CBC News: the fifth estate - the story of the fifth estate

Note: You are viewing the unstyled version of CBC.ca because you can not see our css files, or because you do not have a standards-compliant browser or you are a mobile user.

HOW WE WORK

PAGES: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4- 5

Shooting any story for television is typically filled with dramatic highs and lows. For every great scene that will be used on the air, there are often interviews that fell through, events missed because of delayed flights or luggage. The team may go into the field with a plan, but life unfolds in ways that no amount of pre-planning can take into account. The best stories often take shape when producers and hosts put down their clipboards and carefully watch and listen to what is unfolding around them. Carefully mapped-out plans often end up as crumpled pieces of paper at the bottom of a suitcase.

Tapes pile up at the fifth estate.

After shooting a story in the field, producers and hosts return to the fifth estate with dozens of 20 or 30 minute tapes. These contain formal sit-down interviews with a story's subjects, sequences showing subjects in action, "scenics" of the places visited to add context to the piece, and other visuals. Usually the producer sits with a tape editor to go through the footage, making the first attempt to shape all of the material contained on the tapes.

"As a producer, you have to constantly think about how you will translate all that you have learned into a coherent story on the screen," explains former senior producer Jim Williamson. "It means many late nights going over the tapes again and again, writing down key words and images, developing a rough structure for your piece."

And even when a documentary is coming together in the edit suite, it is never really finished until the day it goes to air. New information may come in, or events may change the context. Old scenes can fall away as a new focus emerges.

Working in the fifth estate edit suite.

"Television is a harsh mistress, and it demands a powerful, unwavering storyline," says contributing producer Julian Sher. Sher was the producer of "His Word against History" the story of Stephen Truscott who, on the strength of tainted evidence, was convicted and nearly sent to the gallows for murder at the age of 14.

Though his first documentary on Stephen Truscott ran on the fifth estate in the spring of 2000, it has since been rebroadcast with some new elements. Even so, Sher could not begin to fit all that he had learned into a tightly focused documentary, and so has turned his findings into a book entitled; Until you are Dead.

NEXT> HOW WE WORK

^TOP