Thursday, May 27, 2004

Good News

Who says there's no justice in this world?

• Posted at 4:09 PM · LINK

Obits

Here's the L.A. Times obit on Jack Bradbury and here's the N.Y. Times on Gill Fox.

• Posted at 3:03 PM · LINK

Happy Harlan Day

A joyous seventieth birthday to my friend of 30+ years, Harlan Ellison. Since he disdains the Internet, he'll probably never know I posted this but maybe the sentiment will mysteriously transfer to that Gutenberg-era "typewriter" contraption he uses. (Then again, he writes some pretty spectacular things on that kind of machine...)

• Posted at 2:55 PM · LINK

More on Five Second Delays

Regarding the five-second delay on a show like the Tony Awards, Bob Foster writes to ask...

Question regarding the 5-second delay: What if someone says or does something that lasts longer than five seconds? If they cuss and throw finger gestures for 15 seconds, what do we see on the screen to cover that time? How does that work?

The way it usually works is that they can cut the audio or the audio and the video. If someone were to say the dreaded "f" word, the Censor-Person would presumably say, "Kill the audio" and they'd take out the sound until such time as it seemed prudent to restore it. They probably can't bleep a specific word on the fly so the sound would just disappear for a period.

If someone exposed themselves or otherwise did something where the visual was deemed offensive, they would probably cut the picture, maybe going to a title card. There's always one ready just in case of technical mishaps. Then they could restore the video after the director had switched to something else..an audience shot, perhaps. It's theoretically possible that a fast-fingered tech director could quickly blur/pixelate part of the screen but they probably wouldn't take the chance. If they were close to the time for a commercial, they would probably just switch to it.

One thing to remember is that with a live show, there's always the chance of a large or small crisis. Cues are missed, microphones go out, etc. The director always has to have contingency plans for the unexpected. They have to ask questions like, "Well, what would we do if someone in the audience just ran up on stage and started delivering a commercial? What if there's a power failure in the theater? What if there's a fire?" The possibility of some actress flashing skin is just another of these possible problems and not even the most dire.

• Posted at 2:50 PM · LINK

Five Second Warning

CBS has announced they're going to put the Tony Awards on a five-second delay this year, presumably to avoid broadcasting something akin to the Super Bowl breast flash. This is a trend that will not last long.

Here's the problem with it: It puts some poor Standards and Practices person in a very awkward position. If someone flashes a forbidden body part or says the "f" word, okay, that's an easy call. But there are plenty of arguable things that can and will happen on live broadcasts. On last year's Tony broadcast, for instance, two men kissed on the lips. If you're the person in the booth with the power to bleep or cut away from that, do you do it? And remember...you only have five seconds to decide. What if someone says, "friggin'?" or does a joke about the president being shot? What if someone utters a remark that many would think was racist? What if someone makes, like Jackie Mason once did on Ed Sullivan's show, a quick, hard-to-see gesture that might possibly have been The Finger? What if someone says something that might have been a naughty word but you're not sure? On taped/filmed shows on which I've worked, I've seen the censor-person replay a tape several times, listening hard, to decide if a certain word had been uttered. I've seen them call others, including their bosses, to discuss a given joke or cleavage. On a live show, one does not have that luxury.

A network's Broadcast Standards department is not, as some people think, there to police what the network thinks is objectionable material. It's there so the network can say, "Hey, we're doing everything we can to be responsible." Right now, in light of Ms. Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction," they demonstrate this with the five-second delay...but this also puts the Standards folks in the hot seat to instantly say that something is or is not acceptable. On a non-delayed live broadcast, at least they can say, "Hey, we would have cut it if we could have."

One of these days soon, the five-second delay will bite them on the ass and it can happen one of two ways. One is that someone makes a quick call not to launder something that is said or shown (or perhaps just misses it) and there are howls of outrage. The other is that the person with their finger on the button pushes it over something that, given more than five seconds to reflect, they might have opted to leave in. Let's imagine that at some award ceremony, some winner gets up and says something like Michael Moore said at the Oscars but in coarser language. The network decides to bleep and that causes an outcry that someone has been censored; that their Free Speech rights have been violated by a nervous network lawyer with an itchy trigger finger. Or maybe it's just a matter of taste and the person who is bleeped feels that what they said or did was not as bad as what America will assume, from the bleep, they said or did. (That's what caused Jack Paar to walk off The Tonight Show. NBC cut an innocuous joke about a Water Closet and people thought Paar had told something truly vulgar.)

The point is that the network wants to avoid protests and the charge that they're irresponsible. It's safer for them to not have the delay so they aren't on the spot to decide what is and what is not acceptable. Once the tumult over the Super Bowl scandal dies out, they'll get rid of the five-second delays because they don't want to make those calls and then have to defend them. Or the delays could go away sooner if there's a brouhaha because someone made or didn't make the right instant decision.

• Posted at 11:37 AM · LINK

Prints Charming

I've been playing with a new toy...the Epson Photo R200 printer. This is not something you want to use for printing out your day-to-day text files or work. Its main functions are to produce (almost) photo-quality prints on glossy photo paper and to print on DVDs and CD Rom discs. I bought it primarily for the latter function, as we are now hearing that labelling your discs with sticky labels or even Sharpie-style markers is not a good idea. These methods will not damage the discs soon but if you're archiving things for posterity, there's a chance of long-range deterioration. If you're going to write on your discs, you should use water-based markers. They're not dark but they put out a legible line. If you're going to get fancy, buy the white, printable blank discs and print on them with a device like the R200.

They're real good for that, though you have to print them one at a time with a special insert shelf that carries the disc into the printer. I recently tried several programs that enable you to design your own labels before settling on SureThing CD Labeller as the best one. The Epson comes with its own design program which is even better, and when the machine prints on a white disc, the result is very impressive. The way it turns JPG photos stored onto your computer into glossy prints is also pretty good, given how inexpensive the printer is. It goes for a little under a hundred bucks at most discount houses and it seems like quite a bargain...

Okay, here comes the "but"...

But here's where they get you: The cartridges. It takes six Epson color cartridges and they ain't cheap. Staples carries them for $18.35 for the black one and $13.25 each for the other five. So buying all six there will run you $84.60. The machine comes with your first six so it's $99 for the machine and six cartridges, then it's $85 for another six cartridges. You get the idea that Epson is selling these contraptions at a loss and figuring they'll make it back on the ink?

There are slightly cheaper alternatives. OfficeMax wants $17.99 for the black one and $12.99 for each of the others so a full set is $82.94. A bit better is Office Depot which is currently getting $16.94 for black and $11.97 for the other five, for a total of $76.79.

Or you can go off-brand. Those prices are all for Epson cartridges. Other companies make compatible cartridges that run around $50 for the set of six. This sounds like a bargain but according to this article from the Consumer Reports people, off-brand cartridges run out faster and the images are more likely to fade. So unless someone tells me they've had an experience to the contrary, I'm going to stick with the Epson variety. Cartridge price aside, it's a great machine and mine is going to get a lot of traffic.

• Posted at 12:09 AM · LINK