I bet the networks love it too, since you can just set the camera up on a tripod and walk away. Production costs have to be about as low as you could possibly go per minute of airtime.
It’s more engrossing in HD, though I guess you wouldn’t get the music then.
The BBC’s Jenny Hill reporting on slow TV?..well, we’ll just need to yakety saxs this thing!
There used to be a thing called the Landscape Channel on satellite that just had footage from a helicopter flying over nice bits of countryside set to soothing music. It was great.
Don’t worry, they’ve whittled it down to a one hour documentary, same as the Norwegian ferry trip.
We here in the U.S. aren’t happy with any art form unless we can crap on it.
edit: Case in point: The Vanishing, La Femme Nikita, and Traffic, among others.
I think it’s great. I look forward to wall-mounted monitors that can have, say, a five-hour long piece of footage – like having a window you can look ‘out of’ and watch the passing scenery… and the scenery of your choice, to boot.
Reddit has a growing Slow TV community over at /r/SlowTV.
People are using it with Chromecast and giving themselves digital fireplaces and virtual scenery walls. There’s hours of this wonderful, relaxing stuff.
Oh yes you can yakety sax it, but you have to do it with this sound track -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyRAsvrFhJQ
I went to Wendover NV and the casino (either the Rainbow or Peppermill) had some stuff like that, but it was three screens in continuity and had things up for about 20min. It was subjects like park landscapes, hippos in a river, or a street in France. TBH that was the most exciting part of the whole trip beside being able to listen to some podcasts I needed to catch up on.
I see this as a perfectly understandable development. A lot of mainstream TV has elements of this, I’m thinking of CSI: Miami in particular. As a cop show, the few times I’ve watched it have been a jumbled mess. I had no idea what was going on.
It only works as a kind of elaborate screen saver, beautiful cityscapes, pretty vivid colours fading in and out in high definition, the plot distracts from it. Its like we want slow TV, but at the moment it has to be hidden as a layer atop fast paced action.
Spacenight was a fabulous Geman late night TV show with low orbit earth satellites providing the scenery for laid back electronica. I have been wishing they would bring it to Australia. Sometimes I just want my TV to be a low level input, like a mandala or something.
Just FYI, Fireplace For the Home on Netflix now has a 3rd edition.
1st edition - crappy shot of a fireplace
2nd edition - Yule Log! Same crappy shot of a fireplace, now with crappy Christmas music
3rd edition - same crappy shot of fireplace, now with crappy classical music
I keep thinking if I watch long enough the flames will start burning some sinners.
I’ve been toying with setting up a dedicated monitor to an old iPhone I have with a slow tv thing or awesome screen saver. I haven’t quite figured out what I want to run but would be easy to do. I have an old monitor (used to work at a company that made them) that I can’t sell for legal reasons with the company I used to work for. If anyone has an idea for a cool app that would work for this, I’m taking suggestions. Mandala would be a good one.
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