Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with TV and media

A piece of fruit on prime time?

slactoid — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:33:38 -0800

Fruit on TV? I remember someone saying something to the effect of, "If we put a piece of fruit on television every night, it will become a national icon". Who said that? And I think that someone actually did it (SNL?), did THAT happen?

Vietnamese TV, anyone?

mordecai — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 08:36:34 -0800

Does anyone watch Vietnamese TV here? hey guys, I'm a student doing my BFA in Creative Producing at Chapman and I'm looking for information on Vietnamese television.

I know this is a bit of a long shot, but would you guys be able to help me out? I need information on the kinds of programmes they show on Vietnamese TV, some of the popular shows, whether programmes are imported, if they're dubbed, etc.

I would be able to do this research myself if not for the fact that most Vietnamese websites are, well, in Vietnamese. So I guess I'm really looking for someone who can speak the language?

Thanks folks! I'd appreciate any help!

How to write a compelling pitch for a reality show?

Elle Vator — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 17:38:37 -0800

Dear Hivemind: Where can I find examples of treatments for Reality TV shows? I have experience writing treatments for film, so I'm already on the right track in terms of describing character or writing synopses... but I'm a bit at a loss as to what points must be hit, in what proportion and in what sequence in a Reality TV Treatment. I've worked in reality before and I'm fascinated by the genre, so I know what goes into a show similar to this. That said, I also know that I've never written a treatment for this format and I could really use some guidance.

Here's how I'm picturing it:
-logline
-expansion on logline (short paragraph)
-nuts and bolts stuff (length of season, length of episode, basic production premise, audience/market brief... too much? not enough?)
-background of the concept (establishing main characters and reasons why the show is being made and will be awesome)
-more detailed breakdown (consisting of...?)
-> season synopsis
-> episode breakdown
-> overall result of the first season and possibilities for subsequent seasons
-team bios
...all about ten pages of well-spaced text (with the first page created as a stand-alone one-sheet) before we add pictures.

I know I'm on the right track, kinda/sorta... but my uncertainty is having a negative effect on my creative process. Me? I'm a writer who's been given a great opportunity and a fascinating concept which I've been consulting on for a while. I'd rather not go boldly in the wrong direction on this, if you know what I mean! I think what I need is to see is some sample documents and/or get pointed to a book or article that breaks it down how the document is formatted in a general way.

Tips? Answers? Illumination of any sort? I'd really appreciate it. :)

Looking for really awesome Spanish-language broadcast media — TV, radio, podcasts, whatever.

nebulawindphone — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 10:38:00 -0800

¿Como se dice "The Wire" en Español? Looking for really awesome Spanish-language broadcast media — TV, radio, podcasts, whatever you've got. I'm trying to revive my long-dormant Spanish skills. I studied it from kindergarten on through college, but it's been years since I had a chance to practice much.

It'd be nice to have a regular something in Spanish to watch or listen to — and while I'm at it, it may as well be something I can really look forward to. I don't care if it's heavy or light, funny or serious, fiction or non-fiction, whatever, so long as it's awesome.

So what are your recommendations for the coolest, best-made and most interesting Spanish-language media?

How do I clear my media backlog?

b.an.dekker — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 07:21:48 -0800

I'm drowning in a sea of media I have no time to consume - someone please throw me a lifeline On my to-consume media list I currently have The Wire series 5, Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis, Siren: Blood Curse for PS3, Playback by Raymond Chandler, Flight of the Conchords series 1 and countless movies. And the list is growing all the time.

Regular long-haul flights are helping me make a dent in the movies backlog, but how do I tackle the rest, short of holing up in a monastery or container ship for a few months with my media library?

Any guidance on how you deal with this luxury problem gratefully received.

Resources for Aspiring Online News Producer?

davidmsc — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 23:42:58 -0800

Resources for learning more about being the "web producer" (aka online content manager, etc) for a small-market TV news outlet? I'm on the verge of landing a gig as the "online content manager" at one of our local TV stations (network affiliate); they are trying to make a big push onto the web, and my passion for current events, love of my community, and 8+ years as a blogger (familiar with CMS, social media, minor techie skills, etc) seems to have convinced them that I am the right guy. For me, this is a Dream Job. Seriously.

The position seems to be part-time content blogger, part-time "in the field" gathering material/stories, and part-time business & analytics (who visits, why, stickiness, etc).

But with no formal journalism education/experience, I want to learn as much as possible as fast as possible. I follow some of the major blogs that discuss the intersection of news & new media, such as Lost Remote and Media Bistro/TV Newser, but I would really appreciate any other sources and links. Thanks, gang!

Need program to track progress in multiple TV series

lrodman — Tue, 06 May 2008 12:02:08 -0800

Is there a good program to monitor progress in various TV shows? I.e. what episode I'm on in shows if watching multiple shows in different seasons irregularly. Optimally this would integrate somehow with hulu/abc/WMP, but I wouldn't expect that. Anyone have a good app like this? It gets confusing with series starting and ending different times, and picking up or taking breaks from different shows.

What do I need to know to stream a TV station to between 500 and 100 people?

asnowballschance — Sat, 03 May 2008 09:29:44 -0800

How do I set up a server to stream media ? A client has contacted us about developing a website with a streaming TV station and a streaming radio station. The stations will run 24/7 with a great deal of duplicated content. Content items will run from 15 minutes to 2 hours. The client wants to set it up as a broadcast, so that if someone tunes in at 8am, he sees the same program as everyone else, just like with regular stations. Because of the need for playlists, it looks like progressive (http) downloads won't work; however, if there are alternatives to setting up a streaming server, I'd love to hear about them.

Right now, I'm getting a handle on hardware and coding requirements so that we can put a team together. We're in West Africa, so the budget is thousands of dollars, not tens of thousands of dollars. We're also looking at a maximum of about 1000 simultaneous users, but hoping to average between 100 and 500.

What kind of hardware should I be looking at for (managed dedicated) servers? And where can we find the Terabytes of bandwidth we'll need?

What do I need to know about compressing media (into Flash)? Best practices?

Anything else I should generally be aware of?

Licensing, content, and profitability are not my problems. Putting together a plan, a budget, and hiring people to do this are.

The End of the News Media?

Gagglehack — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 10:25:59 -0800

Newspapers and media: the sky is falling, the bowl is being circled. What can we do about it? Your best suggestions please. One of the things that has been preoccupying members of the media these days is how to embrace the changes that new technology is handing us on a daily basis. As an editor at a small daily on the East Coast, it's a question we're wrestling with. We've put up a whole host of new stuff on our website — video, webcasts, blogs for reporters and citizens. We have breaking news updates and RSS feeds. We're aggressively local in a way that most major newspapers can't be.

Most of the stuff relies on the reader to come to us. The problem that we don't seem to have an answer to is how we can best get that information out to our readers.

So, hivemind, what platforms should we be considering? How do you get your news?

There may be no silver bullet to fix the spiraling decline this industry's in, but who knows — is there a combination of things we could do to staunch the bleed?

Who decides what the news is?

ibmcginty — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 13:26:56 -0800

Who decides what's news? This question is about seemingly peripheral stories that get coverage, not about the media's quest for the salacious, or about politicians' efforts to get the media to focus on the mundane.

Two specific times in the past week, news stories that seem to me to be unimportant have gotten relatively prominent coverage from a range of news organizations. This sort of thing happens all the time, but it's really jumped out at me in the past week.

Driving into work last Friday, I was surprised to hear Carl Kasell covering the New England Patriots spying scandal in NPR's 5-minute newscast. I stopped to get coffee, and CNN was covering it too.

Then earlier this week NPR gave up precious seconds of its national news summary to a story about a new California law restricting use of cell phones by teenagers while driving... and then CNN was on that story too.

What gives?

I can easily imagine the California law getting minor play from the LA Times; what the heck was it doing on the national news? Does some guy at the AP decide the order of news stories on the wire, and the rest of the media just follows suit? Is there a wider cabal somewhere? What's the deal?

This is a US-centric question, but the experience and wisdom of foreigners is welcome.

What are the most effective qualifications and qualities a production assistant should have on their resume?

ebonyknives — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 12:01:02 -0800

Resume Help: Production Assistant for Film and Television? Finding a Production Assistant job is difficult enough without knowing what should go on the resume.

What are the most helpful qualities for a production assistant hopeful to present on their resume? What stands out the most? If the answer is experience, what about that experience should stand out from the description?

Thanks for your input.

UK DIY IPTV PDQ?

Nice Guy Mike — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 05:27:09 -0800

How can my parents get English TV in Italy? Now that my parents have retired, they're going to be spending more time dual-basing between Italy and the UK, probably a couple of months at a time in each place. They'd like the ability to watch english TV in Italy, and being the family's tech-head I've been tapped for potential solutions.

-------- Longish explanation, skip to bottom for actual questions ---------

The most obvious answer is British satellite TV, ideally via the Astra constellation - the problem is, they're too far south to get a signal without a huge dish (2.4m, according to this page), which is not feasible.

Next up is TV streaming using e.g. a Slingbox, streaming from my parent's home in the UK to Italy. Luckily, I own one that I use on my home LAN, and we were able to conduct a proper test at a friends' place there. The quality was OK, but only for a small window on the computer in question - ideally they'd like to watch on a full size TV.

Torrents are not an option, as the type of TV they'd want to watch will not be torrented (british TV, some soaps).

Due to the small upload bandwidth available, the best solution I can think of is to record in the UK with a DVR of some description, then download (after recordings, i.e. non-real time) from said DVR to my parent's computer in Italy. This would allow better quality than streaming, albeit with slower download times.

So, how to do it?

I figure the following components:
- Server machine with TV card, based in the UK and hooked to a UK TV source and the UK broadbanc connection
- Client machine, laptop with media centre software, taken to Italy and hooked to italian broadband connection, connected to TV
- Server software capable of being controlled via web interface

Ideal, but not required, would be the option of automated (e.g. overnight) downloads from the server to the client. My parents are somewhat technophobic but can do basic operations in Windows (e.g. go to website, click TV shows you want to download, leave the laptop on overnight, watch shows the next day via Media Centre).

--------- Questions: -----------

- Server software:
I'm looking for a recommendation for software running on a media PC (actually, a media server) that can:
- record from TV
- be controlled via a web-type interface (as opposed to VNC)
- can appropriately compress TV show files e.g. using XviD, H264, etc
- can be remotely administered (administration being a separate function to merely "using", ie setting recordings and aquiring TV shows)

- Client software
Windows MCE should provide the majority of user-side interaction, but an automated method of logging in to the above server and downloading e.g. all files in a selected folder structure would be useful.

- For those who have read the lengthy speil above, any comments on feasibility? Any better ideas would be welcome.

Sorry about the length, if any more details are required, please ask.

Torture in the media?

EarBucket — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 10:08:43 -0800

Help me find examples of torture in movies and on TV. Inspired by this thread, I'm working on a project examing the use of torture in the media. I'm looking for as broad a range of examples as possible--positive and negative, recent and older, prominent and obscure.

If the example is from a TV show, it'd help if you could cite a specific episode. If the series has visited the issue more than once, particularly if it's portrayed differently each time, multiple episode cites are great.

Looking for a copy of a 1950s advert

rongorongo — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 05:11:08 -0800

How might I go about trying to locate a copy of a 1950s British TV advert (brand known but agency unknown, a websearch reveals nothing)?

Who designed the opening scenes for the 4400 and Grey's Anatomy?

Aanidaani — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 09:47:07 -0800

I started watching Grey's Anatomy recently, and I can't help noticing a striking similarity between the opening title credits in that show and the opening credits in The 4400. Does anyone know if the same design/production studio created both of these introductory scenes? It seems to me that both introductory scenes have the same style of photography, lighting, and moody atmospheres. Also, the music chosen for each is pretty subdued and similar in style, though this all could just be a coincidence. I've tried to find more information but I'm coming up short. Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks!

Wireless media players that record TV

tirebouchon — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 12:03:23 -0800

I am looking for a Wireless media player that can stream video from my computer to my TV but also record video from my tv to my computer. Does such a device exist?

Computer-based media clipping service?

pzarquon — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 22:07:15 -0800

How easy would it be to set up some PCs to record the local news on several channels for purposes of offering a media clipping service? I don't know what the industry term is for this service, or how it's handled in other markets, but there is a company in my town that basically pays college kids to run a rack of basic VHS VCRs at home to record the evening news on four local network affiliates, cycle the tapes, and hold 'em for about a week in case a client wants a copy of a story that featured their product, a competitors product, a spouse, friend, etc.

Basically, the local stations don't have the patience or time to answer calls from the public who want a tape of their uncle, caught on camera expressing shock at a neighborhood fire, and direct people to call this company instead. It's obviously not a very profitable niche, but it's worth a few bucks to someone, and so far I guess the VCRs, tapes, and basic tracking is simple enough to sustain. But it still sounds like a lot of hassle.

So I was thinking. I've got a coaxial cable coming into my computer room, and four unused Dells, one of which has a video capture card. I presume I could get a coaxial splitter, a few more video cards, install some software, and basically have machines quietly recording the news on these four stations every night. Each would store {x} nights' worth of broadcasts, then dump 'em. Since I'm not messing with tapes, I could have an archive stretching further back than a week, and I imagine I wouldn't even have to think about it at all until someone wanted a specific segment. Then, I'd just copy the recorded video to the machine with a DVD burner, burn it, and hand it over.

Could this really be that simple? Or is there a reason cheap VCRs and cheap tapes are the way things are done now?

Do you have recommendations or warnings on the distribution of video capture cards and hard drives to get four evening news broadcasts simultaneously? How would you configure these relatively mindless recording workstations? What's the most reasonably priced basic video capture cards? Simple recording/scheduling software? Easiest way, when needed, to snip out a bit and burn it to DVD?

Thanks in advance! And if this turns out to be a viable side business for anyone else, you're welcome!

Random question: where is this commercial?

TheWhiteSkull — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 19:47:14 -0800

Has anyone seen this commercial? A client of mine has asked about this commercial for VISA that launched last week, specifically where it's running, is there similar imagery in other media (print, etc.). It won't show up in our measurement tools for at least another month or so, but she seems to have a bug up her ass about it, so any help the hivemind could give me would be appreciated.

How can I get a clip from the Daily Show?

kensanway — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 11:58:23 -0800

Looking for permission to use a clip from The Daily Show I am trying to contact the daily show for both a copy of a clip from their earlier years (specifically the alex chiu interview) as well as permissionn to use this clip in a documentary -- how does one go about doing this (for the daily show in particular, and for other TV shows in general)

Naturally, contact info for the producers of the show are not publicly available -- so how do insiders do it?

XP Media Center & DirecTV DVR connection/set-up

Mrs. Smith — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 08:37:17 -0800

Need help connecting my DirecTV DVR and my new laptop with Windows XP Media Center. I would like to make this a wireless connection, if possible, so I don't have to be near the TV to watch a program. (It seems pointless to me to have to plug in my laptop to my TV to watch my TV.)

The computers are networked, running on an SBC/Yahoo! DSL connected router...all XP computers.

I would like to be able to watch and record TV on my laptop. (I'm not as interested in using the laptop as a giant remote control.)

I would also like to be able to burn a DVD on my laptop of programs that I've recorded on my DVR.

Any help and/or advice you can give would be greatly appreciated.

I don't know much at all about Media Center Edition at this point, so any tips or tricks that you would like to pass along would also be appreciated.

Thanks!

Why did Arrested Development get cancelled?

BigBrownBear — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 07:11:40 -0800

Why did Arrested Development get cancelled? It's just so damn good. I'd love to hear some opinions as to why it failed. Or see any good blogposts or articles.

I'll be your mirror... or not.

insomnia_lj — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 00:35:00 -0800

I've got a Windows Media Center edition PC hooked up to my television using an S-video cable so that I can play DIVX files, and I'm getting my wallpaper showing up on the television... and nothing else. The main monitor still shows all my apps, however. What gives?! It seems to be treating the television as a second monitor, rather than mirroring exactly what's on my PC desktop, and I don't have any obvious way of either changing this, or of running and controlling my video playing software on this second display. Any advice?! I'm using a ATI Radeon X800 to do this, btw.

What TV commercial is this?

thejimp — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 15:39:19 -0800

AdFilter: Can anyone identify this TV ad that ran a few years back? A young man is packing up his car for college and his father is there saying goodbye. Very emotional. The mother is noticeably absent. The father goes inside to find the mother--not sad as expected--excitedly measuring up the son's room for a new hot tub that she's going to install. Can anyone tell me the company and/or a place where I could download the ad? Thanks.

Windows Media Player and my TV

kc0dxh — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 07:57:13 -0800

How can I make WMP default it's full-screen video to a given monitor on a dual monitor system? I have a Jaton 3DForce 5200LE that runs my CRT and is connected to my television. I would like WMP to start and run on my CRT while defaulting it's full-screen to my TV. Can this be done?

Why do films & TV programmes have credit sequences?

ajbattrick — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 04:26:28 -0800

Why do films & TV programmes have credit sequences? I don't get a list of nut & bolt technicians, headlamp designers or airbag testers when I buy a car, so why do I need to be told who pulled the focus, who was an electrician, who swept the floor when I am watching a film or TV programme?