So President Obama delivered his first Oval Office address to the nation last night. To be clear, my critique of the speech is based on the production – not the policy or politics. With that caveat in place, let me say that I thought the president did a good job overall.
The lighting looked great last night in my opinion. Too often I’ve seen really bad lighting for Obama interviews in the Oval – but not last night. As a producer I was looking for reflection in the window behind the president and to see how well the lighting outside the Oval looked. Good on both counts. No teleprompter script reflected in the window. Good depth and detail outside the Oval Office window.
The gold curtains behind President Obama were dressed properly and the array of family photos behind the Resolute desk looked just right to my eye. The final bit of the iconic set design — the presidential flag and the American flag — both looked spot on to me.
Now, there’s no accounting for camera work on these things and the network pool camera will invariably push in tighter than the White House camera. But last night, on my TV at home — I was watching ABC News — I felt like the camera man pushed in too far. All I could see was flags and window behind the president — and that just didn’t read Oval Office to me.
But that wasn’t the biggest problem. No, my biggest problem with what I saw last night was what I couldn’t see — the president’s hands. And boy was he using them!
For their part, ABC News covered the lower third of their picture with graphics nearly the whole time. Granted, this is a common practice — but last night ABC (and probably others I didn’t see) really blew it. President Obama was speaking with his hands in a very expressive manner. The decision to not show this to the audience was a BIG mistake. ABC compounded the error by not making a clean version of the speech easily available on their website directly following the broadcast.
The White House camera – and yes there is more than one camera in the room for things like this — offered a vastly superior view of the address. A wider shot that included some of the Resolute desk and all of the gesturing that came from President Obama. I am so glad I went back and watched this alternate feed of the address – it allowed me to better appreciate what the scene really looked like.
As I said at the top, i think the president did a good job. He delivered the speech well and was very expressive. The “filter,” as network news is sometimes called, was where the production fell down.
Live TV — no redos.
