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BILL COTTON/REFORM…Sweet television music?

Aug 25, 2008 Features / Columnists

Bill was going to de Banks Super Concert. Then he met (as you Guyanese say) the traffic and gave up the ghost. Perhaps Bill will do a deal with the GDF for them to drop me in from that Bell helicopter next time.

Instead, Bill went to watch it ‘pon tv. That was a disappointment. Not NCN’s proudest moment. The essence of Good TV stadium music is TV: telly and vision. Plus sound. Not much of any of those. Noise first. Old Guyanese habits die hard, and so, too, did the sound all too regularly.

The over excitable MC in the purple suit kept telling the crowd to “Make some noise!!’ Maybe they did, but Bill could not hear it at home. The crowd makes an event like this. This was like watching performers in a goldfish bowl. Worse, though, were the singers’ mikes failing.

The pictures should have been spectacular and brought Bill right in on the action. In my face.
They did not always. Apart from anything else, the stage was like a real Piccadilly Circus of cameramen. Every Tom, Dick and Carl was there. Cluttering. Keep it clear for the stars.

The big wide top shots which were supposed to give you the sense of scale were simply not wide enough and simply not varied enough. Bill thinks they should have used that Bell helicopter to give a wonderful effect.

Or cameras on top of the scoreboards. Big it up, NCN!!! The close-ups were not close up enough. Bill likes to see the fingers on the strings, the hands and feet on the drums, the sweat on the brows. He didn’t get enough of that.

Note to trainee vision mixers or switchers – it is never that clever to cut from wide shot to wide shot, especially if the same person is singing. It simply jars.

Repeat this mantra after me. Wide, close, wide, close; it’s like Ballroom dancing on the vision keyboard. Plus you got to go with beat, pick up the pace of the music to determine your cutting.

In the grand old BBC, the great live concert directors rehearse with the music in front of them. They mark up the shots on the music sheet. Then they have somebody call them out for them live. It’s a sight to see, and it works.

What about the artists? Bill enjoyed Dave Martins when he wasn’t breaking up visually or orally (which Bill hears is now a banned word in Jamaican schools cos it got to do with sex).

The lyrics as potent and telling as ever, “Not one blade of Grass,’ deservedly an anthem in its time – and now. But poor man. He was a fish out of water with that crowd.

They wanted ragga and reggae. He was offering revival and retrospect. Bill felt it went above many heads in the audience. Whether they were ‘making some noise’ for Dave and Tradewinds Bill cannot say. He could not hear.  Pity.

Bill switched off once he had seen one too many acts whipping up the crowd. Everybody wanted them to ‘make some noise’.

Silence is golden — not that night, though. On to Chutney night. This time, big screen and plenty of noise….. pleeeze!

Pip! Pip! (the second pip is silent in Guyana ..)

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