Unit 11: Scriptwriting for Media Products: LO1: Examples of Scripts

Types of script I will include in this post:

short film
documentary
news broadcast
radio drama
video game

Short Film - Fogg's Millions by Elizabeth Carpenter

http://bit.ly/2c6kJfs

Documentary - Triumph of the Will by Leni Riefenstahl

http://bit.ly/2cmCAzH

The above script "Triumph of the Will" is a documentary script. Therefore, it is of the same genre as the script I am planning to write, for a nature documentary. While the topics may not be the same, I will be using the same conventions as this script when I write mine.

News Broadcast - BBC News Script

http://bbc.in/2cCUN0v

ISRAEL

Two Palestinian teenagers are among a number of people who've died in a day of attacks between Israel and the palestinian territories. The violence began when Israel launched an air attack killing five people -- and, in retaliation -- a barrage of rockets were fired from Gaza, killing a man attending a college on the outskirts of Sderot. Our correspondent Tim Franks reports:

FRANKS: The pace of attack and counter attack is surging once again. Early in the day, the Israeli air force targeted a white mini van carrying a group of militants from the Islamist Hamas movement which now controls the Gaza Strip. Five of the militants were killed, their number included at least one senior figure from Hamas's paramilitary wing. A few hours later, Hamas hit back:

SXF: SCREAMING

FRANKS: The sound of pandemonium at a college in the the southern Israeli town of Sderot. One man died after rockets, fired from Gaza, hit the campus. His was the first Israeli death in nine months from the near daily missile attacks. In all, the Israeli army said that more than twenty-five rockets had been fired into southern Israel in the course of two hours today. At the same time, the Israeli army killed another militant in the north of the Gaza Strip. And in a later Israeli air strike two people were killed and seven wounded. Local doctors said that the two dead were fifteen or sixteen-years-old and three of the wounded were under ten. Three months after the start of a new round of peace talks between the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships, there's no clear sign of either progress in those negotiations, nor a dimming of the violence in southern Israel and Gaza.

TALIBAN MOBILES

Taliban fighters in Afghanistan have given the country's mobile phone companies until tomorrow to suspend all their services at night or risk having their offices and communication towers destroyed. The warning -- posted on a Jihadist website -- comes after the Taliban suffered a number of setbacks when coalition forces eaves-dropped on their phone calls. Here's our security correspondent, Frank Gardner:

GARDNER: It's called 'SIGINT' - Signals Intelligence - and it's clearly hurting the Taliban. US, British and other NATO forces operating in Afghanistan have developed a sophisticated system of listening in on Taliban conversations and then locating where they are. It's a sign of just how damaging this can be to their operations that the Taliban have now ordered all Afghan mobile phone companies to stop their night-time services between the hours of five pm and seven in the morning. 'If those firms do not implement this decision', says their message posted to a jihadist website, 'then the mujahidin will destroy their offices and transmission towers'. British forces fighting in Afghanistan are able to call on a range of electronic warfare specialists, from ground-based troops, to technicians working out of air-conditioned land rovers, to surveillance planes flying overhead and even satellite sensors up in space. In this covert war, however, the Taliban are fighting back. Knowing they are being listened to, they often feed their enemy false information. "The Taliban" said a military source, "are clever cookies, they've had a long time to perfect their game".

ROBBER

Lancashire Police say a shopkeeper will not face prosecution over the death of an armed robber who attacked him near his store in Skelmersdale. Tony Singh was initially questioned on suspicion of the murder of twenty-five year-old Liam Kilroe, who was stabbed with his own knife, ten days ago. Both the police and the Crown Prosecution Service said Mr Singh was the victim of a violent attack. Lisa McAlister reports:

MCALISTER: Up until he closed his corner shop and got into his car to go home, Tony Singh says it was just an ordinary day. What happened next was anything but. Out of the shadows came Lima Kilroe, a convicted armed robber on the run from police for breaching bail condition on similar charges. The twenty-five-year-old, who was armed with a knife, attacked Mr Singh, punching, biting and stabbing him. But in the struggle, Kilroe also suffered a stab wound and later died. Today, the Crown Prosecution Service said Mr Singh would not face charges over the death. Speaking through his solicitor, Nick Archer, Mr Singh said he had no choice but to defend himself:

ARCHER ACT: I was going home to my family after a day's work. I was subject to a violent and unprovoked knife attack. I tried to get away from the attacker but was left no option other than to defend myself. In the course of the attack, I was stabbed to the head, causing what could have been a life-threatening injury, and also suffered repeated stab wounds to my back. In the struggle with my attacker, I understand he suffered an injury but I do not know how the injury was caused.

MCALISTER: Detective Superintendent Mick Gradwell, believes it is an exceptional case:

GRADWELL ACT: If he'd had the opportunity to perhaps give up the takings, he wouldn't have wanted to fight. He was defending himself as someone was attacking him. I think our advice has got to be to people, don't get involved in these fights. If you can give the property away, that's the safest thing to do.

MCALISTER: Today, Mr Singh extended his sympathies to the Kilroe family. He says his deepest wish for life to return to normal.

OIL PRICE

The price of oil reached a record high today at over a hundred and two dollars a barrel. At the same time, the dollar reached a record low in the currency markets. It has slipped below one dollar fifty to the euro. As our Economics Editor, Evan Davis explains, movements in the price of energy and the dollar are related:

DAVIS: The chain of events all starts with the weakening American economy -- the evidence suggests it is in some trouble.By way of one example, house prices have fallen five per cent in the last three months. The next link in the chain is the Federal Reserve. There is only one strategy it seems to understand -- to carry on cutting. Cutting interest rates to stimulate spending. Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Fed has been giving evidence to congress today, sounding as though he is ready to see rates come down. That strategy has implications for the dollar. With those lower rates expected, it becomes less attractive to buy dollars, so the currency falls. In fact, against the euro, the dollar has now lost forty-five per cent of the value it had at its peak, back in October 2000. The final link in the chain takes you to oil and other commodities -- they are priced in dollars, so they get cheaper for everybody paying in other currencies. It is not surprising the dollar price tends to rise. Indeed measured in dollars, the oil price is not only at a record, it is close to its all-time inflation-adjusted high, which was reached in April 1980. That of course takes you to back to where the chain stated -- the high oil price itself threatens the US economy. Which is, at the moment, the weakest link.