Chapter 20 — Exercises

B-roll is learned in the doing — you cannot read your way to a sequence that cuts. These exercises put a camera in your hand and a coverage plan in your pocket. Do the shooting ones with whatever you have; a phone braced on a table shoots every sequence and insert in this chapter. Take the starred items seriously — they build directly toward Project 2's B-roll day.

Exercises are graded by effort and depth:

• ⭐ Warm-up — a few minutes; locks in a concept.
• ⭐⭐ Core — the real practice; do as many of these as you can.
• ⭐⭐⭐ Stretch — deeper or more ambitious; where the biggest gains are.

Model solutions and critiques for the starred and odd-numbered exercises are collected in Answers to Selected Exercises at the back of the book. Try each one before you read its answer — an attempt you got wrong teaches more than an answer you only read.

A. Seeing B-roll everywhere (Eye & Ear Training)

These need no camera — just attention. They train the eye that the rest of the chapter depends on.

1. ⭐ Count the cutaways. Watch any three-minute interview segment (a news package, a YouTube video essay, a documentary clip). Every time the picture leaves the talking head, tally a mark. Write down the total and one thing you noticed about when the cutaways happen. (Answer provided.)

2. ⭐ Find the L-cut. Watch the same segment again and listen for the moments when the person keeps talking while the picture shows something else. That is the interview audio leading the picture (an L-cut). Note one place where the B-roll proved what the voice was saying. (Answer provided.)

3. ⭐⭐ The sequence hunt. Find one video that shows a person making or doing something (cooking, a craft, a repair). Identify one complete sequence — a single action told in wide, medium, and detail — and write down the three sizes in the order they appear.

4. ⭐⭐ Sound-off test. Pick an interview-driven video and watch 60 seconds with the sound completely off. Can you still follow the story from the B-roll alone? Write one sentence on whether the picture track carries the story or collapses without the audio. (Answer provided.)

5. ⭐⭐⭐ Reverse the coverage plan. Take a two-minute documentary or branded clip and reconstruct the coverage plan the shooter must have carried: list every distinct B-roll shot you can spot and label each a cutaway, insert, or sequence. What must they have shot that you don't see (the safety-net shots)? (Model answer provided.)

B. Reading B-roll (Read the Sequence)

6. ⭐ Name the tool. For each, say whether it is a cutaway, an insert, or part of a sequence: (a) an interview cuts to a wide of the empty workshop; (b) an ECU of a hand pressing a stamp into leather, mid-action; (c) three shots — wide of a barista, medium of the pour, ECU of the crema — cut together. (Answer provided.)

7. ⭐⭐ Diagnose the field. Re-read FIGURE 20.6 (the café steam cutaway). In one paragraph, explain how THE LIGHT field is motivated by the café's locked geography from earlier chapters, and what would look wrong if the steam were lit by a source that contradicted the window. (Answer provided.)

8. ⭐⭐ Rewrite the cut. Look at FIGURE 20.4 (the coffee-pull sequence). Rewrite the "Cut to next" column as if you had only the wide shot and no medium or detail. What can the editor no longer do, and how does the sequence suffer?

9. ⭐⭐⭐ Write your own Described Shot. Choose one B-roll cutaway you could shoot for your Project 2 subject and write it as a full seven-field Described Shot (Frame, Move, Light, Sound, Cut, Effect, Lesson), the way FIGURE 20.6 is written. Make THE CUT field describe how it lays over the interview. (Model answer provided.)

C. Shooting sequences and cutaways (Shoot This)

This is the heart of the chapter. Make things.

10. ⭐ One insert, braced. Shoot a single, rock-steady ECU insert of a detail (hands doing anything, a pen writing, a cup filling). Constraint: brace the camera on a surface — no handheld. Watch it back: is it steady enough to hold for three seconds without distracting? (Model critique provided.)

11. ⭐⭐ The five-shot sequence. Do the 🎬 On Set assignment from §20.3: pick a 20–60 second repeating action and cover it in at least five shots including a wide, a medium, and two details, shot in separate passes. Cut them together in any editor, cutting on matching action. Self-review: does it read as one fluid action? (Model self-critique provided.)

12. ⭐⭐ Cutaway, insert, sequence — one location. Go to any location with activity (a kitchen, a café, a workshop, a garden). Shoot exactly one deliberate cutaway, one insert, and one three-shot sequence. Label each clip. You are proving you can produce all three tools on demand.

13. ⭐⭐ Grab the wild sound. Repeat any three B-roll shots you've already made, but this time record 5–10 seconds of each shot's own sound (get the mic close to the source). Lay the wild sound under the picture in an editor. Write one sentence on what the sound added. (Answer discusses why.)

14. ⭐⭐⭐ Cover an interview subject. Find a willing person with a craft, job, or hobby (this can be your Project 2 subject — get their okay). Without interviewing them yet, shoot a full B-roll package: an establishing wide, at least one full sequence of their core action, three inserts of details, and two B-story cutaways (tools, result, workspace). Aim for too much. This is a dress rehearsal for the Production Checkpoint. (Guidance provided.)

15. ⭐⭐⭐ The café, your version. Stage your own version of the Café Scene's B-roll: shoot the cutaways and inserts that would cover an order exchange — steam or an equivalent, hands making something, a sign or detail that sells the place, a wide of the room. Match the light to a real window so the shots feel of one place. Do you have enough to cover the cuts in a dialogue scene?

D. Editing with B-roll (Cut This)

You do not need advanced skills to feel what B-roll does in a timeline. Any free editor works (DaVinci Resolve is the book's reference from Chapter 26).

16. ⭐⭐ Hide the jump. Take any clip of someone talking, and make a deliberate cut in the middle (remove a few seconds so the head jumps). Now lay one B-roll shot over the jump so it disappears. Watch it with and without the cover. Write one sentence on why the covered version reads as continuous. (Answer provided.)

17. ⭐⭐ Build the sequence two ways. Using the five shots from Exercise 11, cut them in two different orders: once wide→medium→detail, and once starting on the detail. Which order feels better, and what does each communicate? (Answer discusses the trade-offs.)

18. ⭐⭐⭐ Lay B-roll over a real answer. Record 20–30 seconds of someone (or yourself) answering a question in full sentences. Then lay matched B-roll over it so the picture proves what the voice says, keeping the audio running unbroken (an L-cut). Show a friend and ask: did the picture and the words feel like one thing? (Model answer provided.)

E. Fixing broken coverage (Fix the Shot)

19. ⭐ Fix the plan. A friend says: "I'll interview the baker for twenty minutes, then grab a couple of pretty shots of croissants and call it a day." List three things wrong with this B-roll plan and the fix for each. (Answer provided.)

20. ⭐⭐ Fix the shoot. A described situation: a shooter came home with 45 minutes of B-roll, but it is all locked-off wide shots of the workshop from one corner, no details, no sequences, no wild sound. Their interview keeps mentioning "the tiny hand-cut joints." Name every problem and its specific fix, sorted by what a coverage plan would have prevented. (Answer provided.)

21. ⭐⭐ The unmotivated reel. A described B-roll reel: slow-motion leaves, three lens flares, a spinning coffee cup on a turntable, and a drone shot of a parking lot — for a documentary about a seamstress. Diagnose why almost none of it will cut into the film, and rewrite the shot list into shots that would actually serve a seamstress's story. (Answer provided.)

22. ⭐⭐⭐ The story changed. You planned a documentary about a shop's grand reopening (the A-story), but in the interview the owner breaks down talking about her late father, who started the shop — clearly the real story (the B-story). You are still on location. List the B-roll you now need to grab to tell the truer story, and explain why the coverage mindset is what makes this rescue possible. (Model answer provided.)

F. Settings and scenarios (Settings Drill)

23. ⭐ The steady detail. You want a silky, slightly slow-motion ECU insert of espresso pouring. Write the basic capture choices you'd start from (frame rate, how you'd stabilize, how close, whether to grab sound) and one trade-off of shooting slow motion. (Answer provided.)

24. ⭐⭐ Write the coverage plan. For a 3-minute documentary about a neighborhood shoe repairer, write a coverage plan in the FIGURE 20.7 format: at least six beats, each with a shot type (cutaway/insert/sequence), the shot, and a must/nice priority. Include the wild sound line. (Model answer provided.)

25. ⭐⭐ Three scenarios, three plans. In two or three lines each, sketch the B-roll priorities for: (a) a talking-head testimonial for a dentist; (b) a walk-and-talk profile of a trail runner; (c) an event recap of a community festival. What is the one must-have sequence for each? (Answer provided.)

G. Recreate and vary (Recreate It & Five Ways)

26. ⭐⭐ Recreate a food sequence. Pick a cooking or coffee sequence you admire from any show and recreate its structure (not its exact shots) with your own subject: match the number of sizes and the wide→medium→detail shape. Compare yours to the original — what did the pros do that you didn't? (Guidance provided.)

27. ⭐⭐ Five ways to shoot one detail. Take one small subject (a pouring liquid, a turning page, a hand tool). Shoot the same detail five ways: (a) locked-off ECU, (b) a slow push-in, (c) a high angle looking down, (d) backlit against a window, (e) in slow motion. Watch all five; which best sells the craft, and why? (Answer discusses trade-offs.)

28. ⭐⭐⭐ Recreate the L-cut. Study one 10-second stretch of an interview-driven video where B-roll covers the audio, and recreate the exact cut structure with your own footage: audio running unbroken while the picture cuts to two different B-roll shots and back to the head. Match the rhythm of when the picture changes. (Model answer provided.)

H. Interleaved (mixing prior chapters)

These deliberately braid Chapter 20 with earlier chapters so the whole production kit stays live.

29. ⭐⭐ Coverage, old and new (Ch.7). Shoot a two-person exchange as scene coverage (a master, two mediums, a close-up, an insert — respecting the line, Chapter 7) AND shoot three B-roll cutaways of the room and details around them (Chapter 20). In the edit, use the Chapter 20 cutaways to cover a trim in the Chapter 7 dialogue. Write one sentence on how the two kinds of coverage work together. (Answer provided.)

30. ⭐⭐ Show the beat (Ch.17). Take three "telling" claims from your Project 2 subject ("she's meticulous," "the work is hard," "it's a family business") and, for each, apply the show-don't-tell question from Chapter 17 and shoot the B-roll that shows it without a word. (Model answer provided.)

31. ⭐⭐⭐ Continuity in a sequence (Ch.9). Shoot a sequence of a single action and deliberately break matching action on one cut (let the hand be in the wrong position across the cut). Then reshoot and fix it. Write one sentence on what the broken version felt like, connecting it to the 30-degree rule and matching action from Chapter 9. (Answer provided.)

32. ⭐⭐⭐ The whole shoot (Chs. 16, 17, 19, 20). For a real subject, produce the complete Project 2 shoot in miniature: a one-line logline and beat outline (Ch.16–17), a coverage plan (Ch.20), the interview questions you'd ask (Ch.19), and then shoot at least the establishing wide, one sequence, and three inserts. Bring it all back organized. This is the entire back half of Part IV in one afternoon. (Guidance provided.)

When you have done these — especially the shooting ones — you will never again come home from a shoot with an interview you cannot cut. You have crossed from someone who captures footage to someone who covers a story. Next, in Chapter 21, we take these documentary pieces into the genre that assembles them into truth.