Foreign Correspondent

Write a personal reflection on a single camera production shown on free to air television. Include a researched observation with references.

Foreign Correspondent is one of a trilogy of established current affairs shows produced and broadcast by the ABC, along with Four Corners and Australian Story. The show draws on an extensive network of overseas staff - more than any other Australian network - and a Sydney-based research and production team. In the last 14 years they've produced more than 1300 reports from over 160 countries.

This week the show ran only two stories in their usual 45 minute slot, missing the 'soft' news style Postcard segment but giving extended attention to the political career of former cricketer Imran Khan and the impact of gas and oil extraction on Russia's northern Pacific island of Sakhalin.

Journalist Peter Lloyd must have taken every available opportunity in his interview with Imran Khan, from northern Pakistan through the Shaukat Khanum Cancer Hospital and then at Khan's home. I counted quotes from seven different settings and also an interview with Najam Sethi, editor of Pakistan's Daily Times. In addition, archival footage of Khan with former wife Jemima Goldsmith and his cricket career was used. The centre piece was an interview with Khan in a non-descript room, possibly a hotel, using that ABC trademark of a lamp in the background to balance the frame. The camera operator was Wayne McAllister.

Foreign Correspondent's contributor Eric Campbell presented the story on the energy industry that has rapidly developed in Sakhalin, north of Japan. He spoke with locals and also foreign workers, such as Ian Craig, the head of the Shell/Mitsui project. It was interesting that only Craig got his name written on screen but this may be because of the need for subtitles. It appeared Campbell was able to interview in Russian. The camera operator was Geoffrey Lye.

There was a much more pronounced style of editing in this second story. Where the first was quite naturalistic in presenting images to match the narrative with an unrushed pace of edits; the second used techniques such as timelapse to show the speed of the development of infrastructure and used a soundtrack in the style of Phillip Glass - a reference to the work of Godfrey Reggio. I noticed one shot using slow motion, as a group of workers walked from a construction site, many others were in fast motion. In parts and near the end the edits were very quick, again contributing to the sense of speed in construction of the Sakhalin energy industry and the disruption of life on the island. Archival footage was also used, such as images from after a Korean passenger jet was shot down over the island by the former Soviet Union in the 1980s.

I sent an email to Foreign Correspondent with a bunch of questions to see if I could learn more for this entry. Here is their response:

Dear Jason

Sorry we don't have time to answer all your questions. However generally our shoots take from a week to ten days. Sometimes two weeks if it is in a remote place or a story that means going to a number of different locations. A postcard (final cut around 5-7 mins) would be two or three days. Editing generally takes two weeks for a lead story, though sometimes for very topical issues we turn them around faster than that (but work over weekends and overnight).

The Sakhalin story was filmed on an Sx betacam and the sound gear was standard tv sound gear. There was around 10 hours of tape to edit from. The reporter is away on another shoot so I can't ask him how long it took to research. That's probably an impossible question to answer anyway because generally all of us research a number of stories at the same time and we are not just focusing on one story. Sometimes we spend months researching a story, but we are doing lots of other things simultaneously, such as logging tapes, supervising edits, writing scripts and organising graphics etc.

Regards
Marianne Leitch

Foreign Correspondent