Date: 2008-10-27 17:41 Subject: Thermodynamics for Editors Security: Public Tags: nonsense, television

I don't know if I just have an unusual alertness for the increase of chaos in the universe (perhaps something teachers pick up?), but I'm troubled by a curious phenomenon on my television.

It's happened to bonfires, torches, historic fountains, and -- most recently -- a gang of carp from Mantua.

It's a cutting room thing:  As near as I can figure, TV doc filmmakers have a little obsession with order when cutting together the scenic stuff that fills the screen while the host's disembodied voice spends a little time illuminating some issue of art history, human sacrifice, sasquatch, etc.. I'm guessing it's something about rhythm and movement they learned in film school.

And so to keep the pans or zooms neat and tidy, the cutting room guys are altering time.  I've seen steam settle back into hot beverages, fountain-figures greedily slurping up the leaping cascades of Roman fountains, and, most recently, a school of carp swimming backward around an Italian pond in a Renaissance pleasure palace.

What is it with these guys that they assume we won't notice a sudden inversion of the laws of nature?  Tidying up the pans and zooms of the stock shot collection shouldn't involve time travel.  People are bound to notice.  I mean.  Why not show the film upside down?  That'd solve the problem.  They don't show people or cars zorching around backward, but fish?  Fire?  And we should notice?  It's ridiculous. 

Err.  I mean, I'm assuming that's what's happening.

It's entirely possible that the carp were swimming backward.  The little guys did seem to be concentrating rather intensely.

Oooh.  Maybe they were actually swimming backward!  Maybe they were tired of the tourists and the film cameras and...  Forget I said anything.  I just saw backward disgruntled Italian carp!  Smarter than dolphins!

~Dave