The Best Timed Shot in TV History (Probably)
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This is one of the things I really notice in movies. Whenever something explodes in a fight sequence (eg Marvel movies[1]) the sound matches the explosion exactly. I find it annoying although I suspect the average movie-goer would be put off if the sound was realistically delayed.
Aren't they the same thing?
Seek to 4m46s https://youtu.be/kqYenzBwlkU?si=y87R0XvuWL8_7t6Q&t=286
If my memory is right, the actual scene, and delay, is longer than it is in this clip.
I hope this kind of thing catches on. If a movie shows a distant explosion and its sound is heard at the moment of the explosion, you don’t really think about it. But when they treat the sound accurately, it really grabs your attention.
You need some emotion, some performance. Kubrick got that and managed to achieve this in 2001 by combining the emotional austerity of spaceflight with an artificial intelligence who, in an inversion of expectation, is the emotive one. Then he exploited this for the climax, the loss of HAL's personality, being.
Lacking a HAL like element, especially in a film that has one actress, you can't make the humans dull, you need some emotional experience to attach to. In the context of Gravity, that means dramatic calls and the sounds of her human presence. People don't go to the cinema to listen to an ATC feed.
If you haven’t watched Apollo 11 I highly recommend it
I gotta point out though that Apollo 11 (2019) boxed 15M and Gravity (2013) boxed 723M USD, which sort of illustrates my point.
Flames are chemical reaction. Surface of the flame is where oxygen rich fresh air interfaces with fuel rich, oxygen-depleted hot plasma.
The nuclear bomb can cause secondary chemical fires, but the fireball itself has does not have "flame" look to it.
At least one might be familiar with the effect when seeing videos of controlled demolitions. Or just fireworks.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24249084
Seems the video has been taken down....
It was mostly full of sports events where some text appears on screen at the exact moment of something else. I think most of them were comedic.
https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/1bihza/breathing_inf...
https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/comments/3mb05q/xpost...
https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/1nq7w2/frank_gore_sh...
Also available on YouTube and torrents.
If they just put up everything they already made they could charge more than Netflix IMO. Instead, god knows why, it's a limited selection that too from which some missing episodes due to the usual 'woke' rewriting of history & present (racist or whatever-ist people exist right, so what's the problem with a show having such a character? Doesn't mean it's right, nor that the show itself is that-ist).
You're in for a treat, especially if you can enjoy the 70s stylings of James Burke. I particularly enjoy his dry wit which would probably be toned down quite a bit for modern serious productions.
> the usual 'woke' rewriting of history & present
It's not so much rewriting (unless you're a publisher looking for free publicity), but attempting to not broadcast very offensive material that was considered normal back in the day (much as slavery used to be considered normal). Personally, I was quite a fan of "Till Death Us Do Part" featuring Alf Garnett as a racist bigot, but then I can appreciate irony and that the programmes were making the point that he was a character to be lampooned and pitied. However, there's too many people that would accept it at face value and use it to justify their vile racism, so I can understand that it's not suitable for modern consumption.
Britbox doesn't publish their standalone app library but googling the two names together doesn't suggest they have it either.
I suspect for much of the older stuff it's licensing issues making it not worth the time to verify, in their view. Just because it's BBC production doesn't mean there isn't 3rd party stuff that has to be checked.
That and content, they probably don't want to air everything they did in the 60s/70s for example, for fear of being buried in complaints...
It's all fixable, but may not be considered worth the effort. Sometimes not worth the effort to audit even.
FWIW Time Life were involved in a number of distribution arrangements with the BBC, there's some details here [2].
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078588/companycredits/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Life_Television#Televisio...
I think Robert Murray-Smith would be a great host. He has some of the same energy as Burke and he has some history-related videos on YouTube that has some of the same style of storytelling.
Kathy Joseph would be great for the research side. Her book "The Lightning Tamers" is pretty good at describing some of these weird connections and interesting stories throughout the history of electricity.
After watching his videos every day for months now I am still not sure where on the "technical genius" to "free energy advocate" spectrum I should place him.
I mean most of his builds are technically correct (e.g. most of his generators produce a voltage), but he often glosses over details that in practice make the idea unfeasible (e.g. a voltage does not help you if the generator can not provide enough current).
Other times he is just wrong ... just because whales and "tree-spinning-things" have similar "wings" does not mean that you can blow up the same shape to a wind turbine size. (The reason behind that is that the smaller you get the more viscous air becomes (relatively) ... flies and other small insects literally swim through the air because of that. Imo that could be an explanation why the tree-spinny-things have a similar shape, they are just small enough that they "swim", too.)
Read down until 'similarity of flows'
https://cooperlab.wustl.edu/PracticalAdvice/Purcell%201977.p...
[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/u8GMcpEN9Z6aQiCvp/rule-think...
In think some of his videos are directly inspired by pages like https://507movements.com/mm_100.html ... So you might like that too :-)
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/11/fans-of-connections-...
> Television is entirely different. I remember walking around the world with a film crew, sometimes 15 people, and pointing at a bush and saying, "What am I doing here?" That's very time-consuming and expensive, and we no longer need that kind of thing. This time, there's no money. [...] Nobody went anywhere, so we didn't get up and catch planes all the time. And nothing got in the way of the story except me. All I did was stand and talk. Because of the structure, the nature of the production style, the story can move more densely and more quickly than ever before.
I don't know if I agree with him that it's a good thing. One of the things I loved about the original Connections was the experiential aspect of it. James Burke in front of a green screen is just James Burke in front of a green screen.
I think that "quality of the recordings" thing is just something you have to learn to get over. They're not actually bad.
The credit goes to the production team (including Burke, but presumably also his producer and camera) for thinking up the shot in the first place. For delivery, there are far more stressful and impressive live timings done every day around the world
It's just a skill you can practice and some people get quite good at it.
One difference with this is if you miss the lyrics, you can just try again next time. There's a new song every few minutes.
There was only ever one launch of Voyager 2.
Get the timing wrong on Eurovision, despite having one every year, and 100 million+ people will know it.
I get that it probably wasn't in the production schedule, but strictly speaking they could have come back a couple weeks later and done the shot with the voyager 1 launch.
Science is cool, rockets too, but the finesse of this shot hasn’t been seen since.
For timing, The article’s example is pinnacle. For just best shot, Tiger Wood’s 2005 shot. Best photograph shot: Earthrise from Apollo 8.
There's a lot more that goes into that piece end to end. The more you watch it, the more you tend to appreciate and marvel at the fact that it was all done live. It was probably just another round of play and day in the office for the production team, but when you shoot sports at the highest level, you better be prepared when you get that once in a career shot.
So you'd have to be an expert on all of these epic moments, being able to draw them in proportion, and then have the expert pick the best. With panels, seasons of different topics, and a grand finale it would make a great TV show. You could sell the format, and become a millionaire..
..or accept the author's humility (with word 'probably'), assume the author is no expert on the field (neither am I regarding football), and go on with your life.
And it's a strong argument. The BBC rocket shot was about timing, and it was pretty damn good, but everything was 100% scripted and precisely timed, and could have been practiced and rehearsed dozens of times. The Tiger Woods shot was live, obviously, and relies on a confluence of good fortune -- of 360 degrees, the cameraman was exactly behind the ball, he did a masterful job of following its movement while continuously tightening up the shot (an ultra-close-up of the ball is uncommon), the producer sticking with that shot an extra two seconds rather than switching to a reaction, the ball displaying the Nike logo, and finally, the extraordinary physics of the the ball stopping before finally dropping into the cup. And of course the person, place and time -- 16th hole on Sunday at the most famous golf course at the most famous tournament by the most famous golfer to take the lead and ultimately win the Masters. And finally, Verne Lundquist making one of the greatest and most memorable calls of all time, just naturally off the cuff, amazing. In your life!
TFA doesn’t say “best television shot” though, it says “best timed television shot”.
> The BBC rocket shot was about timing, and it was pretty damn good, but everything was 100% scripted and precisely timed
Well, yes. That’s why everybody is talking about it as the best timed television shot and why people are puzzled at this golf shot being brought up where timing is not particularly relevant.
That’s all. I was sleepy and wanted to share another cool video.
I had to go back and watch it again (not memorable enough to me after just the length of time to read your reply, apparently!) - are you talking about 'Oh my goodness. Oh wow! In your life did you seen [sic] anything like that?!'? I don't follow golf, or know the name (Lundquist I mean, obviously Woods) but what's.. what am I missing, why's that 'amazing' 'just naturally off the cuff'?
At 3:20:50 of [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PreYFbNZpVU) is another all-time legendary shot at the Masters. But the announcers say nothing for nearly a full minute and finally concede "words do not do justice to the greatness of that shot." By contrast, Verne found the perfect words instantaneously and delivered them masterfully (no pun intended).
As far as the words he improvised, I would challenge you to find examples of other sentences in news or literature or culture that start with the exact phrase "In your life" (followed by "have you seen", not "did", your prior comment is incorrect). The guy basically created a new sentence structure in the language right on the spot, on the biggest stage.
And I'm far from the the only one who considers this a great call. Here are a few lists which place this specific call as the top-ranked golf announcing moment and among the top 10 sports calls, ever: https://syndication.bleacherreport.com/amp/1433660-the-most-... https://nypost.com/2020/01/08/ranking-the-greatest-sports-br... https://www.nbcsports.com/mlb/news/the-32-best-calls-in-spor... https://golf.com/news/ranking-the-greatest-broadcast-calls-o...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYscemhnf88&t=71s
[^1]: technically broadcast on tape delay, but for Al Michaels, it was live[^2].
[^2]: https://nypost.com/2020/01/08/the-story-behind-al-michaels-i...
Filmed using the rover camera remote controlled from Houston, with a latency of about a second from a command was sent until the camera responded
People tend to forget every manned moon landing site is also a launch site. Sure, there's no atmosphere to disturb the dust since we left, but the liftoff exhaust didn't care much about that.
A launch that knocked over the flag over eight meters away[1] almost certainly also left a smoothly blown-out depression where most of the first footprints were, no matter how inert the site has been since then.
And beside that, between the two of them there was enough traffic in and out of the module that the first footprints were probably stepped on over and over again.
[1] https://history.nasa.gov/alsj/ApolloFlags-Condition.html
Yes, it's possible to mess up the shot, but the odds were in their favor.
Also the walk is filmed South of the Vehicle Assembly Building looking North. Whereas the Voyager 2 took off from LC-41 which is East of the VAB
(It's not the lens - That's a pet peeve of mine, it's not the lens. The z-divide in any graphics simulation is what appears to compress or expand depth. The lens merely makes a shorter or farther camera distance practical. The lens themselves don't distort anything until you're talking about fisheye effects.)
Yes, thank you. It's quite unbelievable how many people get this wrong, even on specialized photography forums and the like.
It was also pretty common to have that countdown broadcast over the radio, as many people would show up just to watch the rocket launch. Even without a radio broadcast, it'd be as simple as a walkie talkie inside the control room and another with the filming team.
This shows up on the internet every few months, and I'm still astounded by how much attention it gets. It is not nearly as remarkable as portrayed.
This is why we can't have nice things.
If it was true, nobody would get nervous about the FOBS at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_Orbital_Bombardment...
It's probably a common skill in presenting, on radio / DJing they call it "hitting the post" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_broadcasting_terms...
All launches are timed, even the shortest notification window is 24 hours for a launch, I could go make this same exact video every week at Cape Canaveral.
I understand the show (with Burke) is coming back[0].
Can't wait.
[0] https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/11/fans-of-connections-...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L37Rckt5WFA
I'm kidding. Mostly.
(Without post production fix up magic, of course)
This is an impressive example of exactly that .. but is it the most impressive example, indeed.
Off hand I don't know of other great examples.
You say its trivial, but is it?
How many times have you tried it?
What makes this one the "best" is that this shot needed to be done right or it couldn't have been done again for years to come (at least if the launch itself was meant to be somewhat meaningful). A myriad of things could have gone wrong but didn't. Of course it's also easy to see they had some tolerances to work with (turning away from the camera to say "that" while standing motionless to make sped up or dropped frames less obvious if they had been necessary).
It's a lot like videos of trick (ball) shots: if you saw them together with all the ones that didn't work, the ones that did wouldn't really stand out much. But when the stars align and everything just "flows" like it should, that gives many people a fuzzy feeling and that's what this TV shot does. It's like a choreographed dance routine.
There were 32 U.S. launches that year. They could have tried again in a matter of weeks. For all we know this was the third or fourth attempt.
Plus, realize that we looked at it with the headline "most amazingly timed shot in TV history", which made us look for something extraordinary. It must have been a totally different experience to see this on TV at the time, half asleep learning about rocket fuel, and all of a sudden the guy points in the direction of the launchpad and a rocket lifts off.
It is not. Filming things is actually pretty difficult.
/s
planets or peking
that was unnecessary. always the need for war.