Talking heads online are death?
I like to follow Michael Rosenblum’s blog, and his is one of the few that I make time to read as often as I can. A post this week really caught my eye because it’s an issue that I am constantly considering.
During my training at the Los Angeles Times, some three years ago now, one of the things I had drummed into me was how boring talking heads are. That was TV-style journalism, not online video, and no one wanted to see it or listen to it. I agreed with them, at the time. And the video team there was in the process of developing an impressive and alternative video journalism story-telling process, even though most of them had a TV background. But I digress.
Rosenblum is of the same opinion as my former colleagues at the LATimes, as he says in his post here on the issue regarding this Cisco video:
Did you look at the video above?
It’s John Chambers, CEO of Cisco.
He is no dope. And what he has to say is both intelligent and important.
Did you watch the video. Did you make it to the end of the video? Come on…. Anyone?
It was only 1:37, but it’s hard to watch.
It’s hard to watch because talking heads online are death.
Death.
No one wants to listen to them.. .hardly anyone can. And in this case, it’s particularly hard because he isn’t even making eye contact with you. He’s kind of staring off slightly to the right of the camera, no doubt reading off a teleprompter.
You have to want to watch. And apparently no one does, because the video has only gotten 803 views and four of them are mine.
If you watch the videos on ft.com (which, full disclosure, I spend all of my paid time working on right now), you’ll notice that a lot of it is just that – talking heads. And a lot of it isn’t. But from what I’ve seen in my short time in this business, it’s my personal opinion that very informed comment on complex subjects by a brand trusted on that issue by audiences IS, in fact, compelling enough to command attention, if it forms part of a broader video strategy that also includes lots more visually-led pieces.
Another model that I find myself discussing a lot with VJs and broadcast journalist friends is the correspondent piece-to-camera model versus the VJ model, which generally uses solely the voice of characters to tell the story, perhaps with a bit of voice over, rather than a journalist ‘personality’ in front of the camera (most of my work on MexicoReporter.com used the VJ model, as have a few piece for the FT).
When I started in online video, I thought that the correspondent model was old-fashioned and patronizing to the viewer. And I do find that using the traditional VJ model gives one, as a journalist, more of a sense of documenting than producing.
But having worked using BOTH models now, I see that the correspondent format has its advantages and is, indeed, popular with at least some audiences. In fact, chatting to a very experienced broadcast journalist recently about this very issue, they said that the feedback from their audience suggests that they want to be led even more by the hand than they already are by that channel’s TV news, which like all major broadcasters uses the correspondent, front-of-camera model.
As media continues to converge with the emergence of mobile devices such as the iPad, should content producers discriminate between online video and broadcast television when they’re putting together video pieces? It’s my view that people are more passive and patient with video content when they watch it on the TV than if they’re watching it online, when their attention spans are a lot shorter and more impatient.
But as we move towards more video consumption on mobile devices, do audiences need to be led by the hand more, or less? Do they need a guide, or just the facts? Or is it simply a matter of taste?
If anyone out there has any research findings on this issue, I’d love to hear from you….
Category: editorial, journalism, media, video
Talking heads are not only death, but they don’t leverage off what the medium does best, which is transport the viewer to another time and place and event. Even talking heads who have ‘important’ things to say – are like FT execs who come to a shareholders meeting and read their speech off a piece of paper, or those who present an idea reading lines off a powerpoint. Interesting, but death. And painful to watch even if important in content.
NOW. I was a bit taken aback by your comment about on camera reporters vs the VJ model. We (at least we) DONT like to let characters ‘tell their own stories’. We are VERY opposed to this. We are also opposed to on camera reporters. We like the VJ to ‘tell the story’ in narration. After all, the VJ is the storyteller. The homeless woman or the brain surgeon are not professional storytellers. The VJ is. So tell me the story. Trying to make a coherent narrative from interview soundbites is a waste of time and a sure way to guarantee the piece is as incomprehensible as possible.
Thanks for your comment Michael.
We’re going to have to agree to disagree about the talking heads. I think people are interested to hear, for example, what the energy correspondent of a respected and independent journalistic brand thinks the effects of the oil spill will be for BP, as opposed to the spokesman of the company defending its actions.
What you say about not letting characters tell their own stories is VERY interesting. My work is usually a combination of my narrative, and making the character’s narrative as coherent as possible, in combination. Voice-over should write itself around what interviewees say, otherwise aren’t you putting too much of yourself in there?
Here are two good experiments for you.
1. Take a few talking head pieces. Show them to a few people. Don’t give them any prep, just screen them. Then afterwards, see what, if anything, they retain. Also, tell them they are fee to click them off if they get bored. I have done this many times. The retention rate is close to zero, if they make it through at all. If no one is going to watch or remember anything, then the whole exercise is a waste of time. Do it yourself and see how it goes.
2. Next time something happens to you that is interesting and you tell your friends about it, note how you tell them what happened. (ie, you’ll never guess what happened to me… and then you tell the story. This is real storytelling. This is how we relate important information to our friends, our families, our co-workers. Well, guess what? The people who are watching your videos ARE your friends, your family, your co-workers. The way you tell a story to them in real life is the way you should tell a story to them in video. No other. Trust me.