This afternoon, I revised the script for the SciCast Awards event on Monday. It’s a relatively simple affair, very much a case of setting up a routine and banging through it twelve times, once for each award. The routine goes:

1. Introduce the award category.
2. Introduce the guest who’s to present that award.
3. Guest says a few words, cues a clipsreel of the nominees.
4. Clipsreel plays.
5. Guest opens envelope, announces winner.
6. Cue their film, while they make their way to the front.
7. Film finishes; hand over trophy, handshake & photos, little interview, etc.
8. Reset and do it all again with the next category.

Simple. Yet I still managed to mess up stage two.

If you’re introducing someone, you want to end on a clear cue to them, and an implicit call for applause from the audience. Consider, then, the difference between:

• “…to present the award, Jem Stansfield, engineer and television presenter.”
  and
• “…to present the award, engineer and television presenter, Jem Stansfield.”

The latter is clearly better. Every time.

I know this. I worked this sort of thing out long ago. I know about inflection, and continuation thoughts, and all that. Why, then, did I use both forms in this script?

Because I’m rusty. I haven’t written ‘proper’ scripts for a while. I haven’t had the discipline of hearing my words performed by professional presenters, of hearing them again and again and again in the edit suite. I’m going soft.

I should blog more. Hard to believe from the meandering nonsense here, but it helps me keep an edge.

Really, though, I should write a script again.

Ouch.