"On the enclosed resume tape you will find a brief montage of standups to let you see and hear some of my on-camera performance abilities. The montage is followed by two stories which I wrote, produced and edited. The first is a hard news package and the second is a features story."Do:
Put length of tape on letter and tape itself (make it between 5 and 10 minutes).
Lead with your best stuff (it’s a 30 second sale!).
Put a slate first with your name, address and phone number (you can repeat it at the end).
Don't:
..include color bars at beginning or show intros.
..show your colleagues, edit them out.
..use anything that you need to explain. “The reason the lighting is poor is..” “I would have shot it better if only..”
..lead with anchoring material. They will assume if you look decent reporting, you can work on the desk just fine.
REPORTER TAPE
1. Short clips of different kids of stand-ups (3 stand-ups, 2 demonstrations).
Use a prop: holding phone, gun, driving car.
Put your name in last stand up of the montage for reinforcement of your name.
Keep it to :30
2. Dip to black
3. Your Best package showing:
a. hard news
b. strong writing
c. nat sound full up
d. compelling video
e. succinct sound bites
4. Feature package
5. Anchoring excerpts
a.one minute of continuous reading
b.vosot intro
c.vo w/short video
ANCHOR TAPE
1. standing montage, :35-:45 warm greeting off top.
2. Two minutes of anchoring including your interaction with other anchors.
3. two or three packages. Show hard news and show you can do something when there’s nothing going on.
Look at some tapes on Talent Tapes and see how yours compares http://www.talentapes.com/
PRODUCER TAPE
Use packages (that you shot, wrote and edited) as examples of your producing strengths: no lengthy soundbites, effective pacing, natural sound full up to draw viewers into the story, etc.
Include a newscast you put together and line produced.
Include a rundown that shows your ability to stack a show.
