Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The greatest shot in television: James Burke had one chance to nail this scene (2024)

openculture.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 209 posts

Re: The greatest shot in television: James Burke had one chance to nail this scene (2024)

#51

Post by sigmoid10 »

IdiotSavage wrote: post #44
somat wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A question about aspect ratio on youtube, Does it care? or can you put whatever aspect ratio you want, I guess my complaint is that I don't see nearly enough (none) square video on the site.

YouTube, as well as any decent player, plays any aspect ratio video, even portrait mode. As an uploader you should never add black bars (if they are in the source, crop them out before uploading) and of course never distort the video. This ensures the best playback experience for all devices.

Ah yes, the good old "shot in portrait mode, converted to 16:9 with added black bars, and then displayed under YT shorts in portrait mode again" category on youtube. This is almost artistic at this point. Sometimes I wonder how small can the content of a video get before people will stop watching it. Is there any research on this?

Re: The greatest shot in television: James Burke had one chance to nail this scene (2024)

#53

Post by ErroneousBosh »

weinzierl wrote: post #45
pjc50 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can. I've even seen intentional 4:3 used as an "80s" signifier. Quick googling suggested that square video under 3 minutes will be automatically classed as "shorts", which much of HN hates and may never have seen.

Not YouTube but regarding the period signifier: Wes Anderson's "The Grand Budapest Hotel" has every section of the movie shot in the time appropriate aspect ratio.

But the presentation format is actually 1.85:1 so the 1930s part is pillarboxed slightly and the 1960s part is heavily letterboxed.

If you buy the Blu-ray it's presented in 16:9 and 1920x1080 throughout, it's just masked to suit.

Re: The greatest shot in television: James Burke had one chance to nail this scene (2024)

#54

Post by radar1310 »

In the 80’s I worked for a radio station in Asheville NC. That allowed us to get press passes to launches at the cape. I was in the press area for 2 shuttle launches including the very first night launch of the Space Shuttle. They launched right after an incredible thunderstorm had rolled through. I’m old now but still remember it like it was yesterday. Incredible to see in person.

Re: The greatest shot in television: James Burke had one chance to nail this scene (2024)

#55

Post by ErroneousBosh »

seer wrote: post #12
RachelF wrote: post #4

The late 1970's were the golden age of documentaries: Connections, Cosmos, Civilization, The Ascent of Man and Attenborough's Life on Earth. Perhaps it's just me, but modern documentaries are rather dumbed down? As a side note: Quite ironic that he ends up pointing to a rocket propelled mostly by solid fuels.

Yes, but the YouTube ed channels are such a treasure in and of itself. We had the “tech” to produce content like this for almost a century, but it took the Internet and democratization of content creation to come up with gems like smarter every day, veritasium, extra history, etc My fear is that this is also being reshaped with ai, mostly for good now but I feel like the personal touch and passion of these creators i…

In among all the MrBeasts and JackSepticEyes on Youtube there are some incredibly creative people.

Two that my 5-year-old loves are OddAnimalSpecimens who could easily have been on BBC children's programming in the 1980s, and Terragreen who would have been his ITV counterpart :-)

Probably the most entertaining child-friendly programme you can watch right now is whatever Jake Carlini is doing. Some wee guy in a house in Austin, Texas is coming up with better stories, better production values, and better life values than any of the "proper" children's TV productions, except maybe Sesame Street.

Re: The greatest shot in television: James Burke had one chance to nail this scene (2024)

#56

Post by hoppushoppard »

rmunn wrote: post #14
51Cards wrote: post #10

I always love this video, and I have been a lifetime dedicated fan of James Burke, but few seem to note that the whole segment didn't have to be timed as there is a cut shortly before the launch. If I recall either James or one of the producers talked about it once. They knew they had to start the last bit 13 seconds before launch and had practiced it repeatedly. At 13 seconds to countdown James nailed it. I'm sure e…

Cuts from the speaker to some background footage, then back to the speaker, are a very useful technique. They can be used to lie, too, of course (cut from the interviewee's face to the interviewer, then back to the interviewee, and you can cut out context that changes the meaning of what was said). But when used with no deception in mind, they can really enhance a powerful moment. And this was a perfect example of it…

I was amazed by the perfect timing. I realized, if you listen closely, there is commentary audio feed from the launch with countdown.

So knowing, the engines starts 3 seconds before liftoff, he was able to time the speech.

I saw this clip dozen of times, and only after keeping attention I realized this.

So with the cut technique, it seems like seamless feature, and that's the magic of the TV. Nevertheless amazing delivery.

Re: The greatest shot in television: James Burke had one chance to nail this scene (2024)

#57

Post by the8472 »

otikik wrote: post #50
IdiotSavage wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube, as well as any decent player, plays any aspect ratio video, even portrait mode. As an uploader you should never add black bars (if they are in the source, crop them out before uploading) and of course never distort the video. This ensures the best playback experience for all devices.

What do you do if you want to combine several sources with different aspect ratios? Surely black bars are acceptable in that case?

I don't know if YT can, but browsers do handle variable-AR videos.

https://litter.catbox.moe/1x93zdib04wu50kc.webm

Re: The greatest shot in television: James Burke had one chance to nail this scene (2024)

#58

Post by nananana9 »

IdiotSavage wrote: post #44
somat wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A question about aspect ratio on youtube, Does it care? or can you put whatever aspect ratio you want, I guess my complaint is that I don't see nearly enough (none) square video on the site.

YouTube, as well as any decent player, plays any aspect ratio video, even portrait mode. As an uploader you should never add black bars (if they are in the source, crop them out before uploading) and of course never distort the video. This ensures the best playback experience for all devices.

> As an uploader you should never add black bars

In an ideal world yes. In practice, the YouTube layout looks weird on aspect ratios that aren't 4:3 or 16:9. If you upload any vertical video it gets categorized as a short, so that's out of the window - and even for things like 21:9 you get a teeny tiny player on desktop since it just fits the width.

Re: The greatest shot in television: James Burke had one chance to nail this scene (2024)

#59

Post by camkego »

If you look at the start of that episode, there is another crazy thing in there, a device which allows you to "see" the bits on a credit card track.

Apparently something called "magnetic viewing film" can allow you to see the bits on the magnetic stripes of credit cards.

I had never heard about this before.

Link to video time: https://archive.org/details/bbc-connections-1978/Connections...

Re: The greatest shot in television: James Burke had one chance to nail this scene (2024)

#60

Post by seer »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #55
seer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the YouTube ed channels are such a treasure in and of itself. We had the “tech” to produce content like this for almost a century, but it took the Internet and democratization of content creation to come up with gems like smarter every day, veritasium, extra history, etc My fear is that this is also being reshaped with ai, mostly for good now but I feel like the personal touch and passion of these creators i…

In among all the MrBeasts and JackSepticEyes on Youtube there are some incredibly creative people. Two that my 5-year-old loves are OddAnimalSpecimens who could easily have been on BBC children's programming in the 1980s, and Terragreen who would have been his ITV counterpart :-) Probably the most entertaining child-friendly programme you can watch right now is whatever Jake Carlini is doing. Some wee guy in a house…

Thanks for the recommendations - I’m also big fan of 3blue1brown and PBS science, but as a recent dad am on lookout for content for my son to watch when he comes of that age - he’s just 1month now, hopefully by that time AI has not enshittyfied everything
Post reply on HN