Video Basics

VIDEO BASICS is intended for courses in television production or video production found in journalism and broadcast, radio-TV-film, electronic media, and communication departments at two- and four-year schools. The course is typically the first-year production course taken the freshman or sophomore year.

Herbert Zettl is a professor emeritus of the Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts Department at San Francisco State University (SFSU), where he led the Institute of International Media Communication and received the California State Legislature Distinguished Teaching Award and the Broadcast Education Association's Distinguished Education Service Award. Prior to joining the SFSU faculty, Zettl worked at KOVR (Stockton-Sacramento) and as a producer-director at KPIX, the CBS affiliate in San Francisco, where he participated in a variety of CBS and NBC network television productions. Because of his outstanding contributions to the television profession, Zettl was elected to the prestigious Silver Circle of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Northern California Chapter. He is also a member of the Broadcast Legends of the NATAS Northern California Chapter. Lecturing extensively at universities and professional broadcast institutions both in the United States and abroad, Zettl has presented key papers at a variety of national and international communication conventions. He is the author of VIDEO BASICS, TELEVISION PRODUCTION HANDBOOK and SIGHT SOUND MOTION, which are translated into several languages and published internationally. His numerous articles on television production and media aesthetics have appeared in major media journals worldwide, and he also developed an interactive DVD-ROM -- Zettl's VideoLab 4.0 (Cengage Learning). His previous CD-ROM version won several prominent awards, including the Macromedia People's Choice Award, the New Media Invision Gold Medal for Higher Education, and Invision Silver Medals in the categories of Continuing Education and Use of Video.