The Manager for Brilliant Ideas, WIN TV.
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Your Mogulship/ Dear Sir,
SBS has had minor success with screening vision of three hours of mulga scrub from the cattle-catcher on the front of a train so I’d like to offer you the once-in-a-lifetime chance to cash in on some of my brainwaves for the inevitable viewer avalanche clamouring for “Slow TV”.
My first idea is to broadcast Donald Trump’s Twitter feeds as he makes them.
They could go up the screen (like a Star Wars intro) but might need slowing down; if rail tracks and sleepers hurtling by at 100kph on the Ghan mesmerised SBS viewers, the frequency of Trump’s tweets soaring up the telly one after another could trigger a seizure in just about anyone.
You want sport, you say? For cricket, what about just a constant shot from the camera hidden in the stumps and nothing else - just bums, legs and bats for an entire test?
If England is batting, you might again need to hit the slow motion button if you need more than an hour’s footage but, anyway, it’s still “slow TV” even if they’re all out before drinkies.
Bernard Tomic’s hands counting money on a table (with the camera mounted somewhere within his haircut?) might be another possible slow-feed.
This tennis-related chap recently suggested to journos that watching him count to a million umpteen times might be more interesting than watching him get trounced on the court so this one’s a potential humdinger.
Pointlessly waiting for a train at any Sydney station (noting that the rail union has copyright of the concept) offers the opportunity for split-screen slow TV showing views both ways at once, and/or swapping around to other stock-still platforms anywhere in the metropolitan area.
Multiple screens also allow for a cross-genre program where one view might be of a packed, motionless platform at Redfern Station while another part of the screen shows a long line waiting for a teller at the bank. The first half of the screen might then switch to a shot of a Wagga taxi rank for half an hour or so.
This sort of multi-view appreciation of totally inert masses of people might interest one of our more enterprising local bookies if it’s done as a live-feed.
Viewers could have a punt on whether a train will arrive before a cab; or whether the little bloke at the back of the bank cue will fall over from exhaustion before he gets to the teller; or if the shop-keeper with the calico bag will complete her multiple banking tasks and coin-counting before the drunk starts a fight at the taxi-rank.
But wait, there’s more!
Imagine if you will a one-armed bandit filling the screen, with (just visible at the bottom) the fingers of the pokie-player pressing the buttons and churning in coins for three hours as the tumblers rotate!
What could be more relaxing? Inset screens might occasionally pop up showing empty kitchen cupboards and fridges; or landlords conducting evictions for non-payment of rent.
I’m sure you’ll also be salivating at the idea of a camera on the handle of a shopping trolley trundling around a supermarket for a couple of hours. It could move up and down on the mount from normal eye level, down to handle level to cater for regular human viewers as well as Neanderthal trolley-elbow-pushers.
Let me know which ideas you’d like to run with and we can discuss my finder’s fee.