How to Create a Sound Bite for a TV Newscast

Video Transcript

"BILL ALBIN: Hello, I'm Bill Albin. And on behalf of Expert Village, I'm going to teach you what you need to know to be a local news reporter. In this segment, we're going to talk about one of the four basic kinds of news stories. At this time, we're going to speak about VOSOTs. There are, of course, readers, VOs, VOSOTs and packages. What sets VOSOTs apart are--well first, let's talk about exactly what a VOSOT is. It's actually two words: VO and SOT. SOT is the news term for sound on tape, meaning a sound bite. When you're watching a news story and you see a newsmaker like the mayor say, "This is what's good for the city." And he talks there for about 10 seconds about what's good for the city. That's a sound bite to most people. But in the news, we call it the SOT. Then, VO is video. It's--it actually stands for voice over because I am speaking but you wouldn't see me, you'd see the video scrolling by. And that's why they call it a voice over. It's my voice over video, but not me in the picture at all. So a VOSOT puts those two things together. The video and the SOT, so that you see video flowing by and you hear my voice speaking about what that video represents. And then at that time, the SOT, at some point I would stop talking, the video would stop and you would get the SOT. The SOT would be, not me talking, but of course, the newsmaker, like the mayor for example, saying his 10 seconds of whatever it is he's talking about. And at the end of that 10 seconds, we would move on to another story. So you may never see me in the story at any point, yet you would hear my voice, and you'll get all the information you needed to go along with that story."