Thumbs down for 'noddys'

This post has nothing to do with Simon, much to do with television. In the United Kingdom, where the television industry is going through a phase of agonizing self-analysis, the head of Channel Five news has asked his staff to refrain from using creative editing tricks such as noddys. MediaGuardian defines the term...

A few words of explanation. The noddy is a decades-old technique used to cover up an edit in a television news report. The producer wants to jump from one part of an interviewee's words to another, but wants to avoid a sudden jolt on screen. So once the interview is in the can, the reporter is filmed nodding and the footage is inserted into the middle.

Other banned techniques include: the over-the-shoulder cut-away, in which the viewer is shown the face of the interviewer and the back of the interviewee's head; the staged or reverse question, where a reporter who has finished an interview is filmed asking his questions again - though this time to an empty chair (which is, of course, not shown); the contrived set-up shot, where an interviewee is filmed walking up some stairs or at his desk pretending to talk on the phone. (This is used to give a reporter pictures to talk over while he explains who the interviewee is and why they're part of the story.)

BBC's Newsnight helped vieres to understand the phenemenon by showing a news report using these televisual syntax devices and then a version in which they were avoided. Heated discusssion ensued.

I found it amazing that 144 people commented on these tricks of the trade. I find here echoes of the altercation when Cinéma Verité had us all agog back in the sixties, and more recently when the Dogme school of filmmaking was the flavour of the day.

We can, of course, pursue the Grail of transparency and authenticity to its absurdist conclusions and ban the use of chroma-key backgrounds, forbid the use of make-up and hair-spray, build no morespectacular post-modern sets.

But the fact remains, and will always do so unless a report is broadcast totally unedited, that the mere selection of what will be transmitted and what will end up on the cutting-room floor aldready constitutes a manipulation of the content. I have the strong impression that this topic is akin to theorizing abut the number of angels can dance on the head of a pin.