Sample Documentary for Television

Black Screen

Fade-In

00:00:00

Fade in title credits: [REDACTED]

Fade out

Background music: theme

00:00:05

Fade in to:

HOST dressed in 1930’s-era clothing. On a table beside him is a lit jack-o-lantern.

Fade to segment TITLE: THE ULTIMATE HALLOWEEN PRANK

Fade out

HOST:

Halloween. A night for lighthearted fun. Trick-or-treating, costume parades, haunted houses, maybe an annoying prank or two. It’s the one night of the year we mock death and laugh at the things that scare us most.

But even Halloween pranks can get a little out of hand. And that’s when they’re no longer lighthearted fun. Like one Halloween back in the late 1930’s, when a group of professional actors carried off . . . The Ultimate Halloween prank.

00:00:30

Fade in to:

Clips of the Depression era followed by clips of Hitler and his army gearing up for war

HOST VO:

It’s October 1938. The nation is still mired in the Great Depression. And now a new worry is gripping the population: impending war. Hitler’s Nazis are flexing their muscle, threatening to engulf all of Europe in conflict. If that happens, the United States might be drawn in as well.

00:00:45

00:00:55

Cut to:

Footage: families gathered around their radio; President Roosevelt speaking into a radio microphone; a live radio broadcast put on by actors and/or musicians, etc.

Scene: PEOPLE around a radio in any setting, such as a bar, a card table, home, etc.

(continued)

HOST VO (continued):

During the Depression years the radio has become a mainstay of family life. In the evenings families like to gather around their set to catch the latest news or to be reassured by one of President Roosevelt’s fireside chats.

HOST VO (continued):

They also enjoy live music and their favorite shows like Amos & Andy and The Shadow. It’s a chance to forget about their worries, if only for a little while. Best of all, in this era when every penny counts . . . it’s free!

00:01:10

Cut to:

Photo: Orson Welles’ headshot, Orson Welles and company acting out a play on radio.

Photo or clip: Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, etc.

HOST VO (continued):

One radio show was called The Mercury Theatre on the Air. Broadcast from New York City on CBS, the hour-long show featured literary works performed by a young actor named Orson Welles and his repertory company. The show had begun just a few months earlier, and it was up against some pretty stiff competition. Its biggest competitor was NBC’s The Chase and Sanborn Hour, which featured popular ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy Charlie McCarthy.

00:01:35

Cut to:

CU of HOST, then slow zoom out and rising overhead as he speaks.

HOST:

This particular Sunday night was no different.

But Orson Welles and his troupe had something up their sleeve that would be talked about long after the Mercury Theatre and the Chase and Sanborn Hour had faded into history. Something … out of this world.

00:01:50

Cut to:

Footage: Clips from Dracula, Treasure Island and Count of Monte Cristo followed by a photo of the cover of the novel War of the Worlds.

HOST VO:

Ever since it first came on the air that July, the Mercury Theatre had put on dramatizations of such literary classics as Dracula, Treasure Island and The Count of Monte Cristo. For its October edition, airing only one day before Halloween, the troupe wanted to do something in the spirit of the holiday. And so they decided upon H.G. Wells’ science fiction novel War of the Worlds.

00:02:10

Cut to:

HOST in medium shot.

HOST:

Now, maybe you’re thinking: just another dramatization of a classic book. A story to get everyone in the mood for the Halloween fun the next night. Right?

Well, that’s not exactly how it turned out.

00:02:20

Cut to: Footage, or ACTORS, reacting to a radio show.

HOST VO:

You see, at only 23 years old Orson Welles was already a veteran of radio drama. He understood how the medium worked. How it could be manipulated to sound so real that listeners could suspend disbelief long enough to imagine a whole world in their minds. A world where things might seem – well, maybe a little TOO real.

00:02:35

Cut to:

Footage of old-time news reporting.

HOST VO (continued):

Welles decided the best way to create this fictional world was to present War of the Worlds in an unusual way. Instead of just acting out a radio play, start to finish, the actors would tell the story through live news flashes. To listeners, it would sound like the CBS news staff kept cutting into a regularly scheduled program to update listeners about events taking place around New York and New Jersey. They would even make it sound like the reporters were on location. In reality, the whole program would be done right in the studio.

00:03:10

Cut to:

HOST. Medium shot.

HOST:

Pretty clever, huh? (Chuckles) You have no idea!

00:03:15

Cut to:

Footage

HOST VO:

Now, in fairness to Orson Welles, a disclaimer was given at the start of the show, and three more at other intervals. Each time the announcer made clear that this was only a dramatization of the H.G. Wells novel. The trouble was that a lot of people tuned in late or in between the disclaimer announcements and never heard them.

00:03:35

Cut to:

CU of Host

HOST:

What they did hear shocked them.

00:03:40

Cut to:

Footage: old monster movies, especially set in rural areas.

Scene: NEWSMAN-ACTOR reading his lines into the speaker in a dramatic, fearful way.

HOST VO:

A news reporter was giving live reports about a Martian spaceship that had just landed in a village called Grover’s Mill in New Jersey. A creature had emerged from this craft and begun destroying people with a heat ray, he said. As radio listeners sat glued to their sets, he described the terrible scene in a voice trembling with despair, much like the live report of the Hindenburg disaster just a year before.

00:04:05

Cut to:

HOST and jack-o-lantern

HOST:

Which is just what he was aiming for. You see, the reporter was an actor named Frank Readick, and Orson Welles had coached him to duplicate the same tone of breathless horror with which the Hindenburg explosion had been reported.

00:04:20

Cut to:

Scene: LISTENERS reacting to radio show.

HOST VO:

But, of course, the radio audience didn’t know that. And many who had tuned in late didn’t even realize this was all a hoax, a Halloween prank designed to draw attention to the Mercury Theatre show and boost its audience numbers.

00:04:35

Cut to:

Footage: Various old clips of panic scenes, interspersed with

Scenes: PEOPLE in panic, on the phone, running in the street, packing suitcases, praying, fainting, etc.

HOST VO (continued):

Panic ensued as the broadcast went on to describe mass destruction by towering alien walking machines spewing poisonous gas. Thousands of people flooded the phone lines at newspapers and police stations. Where should they go? What should they do to save themselves? Others never got to their phone, collapsing from sheer hysteria. People in the area of the alleged invasion fled their homes. Others went to church to pray.

00:05:00

Dissolve to:

HOST holding an old-fashioned dial phone in one hand, receiver in the other hand, looking like the camera just caught him as he was about to make a call.

HOST:

All this over a radio show? Well, remember, this is 1938. People listen to news broadcasts all the time, and they trust what they hear. Besides, there were no famous actor faces or phony rubber costumes to clue them that this was all made up. They could only listen. And use their mind’s eye.

00:05:20

Cut to:

Scene: PEOPLE complaining to one another. Outraged.

HOST VO:

Well, eventually that evening people started to realize they’d been had. Now the fear was gone, thankfully. But what came next was an outburst of anger against Orson Welles and his company and CBS itself.

00:05:35

Cut to:

Scene: YOUNG BOY in “newsie” hat, hawking newspapers.

Footage: Oct. 31, 1938 front page news stories about the War of the Worlds scare.

Footage: Orson Welles making his apology.

HOST VO (continued):

The next day the newspapers ran front page stories about the hysteria and its backlash. At a press conference, Orson Welles made a public apology. He said, “We are deeply shocked and deeply regretful about the results of last night’s broadcast.” And maybe he was. But he couldn’t have been regretful for long – at least where his own career was concerned.

00:05:55

Cut to:

Footage of highlights of Orson Welles’s career: Citizen Kane, etc.

Scene: ORSON WELLES in sharp clothes, surrounded by reporters and glamorous woman, etc.

HOST (continued):

You see, Orson Welles was now one of the most famous men on radio. A lucrative sponsorship deal was struck with Campbell’s Soup, and the show was moved to a more favorable time slot. Pretty soon, his career was taking off and he went on to produce and direct and act in some of the most famous films of his time.

00:06:15

Cut to:

HOST and jack-o-lantern. Slow zoom. At the end of his monologue, HOST lifts lid of jack-o-lantern, blows out the candle, walks into the rear-stage blackness.

(continued):

HOST:

Three-quarters of a century have passed since that night in October of 1938. And still the War of the Worlds broadcast fascinates us. That one little hour of radio has taught us a lot about the power

of media and maybe something about psychology, as well. But one thing we may never learn is whether the hysteria was truly accidental as Orson Welles claimed, or whether he really did intend to fool people into believing Martians had invaded.

An entertaining mystery, eh? (chuckles) That’s show biz.

00:06:45

FADE OUT

Roll end titles

FADE OUT

Background: theme music