The boundaries between formats are blurred in the audiovisual world. That was one of the conclusions that could be drawn from the scriptwriters’ round tables that the ALMA union organized on Friday in Madrid. Although the talks were divided into three round tables, focused on programs broadcast on the internet, traditional television productions and scriptwriters from podcasts (many of them, with extensive experience in television), the topics that were discussed were common. This fusion could be summarized with a phrase from the moderator of these meetings, the television analyst Borja Teran: “The important thing is to tell stories with their own personality, only the format changes.”
These screenwriters’ meetings with the media ―organized by ALMA―, which aim to put a face and give voice to those responsible for the existence of television ―in all its formats―, have focused on this occasion on aspects of the script less known by the public to inquire into the various audiovisual formats. An example are programs like Yu don’t miss a thing, Gen Playz, This is a late and Happy twenties. They are spaces that, although they drink from traditional television, flee from its schemes and formats to approach a younger audience that seeks alternative content on the internet. What does not change is the need for screenwriters behind it. Because, although there may be a lot of improvisation, the themes and the structure are clearly defined. As summarized by Bea Esos, from This is a late, when explaining his role as a screenwriter, “you need a net to dare to jump.” They provide that cushion of safety that allows presenters to jump into the void.
These scriptwriters agreed on the greater responsiveness of these formats to reflect the trends and issues that are on the street. “The sources are the networks, not the media”, according to Ana Macías, scriptwriter of Yu don’t miss a thing. They also agreed to point out that, since many of them have a brand behind them, and contrary to what it might seem, these formats born for the Internet do not have more freedom in the topics covered than that of free-to-air television. To already traditional taboo subjects, such as the Royal House or the Church, Bea Esos adds a new one: politics. “Brands are terrified of upsetting someone.” At the table dedicated to traditional television programs, politics was also mentioned as an issue to avoid: “It is getting into an aubergine from which you are not going to get anything good,” says Óscar Arenas, one of the writers of Nobody behind the wheel in # 0 of Movistar +. For his part, Epi Martín, script coordinator of The happy twenties He recalled the ability of free-to-air television to gather millions of viewers still in front of its screen: “I think Twitch is the flower of a day. In audiovisual everything goes very fast ”.
Just as fiction writers voice created characters, the writers behind these shows have to blend in with the hosts for whom they write. “The nice thing is that it is not noticed that there is a scriptwriter behind it,” says Carlos Cascos, from Gen Playz. It is something that Dinah Robledillo, writer for the El Grito Sordo production company, knows well and who scripts the content proposed by Ignatius Farray, such as the podcast Clowns and fire. In his case, what they provide the comedian is “a structure, a map with some content, and then he can use that map or go other ways,” he explains.
Curiosities and sources
A different function had the scriptwriters of Drag Race Spain (Atresplayer Premium). As Joserra Fudio explains, the program has continuity scriptwriters, who are in charge of the presenter’s texts and the narrative thread, and others who are in charge of obtaining statements from the participants. “You have to study their lives, their styles, their problems, what they want to tell, and you do a distribution of themes and times so that they don’t spend half an hour talking about the needle not being threaded.” In competitions, however, the scriptwriters write the questions and define the structure of the program. This is the case of Carolina Franquiz in High voltage (Four), which highlights how the questions and answers have to be contrasted in various sources: “Curiosities are not usually found in encyclopedias and dictionaries, you have to search a lot on YouTube and in various sources.”
Dani Rodríguez, who has been working on the script for 13 years Illustrious ignorant, describes the Movistar + program as “almost a podcast recorded ”, while the scriptwriters of many of the podcasts represented in this meeting ensured that their spaces lost part of their effectiveness without the visual element that video provides. Javi Valera, screenwriter of Nice good, quotes Dinah Robledillo: “A podcast it’s a crappy show ”. For his part, David Barreiro, responsible for the audio documentaries The king of the cachopo and GAL: the triangle, highlights the importance of creating an atmosphere and thinking about sounds when writing a script.
The influence of television programs and those born for the internet and audio is a two-way road, according to its screenwriters. “I think that, just as in fashion the rich want to imitate how the poor dress, television will want to imitate the podcast”, Defends Valera. “The classical script school was to have everything written, but new programs that are appearing are more podcast, because there is more spontaneity, more oxygen, there is not so much read. Written yes, but not read ”, specifies Valera. Pilar de Francisco, scriptwriter of the podcast How big…! and the program Late Motiv, concludes: “The format is changing, but not the content. Technology is causing content to be consumed in different ways, but the content that is requested is the same ”.
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