TV from hell

ON SEPTEMBER 15, the Danes are going to elect a new parliament. The election date was announced as late as Friday, leaving only twenty days for our media to revel in polls and pundits. Maybe that is why Danish TV now invites me to watch 200-or-so videos at the same time?

AT THE START OF THE SHOW, the anchor, Kim Bildsøe Lassen, commented on his new wall-of-images with great excitement: ”Here you will be able to see everything that happens during the election campaign”. But of course I won’t. The only thing I can see is that something is happening. For all I know, they could show mud boxing or synchronized swimming on every third screen and I wouldn’t notice.

THE BIG MAP is supposed to reveal where in our country (which, as you probably know, is huge) the top candidates will be on any given time or day. On this first evening, apparently everyone was in Copenhagen as that was where the opening TV debate was held.

LUCKILY ENOUGH, the screens are pretty small and the images generally quite blurred so normal people will make no attempts to decode them. If they tried, they would probably miss most of what was said (and then again, you can discuss how great a disaster that would be).
So, obviously, the reason for producing and broadcasting this abundance of moving images is not that DR expects anyone to actually try to follow them. The point is only to show that ”a hell of a lot is happening”. Please God, let us not be boring.

You can check out Kandidaterne yourself on http://www.dr.dk/nu/player/#/valg-2011/16453

One idea is better than two

IN THE VERY SAME WEEK as TIME Magazine announced ”THE DECLINE AND FALL OF EUROPE” on their cover, the Danish newspaper Information ran this article about everything going wrong in the USA. The headline says ”United States of America – a failed state”.
Are western media playing some variety of ”pass the monkey” these critical days?
Anyway, what caught my attention was the page design. It exemplifies a mistake often made by creative people working in the communication business: Instead of trying to control their own creativity with a specific purpose, they seem to allow it to flow freely, letting everything out.

I DON’T KNOW how many people were involved in this page design. Maybe just one person. Most likely, one individual got the idea of using the photo of a poor, lonesome, frightened New Orleans kid in the aftermaths of the 2005 Katrina hurricane as a metaphor for the overall situation of the United States of America. Rather tendentious, you might say, but not a bad idea, and quite a strong photograph.

BUT THEN a second idea enters the stage. You can almost hear someone suggesting, enthusiastically: ”Now what if we wrote UNITED STATES OF AMERICA with stars-and-stripes-letters?”. Yeah, great thinking, let’s do it, the whole newsdesk responds.
Consequently, a lot of effort has been put into designing a stars-and-stripes headline. And this is where it all went wrong.
Because now when I – the reader – open the centrefold, my attention gets divided. Half of me wants to look at the colorful headline and the other half tries to concentrate on the photo – which, thereby, loses just about half of its impact.
The final result is a story that works OK, but no more than that. And that is a shame, as considerable resources were obviously devoted to both contents and presentation.

SEE HOW MUCH MORE POWERFUL this spread could have been if only the editor/designer had managed to restrain his/her creativity and trust the photograph to do the job of grabbing the reader’s attention and visualizing the essence of the story:

IN OTHER WORDS: One idea is better than two!

(and of course, the second idea – the stars-and-stripes-headline – ought to be memorized and eventually used for another story. Because, even though it may seem – is, in fact – a bit obvious, this is a trick that has worked before and will no doubt do it again …)

Morsom mobning – uklar kommunikation

GANSKE SOM Politikens tegner Roald Als anvender faste rollefigurer i sine tegninger – Anders Fogh som hulemand, Pia Kjærsgaard i muddergrøften – har Ekstra Bladet for vane at etablere øgenavne og bruge dem konsekvent, hver gang de pågældende personer omtales. Ofte er det vældig underholdende, selv om det samtidig giver ubehagelige mindelser om skolegården og de stakler, der i årevis måtte trækkes med prædikater som ”Fessor”, ”Tykke” osv.
Godt det ikke er mig det går ud over, tænker man – endnu en gang.

AT UDNÆVNE SVERIGES MONARK til ”stripperkonge” er unægtelig også morsomt, fordi det på en herligt respektløs – og typisk Ekstrabladsk – måde minder os om Carl Gustavs uortodokse og meget omtalte måde at bruge de svenske skatteyderes penge på, og samtidig genopfrisker navnet på en populær tv-serie.
Men når Ekstrabladet.dk går ud fra at øgenavnet er så indarbejdet, at vi umiddelbart vil forstå at det er Carl Gustav der sigtes til når de skriver ”stripperkongen” i en rubrik, overvurderer nyhedssitet måske sin egen betydning som fælles referenceramme:

UNDERTEGNEDE var ihvertfald forvirret i ganske lang tid før sagens rette sammenhæng gik op for mig. Og måtte igennem adskillige fejlræsonnementer såsom: ”Jamen de har da ikke engang fået børn sammen endnu, hvordan kan Daniel så blive morfar?” og ”Han kan da umuligt blive morfar, det må da være farfar …” før det gik op for mig at fotografiet ikke forestiller ”stripperkongen” men dennes svigersøn.
 
MED ANDRE ORD, et billede af Victoria sammen med sin far ville have gjort underværker for den visuelle kommunikation.
Keep it simple, stupid.

Explaining goodness

USUALLY, IT IS SO MUCH EASIER to describe why something is bad than why something is good.

This photographic portrait from today’s Berlingske Tidende inspired me to make an attempt pointing out the particular qualities which make this a great photograph.

AT FIRST GLANCE, the photo simply follows fashion with its black-and-white aesthetics and it also contains quite a few of the features which we often see used as clichés in contemporary press photography, and which I have been criticizing in earlier blogposts (in Danish; my apologies to eventual readers from countries outside Scandinavia).

Focusing on a mirror image is something we see all the time, just like the large out-of-focus area and the quite small part of the photograph which actually shows the motif: A man who is suffering from impotence after a prostate cancer surgery.

BUT THIS PHOTO is not a cliché. Far from it. And why is that?

Because the abovementioned features all serve their purposes. The very topic of the reportage is how men in this kind of situation are seeing themselves, hence the mirror. The man’s nakedness suggests sexuality, another key issue of the story, without any pornographic hints whatsoever; his dignity remains unharmed.

His eyes are extremely expressive, maybe the highlight of this photograph. But the view of the man from behind adds something more to our impression of him, it is not just the symptom of superficial artsiness which you might suspect. Seeing a human body from that angle will inspire the viewer to associate to age, health, weakness; other things that are all very relevant to this story.

TO DRAW A CONCLUSION, this is a very successful photograph. In its own right and, even more, because it adds so much to the story. Words and visuals are going hand in hand.

It would be interesting to learn how the photographer, Christian Als, had been briefed for this assignment and how he was working together with the reporter, Cecilie Gormsen.

Nettet – de meningsløse billeders paradis

BEVIDSTLØST ELLER TALENTLØST? Det er spørgsmålet man må stille sig, når man ser hvordan billeder fortsat bliver brugt – og misbrugt – i danske medier, her nitten år efter at uddannelsen til billedjournalist (senere fotojournalist) blev søsat på Danmarks Journalisthøjskole.

På den ene side konfronteres vi med stribevis af overkonstruerede, fortænkte fotos, der i udviklingens hellige navn bliver tildelt spalteplads i den trykte presse – først og fremmest fagbladene – på trods af at de ikke tjener andre formål end at tilfredsstille fotografernes behov for selvrealisering og trangen til at markere sig i den evige jagt på noget nyt og anderledes. Eksempler herpå er omtalt i tidligere blogindlæg.

På den anden side drukner vi – især på nettet – i en syndflod af meningsforladte billeder, der ville være ligegyldige, hvis ikke det var fordi de optog dyrebart skærmareal som kunne bruges til noget der gav mening.

For eksempel tekst.

EKSEMPEL: Kristian Hansen fra Computerworld vandt årets Bordingpris for journalistik. I over 100 artikler på computerworld.dk har han belyst, hvordan medarbejdere i danske kommuner tegnede kontrakter med KMD, en af landets største it-virksomheder, uden udbud – og samtidig modtog gaver fra it-firmaet. At Kristian Hansen har udført et fremragende stykke arbejde og så rigeligt fortjener hæderen, kan der næppe herske tvivl om; men prøv lige at se på billedsiden!

KOMPLET VISUEL TOMGANG og spild af plads. Jamen det ligger i vores skabeloner, hører vi redaktionen forsvare sig; der skal være et foto i toppen. Okay, og de skabeloner er måske dumpet ned fra himlen?

I weblayout er rubrikker vigtigere end billeder. Det er ikke noget vi tror, det er noget vi ved, for at citere en tidligere statsminister. Så hvorfor vælger et netmedie – oven i købet med et emneområde, hvor ni ud af ti historier handler om abstrakte forhold og derfor er vanskelige at illustrere – en skabelon der forudsætter at samtlige nyheder indledes med et billede?

DEN ENESTE plausible forklaring er at redaktionen ingenting ved om billedkommunikation – og heller ikke interesserer sig for det.
We don’t know, and we don’t care.