Of Papyrus and Video
Too expensive to wrap fish in…. Ever wonder why Linear B, the Greek script, goes from right to left? So do Hebrew and Arabic… while English, French, Italian and all western languages go from left to right? Here’s a...
Read moreScripting Without Paper – 3rd in a series
“Writing” a script for a video or television piece is inherently destructive to the quality of the storytelling. I know this may sound heretical, but it is true. We are working in a medium of picture and sound. We...
Read moreMore On Fluffy
More notes on scriptwriting OK. So you’ve spent the day at the Dog and Cat Hospital, and while you were there, you were witness to (and filmed) the amazing rescue of Fluffy the puppy hit by the car and...
Read more"Writing" for Broadcast
Fluffy must die? You are shooting a story in a veterinary hospital when suddenly, a small 5-year old girl comes in cradling her puppy. The dog has been hit by a car, and though barely alive, the little girl...
Read moreWhat I Learned from Charles Kuralt
On The Road to making better video…. When we train VJs now, we train them to work in very different ways. One of the ways we differ is that we teach them to lay in all the pictures first...
Read moreThe Source
every once in a while something hits you that changes your life…. I was 12 years old when I first read The Source by James Michener.
Read moreDisposable Content
the burning of the Great Library at Alexandria… the MGM version… This morning we had a meeting with the head of one of the largest newspaper groups in the world, based in the UK. We were early…(which I think...
Read moreOur Idiot Culture
Sometimes it isn’t relative. Sometimes it is very specific… In a lovely new book, entitled The Canon, New York Times science writer Natalie Angier warns of the growing gap between knowledge of science and the real world in America.
Read moreThe World Turned Upside-Down
…for all to see, in black and white… “Yes, there are more producers of video content. That content will continue to grow/explode. But I will not have time or energy to watch more than a few each day. Sorting...
Read moreWhat Does It Look Like?
images that once could move a nation….. In November, 1936, Henry Luce, founder of Time Magazine gave birth to a new publication: LIFE. We barely remember it now, but at one time LIFE was an American icon. People waited...
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