Art & Artifice in Newspapers and TV News

Admiral Richard Byrd… come on now.. try and look cold…

A fascinating piece in the NY Times today revealed that the paper ran a photo studio in it’s building on West 43rd Street where the famous and near famous would come to have their portraits show professional for the newspaper.

In the era between the world wars — even as smaller cameras, more sensitive films and near-instantaneous transmission methods were being pioneered — the studio photograph remained the staple of illustration in the pages of The Times

The piece in The Times goes on to point out how the archives are an interesting insight into the sociology of the time – the way that men and women were portrayed.

Fair enough, but I think the idea that these people were schlepped into a studio, where lighting and exposure could be carefully controlled, is interesting in and of itself.

If you want to take pictures of Admiral Byrd conquering the South Pole (which is what he did), then just send a photographer along.

This does not seem so complex to us today, but in the 1920s, it was a massive and expensive undertaking.

Eventually photojournalism got the hang of leaving the studio – so much so that The Times pieces strikes us as a strange anomaly.

But not so with TV journalism.

The vast majority of our television journalism is still studio bound.

Guests still traipse to the studio, wait in the green room, get their make up done and then are brought out before the lights and green screens to do their five minutes worth – little different from Admiral Byrd posing in arctic gear in the middle of Manhattan.

It’s all pretend.

And, of course, it’s all unnecessary.

The ‘studio’ is a remnant of a time when television and video were expensive and complicated to make – which they no longer are, as any 22-year old with a camera and FCP can tell you.

But those who run the networks are still laboring under the memory of a different kind of TV, as the photographers at The Times must also have been laboring under a memory of still photography as expensive and complicated – which it also was once.

I was reminded of this as I read the Times article and watched my friend Mark Bittman prepare a tuna and tofu salad on LXTV, (Channel 4 in NY), where my sister is the Executive Producer (full disclosure, always).

Here was Bittman, schlepping into a studio for several hours to do his few minutes on camera – much like Admiral Byrd in his sealskins.

Today, if you read the paper, Bittman (and not to pick on Mark, but it’s a good example), there’s a piece by him about what he bought, cooked ate and prepared for a whole week of eating alone on Cape Cod.

All it took him to create the article was a laptop.

All it takes to create video is a camera and a laptop.

It isn’t all that much more difficult.

Yet the folks at NBC spend millions (millions!) to drag people into a studio, light them, directors, cameramen, soundmen, floor managers and on and on and on to create what is in the end simply a few minutes of video. And not all that compelling video – not compared to real life video. (How good are the Robert Byrd shots – no matter how well lit – compared with sending a photographer to the South Pole with Byrd!)

Get the concept?

There was a time not so long ago when moving a TV show inside, into a studio, was a more cost effective way of producing content.

Just schelp in the next guest and turn on the cameras. OK, it’s not the most interesting stuff in the world, but it works.

Well, now the technology has pulled a fast one on the TV execs and leapfrogged the studio based content.

It’s now not only cheaper to send folks with small cameras out into the world to capture reality, it’s more compelling and a whole lot more honest, journalistically.

So, kudos to The Times for pulling back the curtain and revealing how those iconic shots were made.

Perhaps one day we’ll have a special on NBC that showed how Sen. John McCain had to appear at the studios in Washington, get made up and then was interviewed in a chair for Meet The Press.

No?

Really?

Why?