Shoot videos the TV way and maybe you’ll be a star

Today’s question: When broadcasters show videos, oftentimes, but not always, the video is blurred in the right and left margins. It doesn’t seem that anything offensive is being blocked. Why is this done? Nobody, in the sort of thing you mention, is blocking anything.

Everybody seems to be shooting videos on their phones these days and sending the images to televisions stations. I guess this is a good thing.

The thing is most people shoot video on their phones with a vertical orientation.

When that gets shown on a TV screen it leaves the sides of the screen black, and TV people hate that. So broadcasters fill the space with blurry or sometimes magnified versions of the original video so parts of the screen aren’t blank.

So if you want the stuff you shoot with your phone to make for good TV shoot it horizontally.

The media shows riots and protests from all over the world, but the protest signs are mostly written in English. I have worked on five continents and find it difficult to believe that protestors could come up with well-printed signs and posters on their own. Who prepares all these signs?

Geez, I don’t know. Who prints protest signs in the United States? It’s not like protestors in other countries only have access to charcoal and sticks to mark their signs.

And I don’t think you can make a broad statement about the use of English in signs in other countries. You see plenty of signs written in the language of the protesters. You notice the ones printed in English because you understand them.