to B-roll footage can also be used to hide verbal or physical tics that the editor and/or director finds distracting: with the audio separate from the video, the filmmakers are free to excise “uh”s, sniffs, coughs, and so forth.
“B-roll” also refers to footage provided free of charge to broadcast news organizations as a means of gaining free publicity. For example, an automobile maker might shoot a video of its assembly line, hoping that segments will be used in stories about the new model year. B-roll sometimes makes its way into stock footage libraries.
Here’s a discussion of how important B-roll is in cutting video segments, whether they be news or ads.
B-roll is the extra footage captured to enrich the story you’re telling and to have greater flexibility when editing. Instead of featuring only talking heads on video, you want to have other images you can cut away to that will add dimension to your story. B-roll can include additional video footage, still photographs, animation or other graphic elements.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when planning your film shoot:
- Depending on the type of video you are creating, evenly divide filming between recording interviews and capturing b-roll. In our experience, having plenty of good b-roll makes a video more powerful.
- Because the times for capturing b-roll are often fixed (a certain activity only happens at a certain time), start by identifying the must-have footage and inserting that into your filming schedule.
- Fill in the rest of the schedule with interviews and nice-to-have b-roll. If you discover, due to limited timing, that you need to sacrifice either a must-have piece of b-roll or a nice-to-have interview, we often recommend sacrificing the interview. The value of b-roll should not be underestimated, not only because it can strengthen the impact of your current video project, but also because it can serve as key footage for additional video assets created down the road.
If you’ve ever watched a TV news crew taping a segment, whether it’s with a candidate you’re there to support, or alongside the road for a traffic story, you’ve seen B-roll being shot. When the on-air talent and the subject of the video segment take several shots walking toward the camera talking and gesturing, that’s probably B-roll.
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