h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sadly true. As the public become ever more immune to advertising, there is an arms race on to make advertising, ever more difficult to ignore. Plans afoot include product placement in TV shows, digitally added post-production, blue-toothing adverts to your phone as you pass shops (who walks about with their blue-tooth permanantly on anyway?), that sort of thing. I know folk in advertising are just doing a job, but honestly they should all be sent away on the 'first ship' along with the telephone sanitisers; useless appendages of our society.

and yes, before anyone point out that advertising pays for this site, I know; i just wish advertising was not such an integral part of life these days I wish people who work in advertising could put their impressive creative skills towards work which isn't so intrusive and irritating to so many people.

If I were in charge of the world the only advertising that would be allowed would be internal advertising, that is to say, you would be allowed to advertise your products and offers within your own shop or website only. No random ads cluttering up the internet, TV, radio and the high street.

*tries to work out the economics of Winnoch's otherwise laudable idea*

Going back on topic, loud background music in documentaries is something I've always thought of as coming from the USA. I can remember a documentary series on the history of New York city, back in the 1990s (I think). I really wanted to watch it, but abandonned it after the first episode. The 'background' music was intrusively loud. It wasn't just loud during gaps in the narrative, it was loud while the narrator was talking. Turning up the volume on the TV just made matters worse.

This isn't the only time I've encountered loud music in American documentaries, but it is a particularly bad one.

Isn't the music basically another way of the programme-makers telling you what to think? I find many "documentaries" to be incredibly shallow, twee, cliched and more than a little biased. The "lay it on with a trowel" type makers want you to be outraged, elated, sad and happy at just the right spots to appreciate their message and have therefore turned documentaries into another dumbed down entertainment where the audience are manipulated into the right reaction.

Bah humbug

And while I'm on a rant, wtf is going on with the Santander adverts? Random sporting "celebrities" dropped into people's homes (sitting on the couch, hiding behind a fridge door) to give totally inane advice but the supposed "ordinary people" in the ads just accept this, in fact they do so with the same look of weary resignation we've all drifted into in the face of the relentless assault by advertisers on virtually every front.

I thought those Santander ads were mocking the genre. Please don't tell me they're serious!

swl, you can be my 2nd in command when I'm in charge of the world.

Does that position come with a Hugo Boss suit and a Blackberry?

And possibly a loud chorus of raspberries!

The BBC news section of their website has an interesting report "Four colossal Sun flares in 48 hours". So I clicked on the report & the NASA clip showing the colossal solar flare only to discover some weird musical sheet:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22539160

Sun flares, still picture, no music:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130413.html

Amazing image

Yep. I usually check apod in the mornings (a picture a day - sometimes a film (but not self-starting).

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/

Usually interesting, occasionally special.

I've been watching The World at War on DVD. Mostly it's been fine, but today's 'episode', entitled 'Inside the Reich: Germany 1940 - 1944', was dreadful. The sound of people cheering and the music played at certain points were loud and continued at the same volume even when Sir Laurence Olivier was talking. On previous episodes sound effects and music were soften while he did his narration.

The discs I have were freebies with the Daily Mail some years ago, so maybe the edition you get in the shops has been remastered to fix this. (I don't read the Daily Mail, btw. Mum bought it as a way of getting the series - she doesn't normally buy a newspaper otherwise.)

It happens more with drama than documentaries, but when the end credits come up mentioning specific songs or pieces of music, I often don't recall hearing them at all.
Of course it may have been the briefest excerpt that still requires a credit.

It's confusing when they say 'original music by...' but there was lots of other pieces sampled too. I'd like to know which is which!

In the credits for 'The Rock' (Nicholas Cage, Sean Connery) they list 'Rocket Man' by Elton John.The track isn't played at all, Nicholas Cage just mentions it before firing a rocket at a renegade marine. A credit for a snatch of a song is one thing, but for mentioning it...?

On the youtube I tried watching two songs from the Eurovision Song competition ... the Romanian entry and the Danish entry. ... but I had to turn away because the camera was controlled by a person on drugs (perhaps?), moving in and out, side to side, switching from one camera to another, I felt sea-sick.

That sort of camerawork is okay for music. It's dreadful when they do it to dancers, acrobats, gymnasts, jugglers, and suchlike performers. I've never yet seen them do it to conjurers. Perhaps that's the solution. All other acts should have a short conjurer in the middle of the stage, doing quiet tricks while the rest of the act happens around zir. That way, the camera will stay still, and we'll be able to actually watch the acts (or the conjurer; perhaps we should stipulate a bad conjurer, so the tricks aren't too impressive or distracting).

TRiG.

If you watch repeated programmes in the early hours, they often have a conjurer practising in the corner of the screen. I'd often wondered why, now I know - thanks TRiG

Documentary Programme. Horizon: Little Cat Diaries. Included background music. Duration 30 minutes

I would say it was produced as a fusion of Big Brother Reality TV versus Warner Brother Cartoon. I found it irritating and patronising. The information content could be reduced to about 5 minutes with an overall conclusion of "Domestic cats view owners as resource providers not as sources of safety and comfort, whereas dogs and small children view "owners" as both resource providers as well as sources of safety and comfort".