AV News 187 - February 2012
Observations following the sequences covered the appropriateness of the
music, noise in the images when viewed at two metres, format, use of video,
and one person raising the issue of copyright material.
Another called for greater saturation of the images and the musical
instrument providing their accompaniment was felt to be wrong for the
location being illustrated and needing to be changed. This observation drew
the retort from a seemingly long suffering spouse, "I said that last night when
she changed it...at eight o'clock"!
Video can now be so readily introduced and it was acknowledged we were
seeing some productions which would have perhaps enjoyed the addition.
Conversely several video productions which I have seen could have used
single images to equal effect. One sequence of a documentary subject which
cried out for video lost impact and pace using disolving transitions.
Guest presenter Colin Balls noted that although the facility in the modern
camera may sometimes encourage movie inclusion in some productions, it
called for discretion and very great care to be used. A walking shot in one
sequence highlighted this, demonstrating that image stabilisation is not all it's
cracked up to be. However, equipment to overcome this is readily available,
currently costing about £1,000.
Voiceovers continue to raise concern, the main issues being sound quality
and the legibility of the voice. One script called for much more information,
while the view of another was that the script was back to front. Yet another
was found to be predictable and called for variety of descriptive interest to be
introduced.
Saturation and noise apart, image quality varied surprisingly across the
sequences, more attributable to image origination technique than the
comparative attributes of Proshow v. PTE. Graphics appropriate to the
subject matter by choice of font, size, embellishment and positioning is a
subject alone and one which perhaps calls for mor H