Great Examples of B-Roll Footage in Action

There are some basic guidelines which will be relevant for all types B-Roll the most important of which is ensuring before you switch the camera on that you have a good shot list.

When you shoot a film, go through the script and note possibilities for good establishing shots, cutaways, and close-ups. It’s the cutaways which are typically formed from B-roll footage.  When you make a documentary or other video that involves a lot of footage of ‘talking heads,’ i.e. an interview with someone -our recommendation is to make notes about what footage you can pair with the dialogue again this is B-Roll. Also consider how you’d like to shoot that subject matter.

Broadcasters would obviously prefer to film their own footage, but a frantic news agenda which we’ve certainly experienced in the last few years coupled with newsroom cutbacks means they don’t always have the resources to do that. In such cases B-roll can prove invaluable, but only if it’s produced in a particular way. We have 2 golden rules to guarantee it gets used by broadcasters.

B-roll is around 6 to 8 minutes maximum of General Views (GVs), roughly edited video footage that illustrates a PR generated campaign.  It is not a finished polished, product and it will be re-edited by the broadcaster, and possibly mixed and matched with footage they’ve filmed themselves.

If you offer up B-roll that looks like their video broadcasters are going to say yes please, thank you very much. Put the best pictures at the top of the B-roll and interview clips at the end. Also useful is a ‘slate’, stating the material is free to use and without any copyright issues.

For more tips about producing B-Roll that broadcasters will use, click here:

https://shoutcommunications.co.uk/case_studies/britannia-case-study/

B-roll is only ever likely to be used on the news; therefore, it should be shot in a “news style” and look like material broadcasters would have filmed for themselves. That means shots held for a minimum of three seconds, no “whip pans” or “crash zooms”.

Good visuals are important, but B-roll can include of couple of sound bites from key spokespeople. This gives programmes a taste of how the spokesperson is likely to perform on air if they’re booked as a guest or filmed as part of a TV package.

It might even encourage them to do their own interview.

In the most diplomatic way possible you can try the spokesperson out, before letting them loose with journalists. How well do they explain what the company is? Do they know the key messages?

Interview clips should be kept to no more than 20-30 seconds and a maximum of 3 clips per interviewee is generally enough

This is an example of B-roll footage produced by Siemens Mobility to showcase their new underground trains being used by online. You’ll see where they’ve credited its usage, and it demonstrates that often the media mix and match their own footage or stills with PR generated content.

For TV and online PR campaigns, give broadcasters something they couldn’t easily film for themselves. These days that’s a lot easier than it used to be: anything that takes time to set up to film or actually film, or to travel to, which really is anywhere outside of London or Manchester, an event that’s outside London…. the list is endless.

It’s just as important to not give broadcasters B-Roll of something they could film quickly and easily for e.g. general views of people walking in a high street, someone using an ATM or general moving footage of the countryside.

An example of this is a B-Roll Shout! Communications filmed to support a campaign about dog ticks.   The footage of the actual ticks was shot with a macro lens – so that you could see the ticks on screen.  This kit wouldn’t be standard for a news crew and ensured the footage was picked up by national TV outlets, including BBC News.

Be sure to include a choice of shots for each sequence so two or more broadcasters editing the same material can produce something different.

If you’re a TV News Editor, or planner as I have been in the past, and you’re choosing between two stories, one with B-roll and one without, you’re going to pick the one with footage.

A final warning though: a PR B-Roll can’t be too heavily branded -broadcasters have strict editorial guidelines and it needs to NOT look like an advert.