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

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

#81

Post by konschubert »

Scroll_Swe wrote: post #67
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…

The youtube channels are nowhere near the style and depth of documentaries like the ones above...

Check out Technology Connections. This is way, way, way more in depth than anything one can find on TV.

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

#82

Post by tclancy »

absynth wrote: post #62
AIorNot wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats because we have a trove of in depth specialist and deep youtube content including all those old documentaries to mine through these days Youtube and the internet is a goldmine and way bigger than old 80s/90s content, im over 50 and remember the 80s well enough.. a few great well produced documentaries are not a comparable to gigabytes or petabytes of videos and podcasts we have today The cultural format of exch…

You watched all that content. Did you take action on it? What did you make or do as a result?

Is that to be the end result of the pursuit of knowledge, creating something? There is the true dumbing down, insisting on a vague kind of productivity as the point of life.

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

#83

Post by jonathanlydall »

It doesn’t compare to this shot, but I particularly enjoyed the one episode of the The Studio with Seth Rogan where it starts with him driving to a filming location where they were going to do a one shot scene and he was explaining to someone how difficult they are to pull off, etc.

The episode was funny (although cringey too) for the things that happened in it.

But what was quite clever I thought was that the episode was itself done (at least seemingly) in one-shot.

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

#84

Post by tclancy »

chaboud wrote: post #11
wagwang wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last line of the video was talking about nuking others...

Could have just been intercontinental ballistic human transport... I can't tell you how many times I've wished to just be fired out of a cannon to Hong Kong from SF.

We have the technology to do that. What we do not have is circus tents big enough to cover the area.

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

#86

Post by nickdothutton »

I strongly encourage all HN readers to seek out any of his work online. Including the meta, where he tasks about being hired for the job, and the approach he took to communicating. Although some of it will look a little dated, the messages are timeless.

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

#87

Post by hjkl0 »

This is my pet peeve.

I don't know the show, but when I first watched this clip (under the title of "greatest shot on television") I totally bought in to the hype and thought it really was amazing. You start out just walking alongside him, and only slowly realize where you are and what is about to happen, and everything is perfectly timed and composed: he ends his walk, reaches the conclusion of his explanation, and you realize what is going on, all at the exact time the launch begins. Brilliant!

Except that this is not "a shot" at all. I just hadn't noticed on my first watch that there's a very obvious cut just at the end of the "walk". It's a different angle from a different location at a different time of day, and he just has one sentence to say before he looks back at the blast off.

It would be no different from any news reporter on location at the time, reading a prepared message ahead of the launch, timed to end before the launch itself with no need for extensive rehearsals, the launch timing is widely broadcast, you time yourself accordingly with your talking speed, by adding pauses, etc. And on top of everything they probably had to do it live too.

I have no issue with James Burke or his show. And this scene is really beautifully done. But it's not the greatest shot in television. It's not even one shot!

(edited: typos)

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

#88

Post by cheschire »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #83

It doesn’t compare to this shot, but I particularly enjoyed the one episode of the The Studio with Seth Rogan where it starts with him driving to a filming location where they were going to do a one shot scene and he was explaining to someone how difficult they are to pull off, etc. The episode was funny (although cringey too) for the things that happened in it. But what was quite clever I thought was that the episod…

I remember on a podcast interview I listened to that he said he intentionally made every episode as close to a “oner” as possible using very long takes and hidden transitions where possible.

It’s to heighten the sense of anxiety and tension for the viewer in order to amplify the comedy.

Great show!

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

#90

Post by jleyank »

mandevil wrote: post #15
devindotcom wrote: post #2

The full series is on Archive: https://archive.org/details/bbc-connections-1978/Connections... It still holds up for the most part, though of course some of the takes, being almost 50 years old, may seem a bit quaint. It's certainly worth watching the first series at least start to finish. Burke is an interesting guy.

I personally feel like _The Day The Universe Changed_ (his second documentary) is better. I love Connections but the basic thesis (there are hidden connections between disparate developments in science and technology) ends up pretty scattershot, spreading out like Brownian Motion. _tDtUC_ is much more focused. Largely based on Kuhn's _Structure of Scientific Revolutions_ for individual stories, it traces how the unde…

Second the comment re the day the universe changed, and found the episode on how Islamic Spain influenced the world quite surprising. Think it was the 2nd one, starting with two competing views of the world from African Roman scholars/clerics.

Many of these older docu’s wanted you to stop and think.

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