Directing and Producing for Television, 4th Edition

chapter five

Demonstration Format

The demonstration format, a kind of “show and tell,” has been a part of television since its very early days. It includes productions ranging from a food channel production that “shows and tells” how to cook, to segments on late-night television where the host shows album covers, funny pictures, funny headlines, and so on. Much of the production in corporate videos is created using demonstration formats. Googling “how to” gets over a billion hits. All how-to productions, which are show-and-tell in nature, are very direct in what they’re trying to accomplish. They tell a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. They’re video cookbooks, and they say, “Here are the ingredients. These are the steps needed to ...