It’s not that disturbing.
If you have ever watched an interview and there is a cut away from the subject to other footage (b-roll) while the subject keep talking, it’s literally the same thing. What happened is that the interview subject started to sound like a complete idiot and the editor had to go edit the audio into complete sentences and coherent thoughts. They cover all that audio editing with a cut away to b-roll. This morph is just a refinement of the the really dirty cuts, like a three or four frame cross-fades that an editor will use when they really need to cheat. Those cross-fades would only work when the interview subject didn’t move their head much. The shitty part is that this new morph will be adopted as a wider tactic by news organizations to save money. If you don’t have to shoot b-roll, why waste the time and money. You will probably start seeing this a lot more on local news to start with. (this is part of a much longer rant for me about TV news getting cheap as fuck and screwing over workers)
Anyway, like all techniques, this can be abused. However, he ability to cut-fuck someone, change the meaning of what they said and cover it with b-roll has been around forever. The worst I’ve ever done was purposely leave in a poorly timed “um” or bad turn of phrase so a interview subject would look dumb. Honestly, sometimes with the footage you have, it really can’t be helped, but I have done it on purpose once or twice. Maybe just as bad, occasionally I would hold a cut a little longer then necessary if an interview subjects body language gave away that they were lying. Normally, I spend way to much time trying to make stupid people sound smarter then they actually are in interviews.
