(文档含英文原文和中文翻译)
中英文翻译
原文：
Ads and PSAs ⑴Copywriting for Visual Media
Before television, there was radio advertising and film advertising in
movie houses.You still see local ads in some movie theatres before the
program starts. So the principle of selling time between programming for
commercial messages grew up with the visual media. A format that is
probably unique to television was developed to deliver short visual
commercial messages very efficiently and effectively in breaks between
programs. The air time was sold to advertisers to generate the operating
revenue and profit for the television companies.
Television provides access to the majority of homes and, therefore,
to the largest audience. Before television, few people had dealt with the
pressure to communicate product or commercial information in a rapid,
attention-getting way that television needs. It was, and still is, very
expensive to buy air time. Because television is the most expensive
advertising medium, it has driven the writers and producers of
commercials to refine their techniques so as to deliver a complete
message in a small amount of time. The cost of this time far exceeds the
production cost of making the message itself.
The short ad has become a kind of twentieth-century art form with a
constantly evolving style. It has attracted much writing and directing
talent from around the world, drawn partly by the money they can make
and partly by the opportunity to graduate to longer forms. Ads are special
because they are so short —usually under a minute. Everyone has seen
them, which is not so true for some other formats.
Almost all television viewers have seen public service
announcements (PSAs),which are messages that are broadcast for the
public good. PSAs are sometimes paid for by sponsoring organizations,
but they are usually furnished to broadcasters to fill any empty spots in
the commercial break. This is one way in which television stations help
the community to which they broadcast and fulfill an obligation of their
FCC license to broadcast over public air waves. Of course, PSAs usually
run late at night or in other less commercially desirable time slots. Not
everyone can write a feature film script, but anyone can write a 30- or
60-second PSA, so it is a good place to start.
⑵Copywriting Versus Scriptwriting
Let us distinguish between copywriting and scriptwriting.
Copywriting includes print and media writing. National advertising
campaigns on television are devised and produced by advertising
agencies retained by the client company. Learning about this kind of
writing and the business of advertising and public relations usually takes
place in a specific track and specialized courses in communications
studies.Although visual writing is involved in some kinds of copywriting,
there are so many other issues involved in copywriting that it is better to
leave those dedicated issues aside and deal with visual writing that
happens to be part of copywriting.
However, small markets in the broadcasting world serve local clients
who cannot afford an advertising agency. Somebody has to write these
ads for the station’s clients. It could be a staff member, part of a unit that
sells the station’s time, or it could be a freelance writer paid by the station
to do this writing work when needed, or a local ad agency. We need to
keep in mind that these kinds of local ads are made on small budgets,
sometimes at cost, by the station selling the air time because their profit
comes from selling that air time. They often have spare production
capacity —a studio, cameras, a camera crew, and an editing facility. This
means that the ad must be written for that budget range without slick
effects or expensive graphics, without travel to expensive locations, and
without expensive talent. It brings us back to the perennial challenge that
every scriptwriter faces:to write creatively and invent original visuals
within a tight budget framework. The same holds true for local PSAs,
sponsored by organizations with no budget to spend on production.
PSAs are an excellent training ground for student scriptwriters. They
are short and complete TV playlets. They require all the disciplines of
scriptwriting. You can easily settle on a public service issue such as
smoking, domestic violence, education,drugs, or racism. You know the
issues. You can test your creative imagination. If you have a related
production course going on, you might be able to produce your PSA. You
can also take a familiar product and try to devise a TV spot for
it.However, a lot of ads rely on specialized production companies to get
pack shots or create computer-generated effects that might be difficult to
duplicate in a college production setup.
⑶Client Needs and Priorities
The PSA and the TV ad are works commissioned by a client. The
client needs a solution to a communication problem that the writer must
provide. We alluded to this discipline of the professional writer in
Chapters 3 and 4. You write for someone or rather someone who
represents the interests of an organization or a corporation. Later we will
look more closely at another kind of writing for a producer of
entertainment films or programs. The entertainment script is different
from commissioned works because neither the producer nor the writer
can know for sure what a good script is until it is produced, shown to an
audience, and validated by box office or audience ratings. Commissioned
programming doesn’t have an audience measurement expressed in terms
of box office revenue. Successful communication can only be measured
by quantifying audience responses as changes in sales or behavior.
Advertisers expect to measure the effect of an ad in increased sales.
Otherwise,there is no business sense in spending money on it. A PSA
often aims to change people’s behavior. It is much more difficult to
garner information that positively proves the effectiveness of the PSA.
Changes in behavior are much more difficult to achieve than changes in
the buying choices of the public.
Writing for clients is often challenging and exciting precisely
because you have a problem, know the desired result, and have to devise
a solution. The seven-step method of Chapter 4 is an excellent way to
approach these assignments. The process of analysis is really important
for writing PSAs. Although you do not now have a client, you must
practice writing as if you had a client to satisfy. Your creative ideas must
do the job. One of the constraints of this kind of writing is that the length
is fixed by the client. Because the resulting product is transmitted in
commercial breaks, its length must be exact to the second, as that is how
airtime is bought and sold.
⑷The 20-, 30-, and 60-Second Playlets
Ads in the form of 20- or 30-second playlets are almost a new art
form. They are a popular art form born of the television age and the need
to compress visual messages into very short, very expensive time slots.
The style and tempo of these ads continues to evolve at a furious rate.
The style of camera work, directing, and editing is quite specialized.
Some companies produce nothing but TV commercials just as some
directors spend their whole careers making these mini-movies. From their
ranks have come a number of feature film directors such as Ridley Scott,
Hugh Hudson, and Alan Parker.
Some TV commercials for national campaigns of major brands,
based on millions of dollars worth of air time, have very high budgets.
With bigger budgets than half-hour documentaries and budgets as big as a
television half-hour episode, these productions are made on 35mm film
with production crews that sometimes rival those for a feature film. The
local market spot for a car dealer or furniture store,however, is often
cheap, down and dirty. Clearly the national campaigns are developed by
advertising agencies whose copywriters develop the ads in collaboration
with creative directors, art directors, and account executives. The
copywriter is not a full range scriptwriter and also usually has to write
print media ads. Although this book primarily serves the interests of
scriptwriters, the visual thinking that underlies billboards and transport
ads relates to both copywriting and scriptwriting.
⑸Devices to Capture Audience Attention
Most of you have engaged in the subtle war between the viewer and
the television advertiser. Hands up everyone who has hit the mute button
during the ads, or gone to the bathroom, or gone to the fridge, or made a
tele phone call during the commercial break! This nullifies the advertiser’s
effort and expense. Sometimes,either by accident or by choice, we find
TV commercials entertaining or fun to watch. The challenge is clear. The
advertiser has a lot of resistance to overcome.Now you are on the other
side of the box. You have to be creative and capture the audience’s
attention in spite of itself so that it pays attention to your message.Your
device has to work for others. Measured by your own viewing behavior,
no audience will give you any quarter. You live or die in seconds.
What are some of the ways you have noticed writers of these
mini-scripts hooking the audience so that it will pay attention to the
message? You can recognize definite strategies such as humor, shock,
of course, sexuality. These strategies are more elaborately developed in
commercial advertising because for-profit companies have the dollars to
spend on high-end production values. PSAs cannot command the same
resources. They are made on lower budgets or created through the pro
bono work of advertising agencies and production personnel. Working
with a low budget is a creative challenge. Production dollars don’t
automatically buy creative and effective communication. Some of the
most ingenious PSAs are cheap but effective.
Consider how a PSA about a public issue such as gambling works.
In this case, the Massachusetts Council on Compulsive Gambling needs
to communicate to a population that suffers the destructive consequences
of this kind of addictive behavior.How do you solve the communication
problem? Let’s apply the seven-step method we learned in Chapter 4. Anthony Friedmann
Acquisitions Editor: Amy Jollymore
Project Manager: Andrew Therriault
Assistant Editor: Cara Anderson
Marketing Manager: Christine Degon-Veroulis
Cover Designer: Cate Barr
Focal Press is an imprint of Elsevier
英文翻译：
广告和公益广告 ⑴文案的视觉媒体
在电视出现以前，我们可以在收音机里听到广播形式的广告和在电影院里观看电影时在影片开始播放之前一些广告。 因此，随着视觉媒体对商业信息影响的扩大，它开始被拿来销售。电视产生以后，在电视播放的时候被插入了很多有商业信息的广告。通过经营和销售这些带有商业信息的广告时间，广告公司和电视台都得到了一笔价值可观的收入。
大部分家庭都拥有电视，因此，它得到了最多的观众。电视广告在传递产品或者商业信息时不会让人产生压力。因此，电视广告的时间在
过去和未来都是非常昂贵的。因为，电视广告带动了广告作者和广告公司改进技术，以提供尽量紧凑和简短的广告，广告所带来的价值远远超过了制作广告本身的成本。
在二十世纪，简短广告已经成为了一门有独特风格的艺术。它吸引了很多来自世界各地的编剧，导演和人才，因为，它可以带来相当可观的金钱。大家都看过广告，虽然很短，但他却能表达一连串完成的信息。
几乎所有的电视观众都看到公益广告，这是，这对于公共利益的广播消息。公益广告所有的费用由主办单位承担，但它们通常在广播电台播放，以填补未被商业利用的空白时间。这是一种形式，电视台帮助社区广播和履行他们的义务，其联邦通信委员会许可在公共广播的无线电波。当然，管理公司通常运行在深夜或其他较商业利益的时段。不是每个人都可以写一个专题片脚本，但任何人都可以写一个30 - 或60秒的公益广告，因此它是一个良好的开端。
⑵版权与编剧
让我们区分版权和编剧。版权问题包括出版和媒体写作。在电视上国家的广告活动都是设计和生产中保留的广告机构客户的公司。学习这种写作的经营和广告和公关通常发生在一个特定的跟踪和专业课程在通信方面的研究。虽然视觉写作涉及一些种类的版权问题, 还有很多其他的问题涉及版权问题, 最好离开那些奉献问题放在一边, 处理视觉写作, 而且恰好是版权问题的一部分。
(文档含英文原文和中文翻译)
中英文翻译
原文：
Ads and PSAs ⑴Copywriting for Visual Media
Before television, there was radio advertising and film advertising in
movie houses.You still see local ads in some movie theatres before the
program starts. So the principle of selling time between programming for
commercial messages grew up with the visual media. A format that is
probably unique to television was developed to deliver short visual
commercial messages very efficiently and effectively in breaks between
programs. The air time was sold to advertisers to generate the operating
revenue and profit for the television companies.
Television provides access to the majority of homes and, therefore,
to the largest audience. Before television, few people had dealt with the
pressure to communicate product or commercial information in a rapid,
attention-getting way that television needs. It was, and still is, very
expensive to buy air time. Because television is the most expensive
advertising medium, it has driven the writers and producers of
commercials to refine their techniques so as to deliver a complete
message in a small amount of time. The cost of this time far exceeds the
production cost of making the message itself.
The short ad has become a kind of twentieth-century art form with a
constantly evolving style. It has attracted much writing and directing
talent from around the world, drawn partly by the money they can make
and partly by the opportunity to graduate to longer forms. Ads are special
because they are so short —usually under a minute. Everyone has seen
them, which is not so true for some other formats.
Almost all television viewers have seen public service
announcements (PSAs),which are messages that are broadcast for the
public good. PSAs are sometimes paid for by sponsoring organizations,
but they are usually furnished to broadcasters to fill any empty spots in
the commercial break. This is one way in which television stations help
the community to which they broadcast and fulfill an obligation of their
FCC license to broadcast over public air waves. Of course, PSAs usually
run late at night or in other less commercially desirable time slots. Not
everyone can write a feature film script, but anyone can write a 30- or
60-second PSA, so it is a good place to start.
⑵Copywriting Versus Scriptwriting
Let us distinguish between copywriting and scriptwriting.
Copywriting includes print and media writing. National advertising
campaigns on television are devised and produced by advertising
agencies retained by the client company. Learning about this kind of
writing and the business of advertising and public relations usually takes
place in a specific track and specialized courses in communications
studies.Although visual writing is involved in some kinds of copywriting,
there are so many other issues involved in copywriting that it is better to
leave those dedicated issues aside and deal with visual writing that
happens to be part of copywriting.
However, small markets in the broadcasting world serve local clients
who cannot afford an advertising agency. Somebody has to write these
ads for the station’s clients. It could be a staff member, part of a unit that
sells the station’s time, or it could be a freelance writer paid by the station
to do this writing work when needed, or a local ad agency. We need to
keep in mind that these kinds of local ads are made on small budgets,
sometimes at cost, by the station selling the air time because their profit
comes from selling that air time. They often have spare production
capacity —a studio, cameras, a camera crew, and an editing facility. This
means that the ad must be written for that budget range without slick
effects or expensive graphics, without travel to expensive locations, and
without expensive talent. It brings us back to the perennial challenge that
every scriptwriter faces:to write creatively and invent original visuals
within a tight budget framework. The same holds true for local PSAs,
sponsored by organizations with no budget to spend on production.
PSAs are an excellent training ground for student scriptwriters. They
are short and complete TV playlets. They require all the disciplines of
scriptwriting. You can easily settle on a public service issue such as
smoking, domestic violence, education,drugs, or racism. You know the
issues. You can test your creative imagination. If you have a related
production course going on, you might be able to produce your PSA. You
can also take a familiar product and try to devise a TV spot for
it.However, a lot of ads rely on specialized production companies to get
pack shots or create computer-generated effects that might be difficult to
duplicate in a college production setup.
⑶Client Needs and Priorities
The PSA and the TV ad are works commissioned by a client. The
client needs a solution to a communication problem that the writer must
provide. We alluded to this discipline of the professional writer in
Chapters 3 and 4. You write for someone or rather someone who
represents the interests of an organization or a corporation. Later we will
look more closely at another kind of writing for a producer of
entertainment films or programs. The entertainment script is different
from commissioned works because neither the producer nor the writer
can know for sure what a good script is until it is produced, shown to an
audience, and validated by box office or audience ratings. Commissioned
programming doesn’t have an audience measurement expressed in terms
of box office revenue. Successful communication can only be measured
by quantifying audience responses as changes in sales or behavior.
Advertisers expect to measure the effect of an ad in increased sales.
Otherwise,there is no business sense in spending money on it. A PSA
often aims to change people’s behavior. It is much more difficult to
garner information that positively proves the effectiveness of the PSA.
Changes in behavior are much more difficult to achieve than changes in
the buying choices of the public.
Writing for clients is often challenging and exciting precisely
because you have a problem, know the desired result, and have to devise
a solution. The seven-step method of Chapter 4 is an excellent way to
approach these assignments. The process of analysis is really important
for writing PSAs. Although you do not now have a client, you must
practice writing as if you had a client to satisfy. Your creative ideas must
do the job. One of the constraints of this kind of writing is that the length
is fixed by the client. Because the resulting product is transmitted in
commercial breaks, its length must be exact to the second, as that is how
airtime is bought and sold.
⑷The 20-, 30-, and 60-Second Playlets
Ads in the form of 20- or 30-second playlets are almost a new art
form. They are a popular art form born of the television age and the need
to compress visual messages into very short, very expensive time slots.
The style and tempo of these ads continues to evolve at a furious rate.
The style of camera work, directing, and editing is quite specialized.
Some companies produce nothing but TV commercials just as some
directors spend their whole careers making these mini-movies. From their
ranks have come a number of feature film directors such as Ridley Scott,
Hugh Hudson, and Alan Parker.
Some TV commercials for national campaigns of major brands,
based on millions of dollars worth of air time, have very high budgets.
With bigger budgets than half-hour documentaries and budgets as big as a
television half-hour episode, these productions are made on 35mm film
with production crews that sometimes rival those for a feature film. The
local market spot for a car dealer or furniture store,however, is often
cheap, down and dirty. Clearly the national campaigns are developed by
advertising agencies whose copywriters develop the ads in collaboration
with creative directors, art directors, and account executives. The
copywriter is not a full range scriptwriter and also usually has to write
print media ads. Although this book primarily serves the interests of
scriptwriters, the visual thinking that underlies billboards and transport
ads relates to both copywriting and scriptwriting.
⑸Devices to Capture Audience Attention
Most of you have engaged in the subtle war between the viewer and
the television advertiser. Hands up everyone who has hit the mute button
during the ads, or gone to the bathroom, or gone to the fridge, or made a
tele phone call during the commercial break! This nullifies the advertiser’s
effort and expense. Sometimes,either by accident or by choice, we find
TV commercials entertaining or fun to watch. The challenge is clear. The
advertiser has a lot of resistance to overcome.Now you are on the other
side of the box. You have to be creative and capture the audience’s
attention in spite of itself so that it pays attention to your message.Your
device has to work for others. Measured by your own viewing behavior,
no audience will give you any quarter. You live or die in seconds.
What are some of the ways you have noticed writers of these
mini-scripts hooking the audience so that it will pay attention to the
message? You can recognize definite strategies such as humor, shock,
of course, sexuality. These strategies are more elaborately developed in
commercial advertising because for-profit companies have the dollars to
spend on high-end production values. PSAs cannot command the same
resources. They are made on lower budgets or created through the pro
bono work of advertising agencies and production personnel. Working
with a low budget is a creative challenge. Production dollars don’t
automatically buy creative and effective communication. Some of the
most ingenious PSAs are cheap but effective.
Consider how a PSA about a public issue such as gambling works.
In this case, the Massachusetts Council on Compulsive Gambling needs
to communicate to a population that suffers the destructive consequences
of this kind of addictive behavior.How do you solve the communication
problem? Let’s apply the seven-step method we learned in Chapter 4. Anthony Friedmann
Acquisitions Editor: Amy Jollymore
Project Manager: Andrew Therriault
Assistant Editor: Cara Anderson
Marketing Manager: Christine Degon-Veroulis
Cover Designer: Cate Barr
Focal Press is an imprint of Elsevier
英文翻译：
广告和公益广告 ⑴文案的视觉媒体
在电视出现以前，我们可以在收音机里听到广播形式的广告和在电影院里观看电影时在影片开始播放之前一些广告。 因此，随着视觉媒体对商业信息影响的扩大，它开始被拿来销售。电视产生以后，在电视播放的时候被插入了很多有商业信息的广告。通过经营和销售这些带有商业信息的广告时间，广告公司和电视台都得到了一笔价值可观的收入。
大部分家庭都拥有电视，因此，它得到了最多的观众。电视广告在传递产品或者商业信息时不会让人产生压力。因此，电视广告的时间在
过去和未来都是非常昂贵的。因为，电视广告带动了广告作者和广告公司改进技术，以提供尽量紧凑和简短的广告，广告所带来的价值远远超过了制作广告本身的成本。
在二十世纪，简短广告已经成为了一门有独特风格的艺术。它吸引了很多来自世界各地的编剧，导演和人才，因为，它可以带来相当可观的金钱。大家都看过广告，虽然很短，但他却能表达一连串完成的信息。
几乎所有的电视观众都看到公益广告，这是，这对于公共利益的广播消息。公益广告所有的费用由主办单位承担，但它们通常在广播电台播放，以填补未被商业利用的空白时间。这是一种形式，电视台帮助社区广播和履行他们的义务，其联邦通信委员会许可在公共广播的无线电波。当然，管理公司通常运行在深夜或其他较商业利益的时段。不是每个人都可以写一个专题片脚本，但任何人都可以写一个30 - 或60秒的公益广告，因此它是一个良好的开端。
⑵版权与编剧
让我们区分版权和编剧。版权问题包括出版和媒体写作。在电视上国家的广告活动都是设计和生产中保留的广告机构客户的公司。学习这种写作的经营和广告和公关通常发生在一个特定的跟踪和专业课程在通信方面的研究。虽然视觉写作涉及一些种类的版权问题, 还有很多其他的问题涉及版权问题, 最好离开那些奉献问题放在一边, 处理视觉写作, 而且恰好是版权问题的一部分。