| [BACK]
When developing stories into believable screenplays, screenwriters have to become adept at research. Whether it involves forensic science, police procedure, finer points of law or medicine, credible information yields believability.
In corporate and educational media writing, research is equally important, if not more so. Here's why: everything depends on what your client wants to say, to whom and for what purpose. These three elements can be expressed on paper in the following documents:
· a target audience profile
· the goals or objectives of the project
· a content outline
Let's start with the target audience. This is analogous to how various genres influence the tone and style of a script to appeal to audience demographics. Action and crime dramas tilt toward men in their twenties and thirties. Romantic comedies play to female audiences. Science fiction audiences are different from those who attend family fare or R-rated material.
Likewise, media writers for business employ a different voice when speaking to an internal audience of employees versus an external audience of customers. Even when addressing employees, the tone will differ if your target audience consists of blue-collar workers compared to investment bankers or healthcare workers. Your sensitivity to these subtle distinctions will be expressed to your client by writing a short Target Audience Profile, outlining the demographics, educational level and sophistication of the audience.
Goals or objectives are equally vital. In the motion picture business, the goal is always to entertain by capturing the audience's imagination. In the business world, the overall goal may be to teach, to persuade, to communicate or rouse to action. Again, your style will be quite different if your goal is to teach employees how to operate a piece of machinery safely than if you're trying to get a potential customer to buy a product. Goals or objectives are usually expressed in terms of what the target audience is supposed to do after experiencing the media presentation: sell more effectively, buy a product, prescribe a medication.
Next comes content: what the media presentation is about. Learning about content involves a variety of activities-interviewing subject matter experts, reading documents or advertising copy. In some cases, you have to actually see or experience a situation with your own eyes. In researching sales training content, I've often spent time on calls with the company's top sales rep to observe him or her in action. Once, when creating a script for a New York City construction management firm, I actually got to view the process of restoring the Statue of Liberty-including going up by construction elevator to the top of the scaffolding. A fascinating assignment, even though I'm not crazy about heights.
Content is usually expressed in the form of a straightforward content outline, just like you used to write for college term papers. It describes what will be included in the media presentation in key point outline.
Note that we haven't addressed the all-important creative concept. That's because it's premature to start brainstorming your concept until you have a firm grasp of the audience profile, project objectives and the subject matter.
Next week-we'll talk creative.
|
