I’m sure a good many of you have heard the news about the current spate of murders near Ipswich over here, but if you haven’t, basically we’ve got a good, old fashioned serial killer on the loose. He (or she) seems to be targetting prostitutes.
As you might imagine, friends of the murdered who are also in that profession (or not, as the case may be) are often not that happy to appear on TV. The TV news over here has compensated for this in an interesting way.
Interviews with them are done with the interviewee off-screen, whilst the presenter nods condescendingly, as they are wont to do.
Voices are dubbed over by actors.
So, we have an interview in which we can neither see nor hear the actual interviewee. Am I the only one who sees this as pretty pointless? Why not just read out a statement, instead of resorting to unneeded dramatics on what’s already a pretty infamous situation?
My favorite is, “How did you feel as <insert hideous happening here>?” How the fuck do you think I felt? What, are they just verifying that the person isn’t a socio/psychopath who feels nothing?
On this side of the pond, news stations do something equally annoying. They interview some toothless hillbilly who has absolutely no connection to the story. “So there I wuz, jawin’ with Cletus, when we sees this big ol’ hound dog, an’ we wuz all ‘Woo hoo!’”
“In the Presidio this evening, a house apparently came crashing down a hillside as a result of a sinkhole. We now go live to the scene where Asian reporter Trisha Takanawa is with an eyewitness.”
“What happened when the house fell into the sinkhole?”
“Well, the house was up there, and I guess with all the rain, it started sliding, and then it just came down! Right into that hole down there.”
“So you’re saying the house fell into the sinkhole?”
“Yeah, yeah! The house came crashing down into the sinkhole!”