Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 07:56:50 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Cutting to a secondary camera that shows the presenter in profile

Started by beanheadmcginty, November 20, 2021, 02:03:58 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

beanheadmcginty

This drives me up the fucking wall. The presenter is talking directly into the camera and then suddenly for no reason it cuts to a secondary camera filming the same presenter from the side who continues talking into the primary camera. I first noticed this on MTV in the late 90s and thankfully mainstream telly doesn't do it very much anymore. However, YouTubers seem to have grabbed hold of it and are really running with the whole idea. I can't help but partially blame Ashton Kutcher. Can someone please explain what the point of this is, why I find it so infuriating and how we can bring it to an end?

Mister Six

The point, I guess, is to bring a bit of variation to the images, and make "a person sat talking to you" look a bit more dynamic. Could be worse - remember T4, with its grainy, B&W second camera?

The Guppy

I like a secondary camera if the presenter turns to look at it when it's active. If they keep talking to the primary one I'm like


I suppose if a Youtuber is filming the whole thing by themselves and editing it later, they'll just talk to camera#1 and use camera#2 footage in the edit when they think it's cool.

But it's not cool, and they should stop doing it and/or die.

Alberon

Many years ago there was a Sky channel called .tv. I think it ran for about three hours a night sharing space with several other channels.

As part of one of its shows my university's physics department was asked if they could shoot a segment in one of the labs. Since we weren't using it we said okay. The segment was a five minute piece to camera about some bit of science or technology.

In the finished piece they did a fair bit of second camera shots, but the thing is they only had one camera so the presenter just had to do his bit again and again filmed from different angles.

Completely failed to keep it interesting as well.

Slightly related, but I always notice in a news report when they cut to the interviewer nodding like a twat as it's obvious they did it afterwards as they also only have one camera.

The Adam & Joe Show did a little bit poking fun at the trend for the wobbly back and white side-cam you see during links on youth-oriented magazine shows.


Dropshadow

Quote from: beanheadmcginty on November 20, 2021, 02:03:58 PMThis drives me up the fucking wall.

Me too. But the thing that really makes me seethe is when a presenter, or someone who's being interviewed looks "just to the left or the right" of the camera. Wish I could reach in and punch them.

Dex Sawash

I hang my tv really low so it is as if they are staring at my tits

Replies From View

Quote from: beanheadmcginty on November 20, 2021, 02:03:58 PMThis drives me up the fucking wall. The presenter is talking directly into the camera and then suddenly for no reason it cuts to a secondary camera filming the same presenter from the side who continues talking into the primary camera. I first noticed this on MTV in the late 90s and thankfully mainstream telly doesn't do it very much anymore. However, YouTubers seem to have grabbed hold of it and are really running with the whole idea. I can't help but partially blame Ashton Kutcher. Can someone please explain what the point of this is, why I find it so infuriating and how we can bring it to an end?

Maybe you could stop watching such shit youtubers

Replies From View

Quote from: Alberon on November 20, 2021, 05:58:01 PMSlightly related, but I always notice in a news report when they cut to the interviewer nodding like a twat as it's obvious they did it afterwards as they also only have one camera.

I've been around when some of these have been filmed - it's quite odd.  Mix of just random nodding, and now pretend to be especially interested, and now look as if you are in agreement but about to interrupt or interject.  They basically film all the possible likely nodding scenarios they might need, takes a couple of minutes at most, and during this time the sound person isn't normally needed anymore so you often get the nodding fragments filmed whilst the sound person is noisily fucking off.

Quote from: Replies From View on November 22, 2021, 07:55:49 AMMaybe you could stop watching such shit youtubers

Youtubers seem to do it once they've had some success and their channel has grown,  they upgrade their camera and use the original one as #2.

EOLAN

The one that gets me is Butch Harmon on the Sky Sports coverage. The camera is effectively filming a conversation between the hosts and pundits as they primarily talk to each other. Butch then turns and talks straight down the camera intensely when it comes to his response.

Replies From View


dissolute ocelot

The alternative is "cut to the anxiously clasped hands", which is used in serious interviews with sad people and is much worse.

gilbertharding

The radio equivalent of this (the fuzzy black and white cutaway mentioned above), which they still do for trailers on 6 Music and 5 Live, is to have a couple of sentences with the treble turned up, and a bit of flange or echo.

'Noddies' - which some posters have mentioned - are a different thing, aren't they? Who was it who got into trouble ages ago when it emerged he shot his 'noddies' several weeks after the interviewee had left the building?

Replies From View

Haha why should that make a difference?  Noddies are an artifice however you cut around them.  Unless you have cameras facing towards both people in an interview and that never happens.

Replies From View

Quote from: dissolute ocelot on November 22, 2021, 10:47:23 AMThe alternative is "cut to the anxiously clasped hands", which is used in serious interviews with sad people and is much worse.

Especially when you realise those "anxiously clasped hands" actually contain the concealed hand-scrawled note "I am laughing inside at this widow's loss".


I was there at a noddies filming session once when one of these notes was left behind on the floor afterwards.  Thankfully the widow had died before the end of the interview or some irrepressible outrage would have ensued.

gilbertharding

Quote from: Replies From View on November 23, 2021, 11:56:09 AMHaha why should that make a difference?  Noddies are an artifice however you cut around them.  Unless you have cameras facing towards both people in an interview and that never happens.

I found it:

It was Yentob

Pity the poor 'source' who had to anonymously defend the egotistical prick. But would this have been a story if the BBC wasn't, at the time, embroiled in another crisis of credibility?

Mister Six

I find the idea that the interviewee is expected to sit around while the interviewer runs through a series of nods, head-tilts and concerned frowns much more surprising than the idea that it might be done on a different day.

gilbertharding

Well, yes - but in the case of Alan 'Three Pensions' Yentob, he was nodding to interviews he hadn't even conducted.

Replies From View

Quote from: Mister Six on November 23, 2021, 01:36:00 PMI find the idea that the interviewee is expected to sit around while the interviewer runs through a series of nods, head-tilts and concerned frowns much more surprising than the idea that it might be done on a different day.

The sound person doesn't need to stick around, though.


Makes you think