Remember how so many of us said that the constant camera changes during gameplay was one of the big problems with the Donny Osmond "Pyramid"? Read on.
While housesitting this week, I was channel-surfing and ran across the Paul Lynde episode of A&E's "Biography." It was just starting, and even though I already have it on tape from when it first aired three years ago, since I haven't seen it in a while, I decided to watch it.
Well, there was at least one new interviewee, whose name escapes me at the moment. (Forgive me if all this has already been printed here.) But the biggest change was that they reshot their existing interview footage...sort of. They would start the normal one shot of the interviewee, but then they would cut away to the same footage being seen through a video editor's monitor, with on-screen timecode and all. Then they'd cut back away to the "normal" interview footage. They employed the same device with still shots of Paul and cast pictures of his plays and TV shows.
Now, I realize that this is a "2 Fast 2 Furious" world and that just about every new movie director these days cut their teeth in music videos and commercials, which all seem to require 15 to 20 camera changes every 10 seconds. But come on, this is "Biography," a show that has never been youth-skewing ever. Why the need to add this "edge" to it? If anything, I found it very distracting. Are TV directors and editors really afraid that viewers will change the channel if a static shot is shown for more than 5 seconds?
Lemme know your views on this.
Brendan
