When you discount the truth, get caught out being uninformed, then try to cloud the issues rather than researching and admitting, you end up losing more face than you could possibly gain.
Sorry Byre and fis, you've both lost a ton of brand equity and shown how far out of touch you are with the reality....
You remind me of a teacher talking to his class that I overheard at the CeBIT trade fair in Hanover. He pointed to a terminal that was linked to four giant water-cooled mainframes for a truly breath-taking flight simulator on a huge screen and told his class "You see here what one can do nowadays with a simple and small PC!"
So here is a story for you -
A long time ago, about 20 years ago, I attended a conference for news gathering called Newsworld in Berlin. All the good and great were there, including a few from the UK, who were a bit put-out, as nobody knew who they were, with the exception of Martin Bell (White Jacket Man) who was known slightly from a few reports that the BBC had sold to other stations and networks.
The big news in the news industry back then, was the new generation of small digital cameras, like the Sony D1000 and the Panasonic EZ-1. One of the star turns was a bloke nobody outside of the UK had heard of, called Brian Blessed (I remembered the name however from Z-Cars!) who had just been up Mount Everest with a Sony D1000 and gave us all a talk about his experiences with the camera and the new digital DV format.
Also there, was one revolutionary news reporter called Michael Rosenblum, who had just received an Emmy for a report he had done from a Palestinian refugee camp for 60-Minutes on CBS. Instead of the usual Sony Digi-Beta or Beta-SP, he opted for a domestic Hi-8 video camera, so as to not create a fuss. Today, Rosenblum runs RosenblumTV and has inspired thousands of VJs around the World.
All the 'shirts' had their collective noses put out of joint by Rosenblum, who told them that they were all wrong in their desire to have large professional cameras and five- or ten-man crews.
"It used to be OK!" he shouted at Martin Bell. "We used to go news-gathering, using little 16mm Arriflexes, but now you need a moose to carry one of today's cameras!"
"I need a full crew and a steady and well-framed camera shot!" shouted Bell back at him. "These new toys will never get into mainstream broadcasting for just that reason!"
I joined in with this shouting match and told Bell that we shall be buying Panasonic EZ-1s just as soon as they come out, as they were so small and were brilliant in low light. "Ideal for covert shooting!"
I accused Bell of wanting to turn a simple news shoot into a media event, with the reporter making himself more important than the story!
"A reporter has to be clearly identifiable in a war situation!" shouted Bell.
I told him that having some reporter poncing about in a war zone made those situations even more dangerous than they needed to be and told him of my experience as a soldier in the Paras.
Bell gave me a full-blast couple of minutes, on the importance of reporters being where soldiers did not want them to be.
"Yer, but you's don't need to stand out like a sore thumb to do it!" shouted Rosenblum. "You're a dinosaur! You's guys are dead!" he shouted in his brilliant New York accent. "You's all dead - it's just that nobody's told you yet! Well, I'm telling you now!"
Later that evening, I had dinner with about ten others, including Rosenblum, Christiane Amanpour (CNN and later 60-Minutes) and Cokie Roberts (ABC News) who later met my Great Dane called 'Viscount Field Marshal Montgomery' and loved him! The table talk was all about the new ways of news gathering.
Amanpour was delighted with that afternoon's shouting match. "It was most entertaining!" she said and laughed.
Robb, if I were still in the ENG game, I would stick a couple of GoPros on my head for half the stuff we were later to do with our EZ-1 cameras (one of which I still have!) All you need is a GoPro and the framing marked out on a pair of glasses, so that you get shots framed correctly.
GoPros are ideal, because you can stream them to an SSD and get truly great quality footage.
Sadly, mainstream broadcasting does not work like that. They still want to use cameras that have to be carried by a moose, to use Rosenblum's turn of phrase. They still want three-point lighting where possible and either a Sennheiser 416 mics with a Rycote 'meerkat' covering them, or a DPA lapel-mic.
GoPros and iPhones are great for covert or just inconspicuous footage, but that does not mean that every shoot can be done with an iPhone on a stick.
So please do not tell me that I am uninformed or out of touch with reality. Whereas you may have heard something from someone and have obviously understood half of it, this topic is my back yard.
