[Tech1] Soft options!

[Alan Taylor]

There’s a variant of that which seems to be obligatory on cooking shows.

The camera operator hides behind stuff in the kitchen ( hanging utensils or things standing on the counter ).  The presenter is sharply focussed, while the foreground object is really soft, but the camera  tracks along to make it look like a hopelessly out of focus version of Brucie’s conveyor belt.

Other over- used conventions are always in detective dramas.  One is where they are searching somewhere for clues.  Our hero is prominent in the wide shot when  another cop in the distance over-acts spotting something and yells “Oi Sarge .....”

Another convention is that when a suspect is initially approached, they are always doing something ..... mucking out the pigs, pruning roses, fixing a car engine etc.  The police start asking them about the night of the murder, but they continue to nonchalantly do what they were doing.  Now I’m the first to concede that in real life I haven’t  been the prime suspect in many murder enquiries, but I do think that if the police ( or anybody else ) called to ask me questions, I would pause for a moment and give them my undivided attention. 

In news or documentaries, the director often likes to film the interviewee walking along while the voice over or caption introduces them “ Faye Dowt, author of a book about television clichés”.  The trouble is that the person invariably walks in a very self-conscious manner.  I did a documentary following the first few days of a bunch of new MPs and one of them asked us for any useful media appearance tips for newbies. I suggested practicing walking in an establishing shot without looking like a pillock. 

There is a variant of that establishing shot which is used in many of those property shows  mentioned by Mike. The couple walk hand in hand through the streets of a Spanish village.  Now for many couples, that’s a routine thing and no problem, but occasionally it looks like the couple have never walked hand in hand in their life and appear awkward at being required to do so.

Alan Taylor

> On 15 Mar 2021, at 23:29, Mike Giles via Tech1 <tech1 at tech-ops.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> This has been mentioned before, but I find myself increasingly aggravated by the widespread habit of taking a wide shot of participants in things like Escape to the Country, with focus set on an often insignificant object close to camera ~ these shots seem to be interminable, whilst the eye and brain struggle with the blurred image of the real subject matter. I often have to search for the object that is actually in focus, because it’s certainly not at the point of concentration. It’s even crept into news coverage of interviews and I can only assume that it derives from producers (sorry Bernie!) using cameras on auto-focus which lock onto nearby objects, because that’s what they do, and now seems to have become de rigueur ~ it seems happen on all channels and it enrages me every time. Almost as annoying as mumbled dialogue, or unequalised personal mics!
> 
> Am I alone in my misery?
> 
> Mike G
> -- 
> Tech1 mailing list
> Tech1 at tech-ops.co.uk
> http://tech-ops.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/tech1_tech-ops.co.uk