If an interesting way of reading from a slide sounds like an oxymoron, have a look at THIS to see how the same lines can be read forwards and backwards - but make sure you stay with it all the way through.
How to make reading a slide sound interesting
If an interesting way of reading from a slide sounds like an oxymoron, have a look at THIS to see how the same lines can be read forwards and backwards - but make sure you stay with it all the way through.
PowerPoint style presentation continues to dominate BBC News – courtesy Robert Peston (again)
In a number of previous posts (here and here), I’ve complained about the obsession of BBC Television news (and other) programmes with increasingly elaborate and confusing graphics.
I can see that using computerised graphics is cheaper than sending reporters and camera crews out to film newsworthy events, but they leave the average viewer (e.g. me) ever more baffled and confused about what tonight's gripping messages are supposed to be.
As if the distracting information overload inflicted on us by the daily diet of PowerPoint presentations isn’t depressing enough, our premier public service broadcaster is still giving us yet another dose of much the same thing on its prime-time evening news bulletins.
Tonight’s offering from Robert Preston plumbed new depths (see below). The ‘news story’ was actually a lecture, disguised as television news footage by flashing moving numbers on the screen, followed by a still picture with a bullet point on it purporting to explain what the biggest of the numbers is supposed to mean.
Just in case anyone was getting bored or baffled by Peston’s monologue at this stage, he suddenly materialises, still talking, on a small TV screen in the corner of a room, from which furniture and fittings keep disappearing – possibly because they can’t stand any more of it either.
Our esteemed business correspondent then returns to his natural habitat, standing next to a screen with slides on it, before we finally get to see a few seconds of film of buildings in the City of London that are presumably intended to make us feel that his PowerPoint presentation was a news story after all.
(I'd be interested to hear from visitors from outside the UK whether this bizarre development in television news coverage is a peculiarly British phenomenon or is a world-wide trend).
I can see that using computerised graphics is cheaper than sending reporters and camera crews out to film newsworthy events, but they leave the average viewer (e.g. me) ever more baffled and confused about what tonight's gripping messages are supposed to be.
As if the distracting information overload inflicted on us by the daily diet of PowerPoint presentations isn’t depressing enough, our premier public service broadcaster is still giving us yet another dose of much the same thing on its prime-time evening news bulletins.
Tonight’s offering from Robert Preston plumbed new depths (see below). The ‘news story’ was actually a lecture, disguised as television news footage by flashing moving numbers on the screen, followed by a still picture with a bullet point on it purporting to explain what the biggest of the numbers is supposed to mean.
Just in case anyone was getting bored or baffled by Peston’s monologue at this stage, he suddenly materialises, still talking, on a small TV screen in the corner of a room, from which furniture and fittings keep disappearing – possibly because they can’t stand any more of it either.
Our esteemed business correspondent then returns to his natural habitat, standing next to a screen with slides on it, before we finally get to see a few seconds of film of buildings in the City of London that are presumably intended to make us feel that his PowerPoint presentation was a news story after all.
(I'd be interested to hear from visitors from outside the UK whether this bizarre development in television news coverage is a peculiarly British phenomenon or is a world-wide trend).
The 'magic' of Oscar acceptance speeches
It's an interesting fact that, at school speech days and company award-giving events, the lucky winners do not get to make acceptance speeches - with result that audiences are spared the endless succession of embarrassing expressions of surprise, gratitude and false modesty that are the norm at the annual Academy Awards and Golden Globe ceremonies.
If acceptance speeches aren’t considered a necessary part of such events in the world outside show business, it raises the question of why the organizers allow and encourage Oscar winners to say anything at all – other than, perhaps, Alfred Hitchcock’s minimalist masterpiece (“Thank you”) back in 1967.
Do they really think that anyone wants to hear the succession of rambling thanks to everyone who ever existed (including Clint Eastwood’s mother for passing on her genes to him) or the uncontrolled emotional outbursts from the likes of Halle Berry, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Winslet?
The answer is obviously an emphatic “yes”. Otherwise, without the unpredictable possibility of such embarrassing excesses, movie award ceremonies would be so boring that no one would ever watch them, let alone pay large sums of money to broadcast such magical moments to the wider world.
(See here for Paul Hogan's much ignored good advice on award winners' speeches and some reflections on why speech-making doesn't come naturally to actors).
If acceptance speeches aren’t considered a necessary part of such events in the world outside show business, it raises the question of why the organizers allow and encourage Oscar winners to say anything at all – other than, perhaps, Alfred Hitchcock’s minimalist masterpiece (“Thank you”) back in 1967.
Do they really think that anyone wants to hear the succession of rambling thanks to everyone who ever existed (including Clint Eastwood’s mother for passing on her genes to him) or the uncontrolled emotional outbursts from the likes of Halle Berry, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Winslet?
The answer is obviously an emphatic “yes”. Otherwise, without the unpredictable possibility of such embarrassing excesses, movie award ceremonies would be so boring that no one would ever watch them, let alone pay large sums of money to broadcast such magical moments to the wider world.
(See here for Paul Hogan's much ignored good advice on award winners' speeches and some reflections on why speech-making doesn't come naturally to actors).
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