Originally posted by vinteuil
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Dr Roberts is the one: what a smashing lady! Thanks vints; sorry french frank - I just couldn't recall the name of the series or the channel. -
She is indeed, and the camera loves her. Like Lucy W, she has a vocal idiosyncrasy - in her case, she pronounces her "o's" as "a's", hence she is a bane specialist, but none the worse for that.Originally posted by Serial_Apologist View PostComment
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It is a strange aspect of neo posh-speak, I find, often emitted in loud voices by young women in parties on late night tube trains heading for Sloane Square -another being "feud" for "food", as pronounced by many toddlers.Originally posted by Richard Tarleton View PostComment
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Only because the current production fashion has made it so...to the extent that we have to see someone in a car/train/plane to 'explain' that we are about to see a different place. Are viewers really that stupid? Or rather, do producers think viewers are that stupid?there is the problem that television is essentially a narrative medium. Section A leads to section B followed by C in straightforward order for the most part.
Certainly Lucy W's film on the Romanovs was not too extreme in that respect.Comment
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Not quite what I meant Ardcarp. What i meant was that the visual grammar of television is inherent in the medium, and this makes it very difficult to qualify information. The only way out is to have a debate in which different views can be addressed. This is what happens all the time in print media. It isn't really a matter of fashion. If you watch a series like Civilisation, which moves at a leisurely pace, you will find that Sir Kenneth Clarke is the sole interpreter of the facts, and there is no space for a different view.Originally posted by ardcarp View Post
Television devours a subject and then forgets it. Somebody makes a bad production on, say, greek warships. Some while later new discoveries are made in the real world and somebody suggests doing a programme about it. 'Oh no!' is the reply, that was done last year!'
Compare this to book publication. If a dud appears it is always open to someone to refute it and try to produce something better, but television rests on its laurels with one production, allowing a long time to elapse before producing another, and indeed quite often repeating the original.Comment
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Would normally have persevered with any BBC Russian history documentary but Lucy really gets on my nerves, I'm afraid. She didn't do the history of choral evensong very well, either imho, although press reviewers (well, The Indy anyway) seemed to think she was wonderful. Too much work going to one presenter, maybe?
The other history presenter who gets on my nerves is Janina Ramirez. Things like handling historical records in archives without wearing gloves, and prancing around English Heritage properties in stilettos? Not good,is it.
Alice Roberts I do like, though. And Sebag-Montefiore's not bad.
The Lost Princesses was good. New material and a couple of new turns on events that must have emerged recently.And the tune ends too soon for us allComment
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I'm not sure I understand what 'visual grammar' is. If there is such a thing, I see no reason why it sholdn't be subject to fashion (or at least evolution) like anything else. One has a picture (still or moving) plus sound (music, speech or other noise...possibly silence). In theory any combination is possible. There seems to be a fashionable imperative to 'tell a story' even when there isn't one. For instance Attenborough's Blue Planet, fantastic though the filming is, is guilty of concocting tales of how the little whatsit sneaks out cheekily from behind the big whatsit. Not necessary, IMO.What i meant was that the visual grammar of television is inherent in the medium
If we restrict the discussion to making documentaries...which I think you are talking about....there is a definite current fashion in how to do it. It wasn't like that 20 years ago and it won't be like it in 20 years' time.
But I agree there is a lot of truth in...
Television devours a subject and then forgets it. Somebody makes a bad production on, say, greek warships. Some while later new discoveries are made in the real world and somebody suggests doing a programme about it. 'Oh no!' is the reply, that was done last year!'
But there is nothing about the medium itself which decrees that it has to be like that, surely?Comment
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I agree with you about the Blue Planet. The miles of footage have to be carefully pruned, and then as you say small narratives are invented for the script. I also find it irritating when we are told what an animal seems to be thinking when in fact it is just reacting.Originally posted by ardcarp View Post
Back in the days when film was very expensive and costly to process, documentary directors needed to keep within budget by building at least a rough scenario before filming. In comparison digital video does not use costly stock. This means that huge quantities of data can be produced, and the selection process is very lengthy. So, putting it roughly, there's a tendency to go out and shoot everything in sight and then come home to invent the theme.Comment
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Just watched with a mounting sense of disappointment a documentary on Odysseus written and presented by Simon Armitage (2010). A number of cliches in the script surprised me, given his reputation as poet. But also, as ardcarp says, the current fashion for filming documentaries. I will give this more thought, but the best words that come at the moment are that we are visually talked down to as viewers.
Jonathan Meades, with his quirky style evolved with his regular director Francis Hanly, is the only documentary maker, in my experience, who has evolved a genuinely innovative visual grammar.Last edited by kernelbogey; 15-11-17, 21:46.Comment
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@kernelbogey, I'm nodding here as I read your comments on this thread.
Not nodding to sleep, but nodding in agreement, mind you :-)
I'd also like to add an exacerbating point: program-makers need to ostentate everything in order to stave off the huge competition for eyes and ears. Particularly the youth.
The idea is that the presenter needs to startle, and startle regularly .. continuously if need be. Even material which is already by turns gruesome, astonishing or awe-inspiring actually needs further emphasis, because otherwise the youthful audience will turn its attention to Youtube, Facebook, Twitter or any other of the myriad content sources they now have at their disposal.
I say youth, not because I think the older audience doesn't use these modern media (speaking as an old and frequent captive of so-called "Youtube wormholes") but because clearly the older audience has the experience of what it was like before (for which paradoxically, I would recommend frhamilton's Youtube channel) when there was hardly any "content competition" as I call it, and in effect, radio and TV channel had captive audiences, so sexing up content was altogether less necessary.
I think there was a more balanced approach back then. Certainly the content was also emphasised, but it seems to me, not when the content was able to speak for itself.Comment
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Thanks, arthroceph, for comments. Yes, I'm sure you're right about emphasis - though less sure whether the youth is seen as a target audience by makers of these documentaries.
More to the point for me is the density of the commentary. Watching Meades's documentary on Nazi architecture reminds me that his commentary has the depth and density of a radio script, if not a written essay, indeed: you can't afford to let your attention wander for a second.
By contrast the average tv documentary is pretty low key, low density in its approach.Comment
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