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BBC's a History of Ancient Britain

Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2011 5:00 pm
by col lamb
What great storytelling content, what rubbish camera work.

Why the BBC do it?
.
.

Presenter going in and out of focus more times than I could count

Very fast unsteady pans repeated over and over

Excessive hand held camera movement, and I do mean excessive

Completely OTT shallow depth of field shots

Shooting a close up of the presentor with the sun directly behind him resulting in him going in and out of sillouette and lens flair happening and then not
.
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All the above repeated over and over again and all the above in the one clip with many such clips all in the last 15 minutes of the programme, so if you were the person(s) responsible could you please post what other programmes you have shot like this and I can then avoid them.

Well done the BBC, if this is the best you can do then get rid of the cameramen, editors and especially the directors.

If you missed it do check it out, it is bound to be repeated it is the BBC after all

Re: BBC's a History of Ancient Britain

Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2011 9:13 pm
by TimStannard
I'm pleased to say the OTT shallow DoF shots seems to have had its day with the films posted by the "better" makers on the net. Hopefully the BBC will follow suit.

Sadly the overuse and inappropriate use of wobbly shots is still rife - and I don't see that going away as its been around for twenty years now.

Glidetracks are the new thing to overuse. Watch for that in the next series of BBC documentaries.

In answer to your question "Why [does] the BBC do it?" I can only speculate it is to try to appeal to a generation brought up on pop videos and yoof programming. To be fair, both of these have been extremely innovative in creating new and exciting styles of video and broadcasting. However, it seems that not every director has the ability to understand when certain styles are appropriate.