Final Review Exercise
Please correct comma splices, run-ons, fragments,
misplaced/dangling modifiers, apostrophe usage, or any other punctuation or
usage error you find. NOTE: Not
every sentence has an error, and some sentences have more than one.
I have always wondered
why am I able to see random television program, often for less than ten
seconds, and immediately recognize which network the show is airing on? To me
the differences seem obvious and undeniable on ABC, colors are always darker
and the definition is softer. NBC programs look more like traditional videotape
brighter, sharper, and more aggressively modern. Everything on CBS, has a
slightly grainy understated appearance, Fox looks like the middle ground
between CBS and NBC. When the show Cavemen premiered last fall and I came across
the first episode by accident it was not known what channel I was watching, but
I did know this aesthetically Cavemen looked like an ABC show, it looked
like Head of the Class which had looked like Barney Miller. I had a similar experience, when I
first saw30 Rock a sitcom
that visually resembles Friends, which visually resembled Silver Spoons. These
relationships have nothing to do with content they refer only to the technical
non-narrative aspects of how the shows are broadcast. For reasons I don’t
understand I can identify the look of any major network instantaneously. So can
a lot of other people we can do it without even trying.
Except that we can’t.
It’s a paradox. My
ability to differentiate between TV networks is real. When I watch Lost I sometimes think this reminds me of Twin Peaks and Moonlighting. And I am right, but not for the
reasons I believe. I think they look alike, but they don’t or at least not any
more than all the other TV dramas shot on 35mm film. It’s an optical illusion
created by my own mind and what’s weird about this particular illusion, is that
it usually ends up proving accurate, I am tricking myself into seeing the truth
even though that truth is invisible. I have watched so much television that I
am now a genius.
And I suppose an idiot.
When initially pursuing
this discrepancy the hypothesis was that these differences must be purely
technological. I assumed the answer would be explained by different kinds of
film stock or by different frequencies used during the transmission of
satellite feeds. These possibilities were proved false. All the network
producers buy their film stock from outside sources so there can’t be a brand
of film that makes NBC look like NBC. It also can’t be a result of frequency
because networks use different channels in different markets. As far, as I can
tell there is no meaningful difference between how different networks shoot and
broadcast.
This dead end made me
question my whole premise, was I the only person who saw these differences? I
started asking acquaintances if they could tell the difference between CBS and
NBC. I noticed that whenever I asked a person who watched lots and lots of
television. He always said “Of course." But whenever I asked someone who
only watched TV casually he inevitably said something along the lines of I’m
not sure. At first I thought those responses helped prove my point, I thought
they suggested that these aesthetic differences were real but their subtlety
was lost on anyone who wasn’t a sophisticated viewer. But now I suspect a
different explanation in reality watching an inordinate amount of TV, causes a
person to imagine concrete visual differences that are
merely just the manifestation of abstract subconscious knowledge.
