Exposition: As Seen on TV

John offers some guidelines for using in-universe breaking news to provide exposition to the audience:

Unless you're literally having the characters stare at the TV set, you're basically dividing the audience's attention between two planes of information. If you don't do it carefully, the audience won't know where to look, and the scene will be a disaster.

We're going to expand John’s tips with some examples and see how this type of exposition can also help with world building and setting audience expectations.

The main things we'll investigate: What exposition we get for the primary story, what world building it presents to the audience, and if we get any reactions from the story's characters to what they're seeing.

RoboCop

Exposition for the Plot

A story about three murdered police officers explains that the Detroit police department has been purchased by the company Omni Consumer Products.

World Building

It's a slick corporate news broadcast, and hyper-condensed. "Give us three minutes – we'll give you the world." It's a heightened version of half-hour nightly newscasts with cheerful, camera-ready and corporate approved anchors.

It also shows a world on the edge of oblivion from all sides, starting with a report on the threatened use of a neutron bomb, then following it with a report on an armed space station.

And yet there's a tongue-in-cheek humor alongside it, like how the space station story focuses more on the inadvertent weightlessness for the president and his staff instead of contemplating the potential use of an orbital weapons platform.

It's cheery, sanitized, This Is Fine coverage. And even in its three minutes, there's an interruption for a commercial. A commercial for luxury medical tech, adding to the sense of a highly corporate future optimized for capitalist excess.

Character Reactions

Robocop breaks in over the course of its story with interruptions from in-universe television spots. These are shown directly to the audience instead of mediated by having an in-story character watch them.

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

Exposition for the Plot

A planet-killer asteroid is going to hit the Earth in 3 weeks after the unexpected failure of the manned mission to intercept it.

World Building

The radio station they're listening to advertises their "countdown to the end of days with all your classic rock hits." It sets a tone for the film's deadpan humor by taking a devastating moment and immediately pivoting to standard dj patter.

Initial Reactions

Dodge is frozen in shock. He makes a non sequitur comment about thinking they missed their exit. The beginning of the film features Dodge in this dazed state, keeping up his routines and not taking Earth's imminent demise as any kind of call to action.

The woman in the car with him, who we learn was his wife, unbuckles herself and runs off. She seems to have made the immediate decision that her last three weeks alive will not be spent with this man.

Children of Men

Exposition for the Plot

It's a feature news story highlighting the death of Earth's youngest person, saying he was murdered by a fan after refusing to give an autograph.

World Building

We get a lot.

In a story that sounds like the kind of media package put together about a celebrity death, and the mention of a fan suggests being the youngest is a very big deal.

Knowing the world's youngest person means there are no children being born, and this person was 18 years old, meaning this is a long-running global emergency.

The nature of the death suggests a nihilistically violent world, which is reinforced by the bombing of the coffee shop at the end of the scene.

Immediate Reactions

There's two sets of reactions in play. The crowd stands in stunned silence, crowded into the coffee shop staring at the report in dismay. An older woman clutches a small dog in her arms. This death is personally painful for all of them.

Theo, our protagonist, weaves and pushes his way through the crowd to order his coffee. He barely pays the report any attention, trying to get his day going and not being emotionally invested in "Baby" Diego. Not only does his detachment save his life, but it lets us directly see a difference between Theo's personality and the general population in this world.

For All Mankind, "Brave New World"

Exposition for the plot

These news broadcasts act as a recap of recent events in the previous episode, but through the lens of Earth-based media. It's a reminder of the dire stakes the Marsies are under.

World Building

There's a propaganda narrative being created to label the Martian colonists as radicals and terrorists. It seems to be the defining media narrative, but we also see footage of pro-Mars protests featured in one of these clips.

Character Reactions

This episode in particular features a sharp reaction from, Lily Dale. Seeing the general tone of the news, and how they're characterizing her friend as a terrorist, this lights a fire under Lily. She wants to document what life is actually like on Mars, with the express purpose of showing to Earth that they are not terrorists.

An Ironic Counterpoint

There's a lot of weight placed on the desire for the Marsies to be taken seriously and not seen as aggressors. However, when they learn of a multi-national military force nearing the planet that they can't possibly fight off in a direct battle, they make a difficult choice. They plan an act of sabotage, blowing up part of the mining platform the Earth forces want to capture so that no ships can dock there.

And in doing so, they wind up killing one of the Marines who was sent ahead of the ship to scout the mining rig.

While the news on Earth labels them violent extremists, and one of their own starts working to counteract that image, the leaders of the rebellion wind up feeding the negative narrative with their sabotage mission.

Takeaways

• Don't be afraid of directly telling the audience what's going on, but remember that you're not doing so in the voice of the writer. This is an opportunity to flesh out the kind of world your story takes place in.
• Who, if anyone, is watching this report? How do they relate to not just the information, but its source?
• Don't just think about news broadcasts as a source of exposition! There's lots of opportunities to drop exposition in via in-universe media.