ABSTRACT
The chapter discusses the many professional roles involved in making television, with emphasis on the creative and managerial roles of producer, director, screenwriter, editor and camera operator. It is not possible in the space available here to provide as much detailed descriptive information about these roles, or the competences needed to carry them out to professional standards, as can be found in the many ‘how-to’ books on the market about television production. A few such books are listed in the Further Reading section at the end of the chapter. Nevertheless, the chapter considers the different roles in television programmemaking and gives an overview of the different stages of the production process, including some of its key terminology. The chapter includes practical exercises that individuals or groups can work on in order to explore these processes for themselves. The aim of this chapter is to develop an analytical understanding of how television production communicates with audiences through the skills and techniques used by professional television-makers. The assumption behind it is that learning about television is not only a critical and theoretical enterprise: television is an industry, a technology and a set of working practices. So the student of television should understand the broad principles of audio-visual composition by learning about the production practices that bring programmes into being, watching a range of television programmes to consider their audio-visual strategies and gaining as much experience as possible of making his or her own short television films in creative and reflective ways.
