On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 7:56 AM, Joe Hass <[email protected]> wrote:
> My totally unscientific, based-in-no-research guess: as sporting > events grew, and the crew and equipment size grew, and the quality of > both improved, you eventually reached a point where a director could > use a decent portion of the cameras to focus on reaction shots, both > before, during, and after a play. That said, I point to Fox and MLB as > the point when we crossed the threshold to overdoing it. At the same > time, the idea of cutting to audience members comes from the idea that > a lot of people aren't paying full attention to the program and these > visual clues are designed to tip them off that this is what's going on > and how they should be feeling. > > That said: no, you shouldn't use them in the coverage of a news event, > and it's another sad moment. > I don't mind the judicious use of reaction shots at political speeches. During the Keynote speech last night by Castro he referred to his mother (started out as a poor immigrant daughter from Mexico, now one of her twin sons is Mayor of San Antonio giving the Keynote at the Democratic Convention, the other introduced him, and is running for the US Congress). A shot of his mom in the audience made sense (but not the constant cutting back to her). Shortly after he referred to his daughter, and a cut to her made sense - and paid off as she engaged in cute 3 year old behavior. Except, the producer (or is it director?) got burned a little, because after they finally cut back to Castro the audience burst into laughter, and we could not tell at home if the convention audience was seeing the girl do something new and even cuter, or was just reacting late to the cute gestures we had already seen. That whole sequence when he referred to his family would have made for much more effective reaction shots if there had not been so damn many of them already. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
