perfect
Yesterday’s blog comparing Ali Ghanbari’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to Pat Lafferty’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier set off an interesting discussion in the comments department.
Many professional journalists and cameramen and women took to the defense of the ‘professional’ piece with examples of where Lafferty had failed.
OK.
What I found interesting here in the beginning was that someone like Pat Lafferty with exactly four days of training and using a Sony camcorder that costs $900, no professional microphones, only the built in mic and cutting FCP could even come close to a massive award winning professional. Clearly, something very seminal is happening in the industry.
Upon later consideration, and reading a few of the comments, often from professional cameramen, they found Lafferty’s piece ‘connected’ with the subject better than Ghanbari’s.
This may or may not be true.
Television at this level is a fairly esoteric and subjective ‘science’.
But if they are right, it might be because Lafferty is, besides being COO at McCann, a retired former marine.
In a way, I think Lafferty’s piece ‘connects’ on such a fundamental level is because he has chosen a topic about his he has personal passion and history.
This, I think, is also a harbinger of ‘things to come’.
The days of the ‘professional’ piece maker – whether it’s local news or a series for Discovery are going to be replaced by stories made and told by people who have a personal passion for the stories they are telling.
Hair splitting aside, there really is not 30 years worth of professional experience difference (so to speak) between the two pieces. And that says a lot for the technology.
But when the technology gets so good, so easy and so affordable, then people who have a personal passion can get their hands on it and we’re in a whole new world.
Today, most TV shows are cranked out by technical professionals who, while they are very good at their work, are equally content to produce Ice Road Truckers or Miami Ink. To them its all the same.
But soon we will have a generation of real Ice Road Truckers telling their own stories.
And that, I think, will be a whole new world.
