Tutorials Journalism

Cutting a News Package: Structure, B-Roll, and Pace

Intermediate · ~20 min

Overview

A news package is a tightly constrained form: usually between about ninety seconds and two minutes, assembled fast, and required to be comprehensible to someone who knows nothing about the story. That constraint produces a fairly standard structure, and knowing it turns package editing from an improvisation into an assembly job. This guide covers that structure, how much coverage you actually need to shoot, and the sequencing habits that make a short package feel complete rather than rushed.

What You Need

Interview material, ideally more than one voice
B-roll covering the location and the subject of the story
A written script or at least a stated angle before you start cutting
Recorded narration, or a plan for who reads it
Natural sound recorded on location, which is the ingredient most often missing
A hard duration target, agreed before editing rather than discovered after

Steps

Write the script before you touch the timeline

Decide the angle in one sentence, then write narration around the interview clips you intend to use. Editing first and writing afterwards produces packages that wander, because the structure ends up determined by what footage was most appealing rather than by what the story needs. The script is the plan. The edit executes it.

Open on the strongest available image and natural sound

The first three seconds decide whether the viewer engages. Lead with the most visually arresting material you have, with location sound present rather than narration over silence. Opening on a presenter or on a wide establishing shot with no sound is the most common way a package starts flat.

Follow the standard shape

The conventional structure exists because it works under the duration constraint: a hook establishing the situation, narration providing context, a first interview clip carrying the human element, more context and detail, a second contrasting or corroborating voice, then a close that resolves or points forward. Deviate deliberately, not by accident.

Use interview clips for what people cannot say for you

Narration handles facts, context, and sequence efficiently. Interview clips should carry what narration cannot: first-hand experience, emotion, opinion, and authority. A clip of someone stating a fact you could have narrated in half the time is wasted duration in a form that has none to spare.

Cover every narration line with relevant pictures

Narration over unrelated or repeated b-roll is what makes a package feel padded. Aim for roughly three times your finished duration in usable b-roll, shot as sequences (wide, medium, detail of the same subject) so you have somewhere to cut that actually matches what is being said.

Keep natural sound present underneath

A bed of location sound under narration and b-roll is what makes a package feel like it came from somewhere. Cutting it entirely leaves narration floating over pictures and reads as flat and studio-bound. Let it come up fully for a beat at least once, usually at the opening or on a strong image.

Pro Tips

Shoot sequences, not shots. Wide, medium, and detail of the same subject cut together. Three unrelated wides do not.
Record thirty seconds of clean location sound at every setup. It is the ingredient editors most often lack.
Cut interview clips tight. Most usable soundbites are shorter than the speaker's full answer.
Never cut picture and narration at the same instant throughout, offsetting them slightly is what makes an edit feel fluid.
Watch the finished package with fresh ears for anything the narration says that the pictures contradict.

Knowledge Base

What You'll Learn

The news package is a solved form, and knowing the solution makes fast turnaround possible. Below: why the standard structure works, and what "enough b-roll" actually means.

Why the Standard Structure Works

The conventional package shape is not arbitrary convention. It is the arrangement that gets a viewer from ignorance to understanding within a very short duration.

The hook establishes situation before explanation. Showing the thing before explaining it uses the medium's strength: a viewer who has seen the flooded street needs far less narration to understand the story about flooding.

Narration handles compression. Facts, context, numbers, and chronology are conveyed several times faster in written narration than in interview clips, which is why packages that are mostly interview run long and say little.

Interview clips supply what narration cannot claim. First-hand experience, emotional weight, opinion, and authority all require a person saying them. A package alternates between the two because each does something the other cannot.

The close points somewhere. Under a hard duration limit, a package rarely resolves a story: it establishes what happens next, what is unresolved, or what is at stake. Endings that simply stop feel incomplete. Endings that point forward feel finished even when the story is not.

What "Enough B-Roll" Actually Means

"Shoot plenty of b-roll" is standard advice and insufficiently specific, which is why editors routinely receive footage that cannot cover a script.

The useful measure is not duration but coverage in sequences. Ten minutes of wide shots of a building is nearly useless. Ninety seconds comprising wide, medium, and detail shots of three different aspects of that building will cover most of a package.

A sequence (wide to establish, medium for the activity, close for detail, plus a cutaway) cuts together naturally because the shots share a subject and differ in scale. Shots that differ in subject but not scale do not cut. They read as a slideshow.

The practical target is roughly three times the finished duration in usable material, shot as sequences, covering every element the script mentions. The test while shooting is simple: for each thing your script will refer to, do you have three shots of it at different scales? If not, that line will be covered with something generic, and generic coverage is what makes packages feel padded.

Where This Fits

This guide covers one specific part of mobile journalism. The wider picture (shooting, filing, verifying, and the practical kit for reporting alone from the field) is in Mobile Journalism: A Complete Phone-Based Reporting Kit, which frames the discipline as a whole and links out to the detailed guides underneath it, including this one. If you are starting from scratch rather than solving a specific problem, read that first and come back here.

FAQ

Q: How long should a news package be?
A: Commonly between about ninety seconds and two minutes for broadcast, though online packages vary more. The important thing is agreeing the target before editing rather than discovering it afterwards, because the structure and how much material you need both follow from the duration.

Q: How much b-roll do I need to shoot?
A: Roughly three times your finished duration in usable material, shot as sequences (wide, medium, and detail of the same subject) rather than as unrelated single shots. The test on location is whether you have three shots at different scales of every element the script will mention.

Q: Should I write the script before or after editing?
A: Before. Editing first produces packages whose structure was determined by which footage was most appealing rather than by what the story needs, and they tend to wander. Write the angle in one sentence, script the narration around your chosen interview clips, then assemble.

Q: Why does my package feel flat even though the footage is good?
A: Usually missing natural sound. A bed of location audio under narration and b-roll is what makes a package feel like it came from somewhere, and letting it come up fully for a beat on a strong image is what gives it life. Narration over pictures with no location sound reads as studio-bound.