WHAT IS ROUGH CUT?

"Rough Cut" is a regular series of online video reports from around the globe. Launched on June 28, 2005, the series is an expanded opportunity for FRONTLINE/World to develop and present the sort of stories we broadcast on our television program. "Rough Cut" positions us to lead in the trend toward media convergence, truly integrating broadcast and online content and reaching an audience all over the world.

We use the term "Rough Cut" because we want to encompass a variety of reports, including some works in progress and some experiments in style and format. The series will be an outlet for emerging documentary talent and a testing ground for future broadcast stories. Many of these videos will be polished reports by veteran journalists and seasoned producers, but "Rough Cut" will also nurture and host stories by talented graduate journalism students, as well as other young filmmakers. Out of this mix, some of the videos will be selected for broadcast on FRONTLINE/World television episodes.

"Rough Cut" videos will adhere to the same rigorous journalistic and production standards as all FRONTLINE/World reports, but they may be more idiosyncratic, more personal, more unconventional than our usual television documentaries.

The FRONTLINE/World Web site draws both an American and an international audience. "Rough Cut" allows the series to connect on a regular basis with a widely dispersed audience and to present videos that help link a global community. One recent video, "Calcutta Calling," the story of three American teenage girls returning to India to visit the orphanage where they were adopted as babies, prompted a spirited, heartfelt exchange on our Web site about cross-cultural adoptions. Another "Rough Cut" video, "The Play Pump," about a social entrepreneur helping to bring clean, safe drinking water to poor rural communities in South Africa, provoked an outpouring of interest and questions about how the experiment might be duplicated in other countries.

If you would like to see any of the "Rough Cut" videos we have presented so far, you can watch them all online here.

We will also post submission guidelines for the "Rough Cut" series on the site in the near future. In the mean time, if you have a video or an idea for a video you would like to submit, please send an email to frontlineworld@flworld.org, with "Rough Cut Submission" in the header and we will contact you on how to proceed.