:
The BBC has admitted that Alan Yentob, the corporation’s creative director, has performed “noddy shots” on interviews that he did not personally conduct for his arts series Imagine.
In the first instance of a senior BBC executive being drawn into the TV trust issue, a senior corporation source admitted to MediaGuardian.co.uk that Mr Yentob often does not conduct all the interviews on Imagine – even though he appears nodding or reacting to them.
Mr Yentob, one of the BBC’s most senior figures and widely seen as the corporation’s ambassador, conducts many of the major interviews for the series…
However, it is understood that scenes featuring Mr Yentob reacting to some of the more peripheral figures and experts featured in his programmes were edited in even though he was not actually present. Editing work on the programme later gave the impression that he was present.
Oh dear. And I thought all the recent contoversy was just down to sub-contractors and ‘work experience kids’. Do read the rest.
Update: More on noddy and friends from Rod Liddle in the Spectator: The end of the ‘noddy shot’ is a ray of hope for television:
Nobody much likes television, especially not the people who work in it. They think it’s a cretinous medium, a sort of institutionalised con-trick, the cultural equivalent of a McDonald’s Happy Meal — processed excrement which everybody, including the consumer, knows to be dumb and bad for you…
There has been much photogenic hand-wringing and crocodile tears, but in the end I doubt very much that there is the will to change things a great deal…
So, along with the noddy shots, let’s consign a few more of those hackneyed TV devices to the bin. The ludicrous knocking-on-the-door shot, for example — the staple of every TV documentary and something I’ve had to do in almost every film I’ve made. The audience is enjoined to believe that this is a wholly naturalistic event — the presenter, followed by a film crew, wandering up to some interviewee’s front door, knocking and being admitted. I once had to do the door-knocking thing 14 times when about to interview a very thick lady in Leicester, because no matter how much we told her not to, through gritted teeth, she kept opening the door and saying hello to me and then offered a cheery ‘And how are yow?’ to the rest of the crew. Who, of course, the audience is not meant to know exist…
But for too long the television industry has been mired in a self-disgust occasioned by its implacable belief that it must always appeal to the lowest common denominator, that its audience has the IQ of a lamprey. This is as true of even some of the most serious documentaries; it is especially true of evening news reports.
Amen about the evening news. Another article worth reading in full.
Thank you to The Fat Contractor for the Spectator link.
“Oh, but the viewers know that already”. “It’s part of the language of televison”. Etc.
The use of noddies is a tried and tested (and a bit of a cheesy)technique for providing some sort of cutaway to cover an edit.
The convention is accepted by viewers, on the grounds that the interviewer is merely “repeating” a few nods and gestures that he/she would have made during the interview anyway.
If you only have one camera, they are shot just afterwards, (as are questions, sometimes) instead of during, as you would if you had two cameras, one on the subject and one on the interviewer.
To shove in a noddy later when a minion actually did the interview for you is deception, pure and simple.
Sam Duncan | 07.09.07 – 7:53 pm |
“Oh, but the viewers know that already”. “It’s part of the language of televison”. Etc.
Surely anyone with a passing knowledge of television knows that ‘noddys’ are used to punctuate interviews and cover interviewee actions (like nose picking, looking into the camera etc) and are rarely sinister. To concentrate on ‘noddys’ is to let the BBC off the hook.
What is the next complaint going to be, that bands mime their songs on TOTP?
There is an issue where the ‘noddys’ show delight (NuLiebore interviewee) or scorn and derision (Tory interviewee) on the interviewers face. But even then it’s abit obvious don’t you think?
The real problems lie in the re-wording of interview questions to change the percieved meaning of the interviewees response or the juxtapositioning of film clips which contradict the interviewee. No doubt there are many other subtler tricks they get upto. I’m more concerned about the constant propaganda mixed into drama and childrens programmes, the constant debasement of science and the AGW Swindle than this.
Somehow, no matter what the outcome of the Great Noddy Debate, the Noddy will rise again from the grave, like Mandelson, to be reborn again.
Incidently Rod Liddle has addressed this subject in the Spectator today.
Yes, concentrating only on noddies would be a mistake, but as Rod Liddle points out (excellent piece, by the way; I’m only checking BBBC right now because I’ve just read it and wanted to see if anyone else had posted about it), it’s symbolic of a disregard for the viewers’ intelligence. Yes, most of us know that it’s done (although I wasn’t so aware of the “staged question”, which is what Yentob was up to, and is arguably more dishonest), but surely the only reason it is done is to give the false appearance of the interviewer genuinely reacting at the time. Otherwise, why bother?
And once this minor untruth became accepted, no wonder programme makers went further: doorstep shots, staged questions, altering chronological order in editing… all the way up to assuming everyone shares their political beliefs. It’s all part of a continuum of contempt for those of us outside their world.
Sam Duncan | 07.09.07 – 9:39 pm |
Otherwise, why bother?
AFAIUI it was originally, as I said, to cover up interviewee actions that wouldn’t look right on tv such as nose picking and looking down the lens. In that usage I don’t have a problem with it, pretty much as I don’t have a problem with bands miming. I’d rather hear them sing, but hey.
I’m not sure it has led to real dishonesty, that, I think was already there – although it’s an attractive theory.
Liddle, incidently, is wrong about the Queen incident tho’. I’d say that was more about Republicanism and trying to make Her Majesty look bad than chasing ratings.
Note: the Spectator link seems to be incorrect
jg | 08.09.07 – 10:06 am |
Altogether now ‘Oh no it isn’t!’ 😉
Er, oh yes it was – in my update to the blog post! Sorry. It’s fixed now. 🙂