Comments on: Talking heads online are death?

By: Rosenblum

Rosenblum — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 18:52:53 +0000

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.

By: The Video Reporter

The Video Reporter — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 16:49:31 +0000

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?

By: Rosenblum

Rosenblum — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 16:37:40 +0000

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.