This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
moved here from YKTTW
Dark Sasami: I wanted to document the news trope Film at 11 in which the actual news is held hostage with little tidbits thrown at you until the actual story is complete anticlimax, but it would be kind of pointless to do that unless some kind of entry on The News or Evening News exists. Am I missing something, or are we missing something?
Gus: Prime Time News exists. News Parody exists. The News does not.
Dark Sasami: Okay, so I spent the last week in a house where people actually watch the news, which I gave up on years ago. And I'm really struggling to come up with an entry for it (or two, one for local and one for national), because it has so little to do with news that I get carried away with sarcasm. Can somebody create a starter entry with a straight face? I can't do it.
Besides Film at 11, my news-watching adventure has revealed to me the tropes Yet Another Baby Panda, Could This Happen to You?, Back To You Dave, and Delusions of Local Grandeur. But You Know That Thing Where the newsreaders banter with each other between stories and pretend they're witty and imagine that people want to hear what they actually think? Whaddaya call that?
Also, what about that thing where national news will run a story, and over every noun they'll show footage of what that noun is, even if it's a metaphor? It's usually when they're rambling about something with opinions, and they're telling both sides while narrating and not showing an anchor. "Some people say things are bad. [footage of people walking] But others, like thing expert Jane McExpert [footage of Jane at a computer], say things are good. [Jane: "Things are good."] At any rate [footage of people again], time [pause over shot of watch] and tide [pause over shot of ocean] wait for no man [shot of man]. Tom Voiceguy, ABC News, Philadelphia." [Back to the newsroom] "Thank you, Tom."
Bluetooth The Pirate: The patter between newsreaders is done for filler, the same as any other live broadcast (like an Award Show, although they rarely need to be longer than they are). It's sometimes called a "stretch", and the floor director signals it to the anchors with a hand sign which vaguely resembles a taffy pull. It gives the broadcast the precious seconds it needs to fill the hole in the national sattelite feed.
As for the editing style described in the above paragraph, I'd call it a "B-Roll Rebus", after the print stories with pictures inserted in place of words. But that's just me.
It'd also be helpful if everyone knew what "B-Roll" refers to, I can't count on it being a commonly known term. I think I can handle that one.
Octal: Added B-Roll Rebus, using Dark Sasami's (slightly modified) text. I liked the name.
Dark Sasami: Anybody know why the tropes linked from this page all show up on the Check For Orphans page?
Gus: The orphan seeker needs to be told about new indexes and it is not smart enough to read from the Index-Index page, yet. This index is now hand-coded in, to fill the gap while I loaf around and procrastinate about making the changes to the Orphin-ator.
I can't find an entry yet, but one thing that US news programs (real ones, or ones "inside" a movie or TV show) seem to have in common is a sort of high-pitched sound near the beginning. In these latter days it's often something like a violin solo at the end of the theme music; I am told that back in the day, you got the two-note bleeps of a modem doing ~110 bps FSK for a Teletype. I think it's both an attempt to attract attention (the high pitched noise stands out, like a whistle or siren), and for the modem sound, a way to say "Hey! Fresh news! Something new! Pay attention!"
