Zig Zag: You and the Media
You and the Media is a unit of the BBC Schools TV series Zig Zag from the 1980s, covering media for primary school pupils.
Programmes about human communications, framed through media studies. There is an overview of the history of human communications from cave paintings, consideration of calligraphy, how pictures can express meaning without words, and how people can give different accounts of the same events.
The third episode includes a short play called What's It All About? by John Tully and starring Ruth Mayo and Martin Howells, about misunderstanding and only having part of the story.
The fourth episode looks at sound and moving pictures together, with footage of school children attempting to shoot their own videos on location and making elementary mistakes, combined with a look behind the scenes at the making of the Zig Zag programme itself in the studio.
This unit wasn't repeated again after its original outing in 1986. It was originally advertised as 7 episodes, including these 4 plus the following 3 episodes featuring the natural history film Mordicus.
Memorable Moments
The television production material in episode 4 is written (by charismatic producer David Roseveare) with a real passion and interest for 1980s BBC Television techniques, right down to the abbreviations used in camera scripts.
Regular presenters Sheelagh and Paul roam the Zig Zag studio and gallery, talking to the staff and demonstrating the equipment.
“Now this is camera 1 here, operated by David. And you're seeing us through camera 2.
- And that's Brian's camera. And you're seeing us now on camera 3. Well we've got even more cameras to show you”
— Sheelagh Gilbey & Paul Coia
They visit the set of the play What's It All About? from the previous week and meet the designer, lighting director, floor manager and actors. By this point the rabbit hole has started to open up to infinity, as the play itself involves a production crew checking scripts and preparing to film a scene, and now the actors playing the production crew are seen checking their different scripts of the actual play about the pretend scripts.
Paul then 'interrupts' the director (who is also the writer and producer of the episode, David Roseveare) to interview the staff in the production gallery about their jobs.
“You're probably wondering what all these people up here in the gallery actually do. Well I thought we'd go through them one by one and first of all we have the technical co-ordinator Jeff here. What exactly do you co-ordinate?
- Well I co-ordinate the technical operation of the studio”
— Paul Coia & Jeff Jeffery
David himself shows Paul the script of the programme, in fact the script of the conversation they are in the middle of having, including the part where David shows Paul the script.
Paul then talks to production assistant Rachel Boyd who calls out the camera shots, of the very cameras which are pointing at her while she calls them.
The programme then reaches its peak of meta self-referencing as Paul describes the script, saying "And there it is! Words on the right... camera instructions on the left"... while pointing at a script bearing those exact words. He explains the scripted instruction "H/A BCU part of script in front of Rachel" means a high angle big close up of the script... during a high angle big close up camera shot of those very words.
Paul then reads ahead in the script (but still clearly following the scripted words in shot which tell him to read ahead!) to discover that the next shot is going to be of himself, after David says the word "cut", which he does right on cue in the script!
And to finish the programme before the entire BBC implodes into a black hole, David follows the script to cue everyboby, including himself, to say goodbye.
“So it's far more complicated than perhaps we expected.”
— Paul Coia[1]
David Roseveare shows Paul Coia the script of the conversation they are currently having
The script shows which parts of itself should be seen!
Episode List
| # | Title | Broadcast |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Writing and Printing | 22 Sep 1986 |
| 2. | Books and Newspapers | 29 Sep 1986 |
| 3. | Reporting | 6 Oct 1986 |
| 4. | Sounds and Pictures | 13 Oct 1986 |
Broadcasts
| Year | Term | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Channel | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1986-87 | Autumn 1986 | Monday, 11:00am | Wednesday, 2:15pm | BBC2 |
Credits
| Presenters | Sheelagh Gilbey Paul Coia |
| Guests | Kyoko Read David Graham Bernard Foyster Rachel Hardman |
| With children from | Colleton Primary School, Twyford Pontesbury C of E School, Shropshire Marlpool School, Kidderminster Munster Primary School, Fulham |
| What's It All About? | |
| Written by | John Tully |
| Starring | Ruth Mayo Martin Howells |
| Sound and Pictures featuring interviews with: | |
| Designer | Barry Reid |
| Lighting Director | Harry Bradley |
| Actors | Ruth Mayo Martin Howells |
| Floor Manager | Bob Thornton |
| Technical Co-ordinator | Jeff Jeffery |
| Vision Mixer | Wendy Locke |
| Production Assistant | Rachel Boyd (but not Jane Evans) |
| Director | David Roseveare |
| Series Producer | Tom Stanier |
| Producer | David Roseveare |
Resources
There were teacher's notes and a project book (Behind the Scenes) available.
A poster was also released called Zig Zag Goes Behind the Scenes... The Making of a BBC Television Programme, with pictures and information about making an episode of Doctor Who with Colin Baker. According to an article in Doctor Who Magazine the photographs were taken on Thursday 17th July 1986 during the recording of episodes 13 & 14 of The Trail of a Time Lord[2].
- ↑ Paul's comment "it's far more complicated than perhaps we expected" actually comes in an earlier conversation about lighting, but fits very nicely for the whole programme!
- ↑ Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition 'The Complete Sixth Doctor' (2003) page 55 mentions photography for the Zig Zag poster in an article The Trial of a Time Lord Parts 13 & 14: Every Loser Wins by Gary Gillatt.
Topics
School topics covered in this programme. Click to find other programmes covering the same topics, but bear in mind topics are a new addition to the site in 2023 and not many are set up yet.
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