I'm just watching a show called "Combat Zone" an episode called "Ambush at Lake Tharthar, Iraq". It's an pretty engaging story of some troops that drove into an ambush and how they got out.

Some things about this show i like:
1. Telling these stories is great.
2. The use of computer graphics to show the movement of forces on a map is also pretty good, though they do too little of it.

Now for the thing that drives me crazy:

1. These "re-enactment" segments... there's this artificial camera shake introduced for some reason that literally makes me ill. I have to look away from the screen and just listen to the audio. It's ridiculous.

2. The editing of the video: They don't stick with any single shot for more than 2 or 3 seconds... and they intersperse all these useless clips over and over and over again. In this particular episode the same (shaky) shot of a hand on a helicopter control stick is used probably 10 times. Same for an "insurgent" popping up out of the weeds and shooting.

I understand that the budgets are low and time needs to be filled up, but this is ridiculous.
This one hour show is probably 1/4th studio shots of interviews and 3/4ths these "recreations". Let's say there are 30 minutes of recreation video... if i had to guess it is at most 5 minutes of unique video that's just played over and over and over again.

I would much more enjoy a straighter telling of the story without the MTV style editing.

(oh, and in case some marketer is reading this... i'm only 31 and i grew up playing video games from before the time it was "cool", so this isn't a matter of my being "uncomfortable with technology".)

quote:

I would much more enjoy a straighter telling of the story without the MTV style editing.

Well said! I'm 27 and I feel the same way. Not everyone who watches these shows has the attention span of a 5-year old. It's OK to have a shot on screen for more than 1.5 seconds, people!