The Greatest Shot in Television: James Burke Had One Chance to Nail This Scene (2024)

It really grinds my gears that the uploader had to ruin the "Greatest Shot in Television" by stretching the 4:3 video to 16:9.

I know I sound like a pedant but so many of these old TV recordings are uploaded this way on youtube. I was so annoyed by this infact that a few years ago I made a dumb extension that squeezes the video element back to 4:3 [1]. I'm not sure if this still works though.

[1] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/doddimnledmldclhlbf...

I always love this video, and I have been a lifetime dedicated fan of James Burke, but few seem to note that the whole segment didn't have to be timed as there is a cut shortly before the launch. If I recall either James or one of the producers talked about it once. They knew they had to start the last bit 13 seconds before launch and had practiced it repeatedly. At 13 seconds to countdown James nailed it. I'm sure even after practicing it I would have stumbled over a word in the clutch moment!

The late 1970's were the golden age of documentaries: Connections, Cosmos, Civilization, The Ascent of Man and Attenborough's Life on Earth.

Perhaps it's just me, but modern documentaries are rather dumbed down?

As a side note: Quite ironic that he ends up pointing to a rocket propelled mostly by solid fuels.

I’d also mention the ascent of the Apollo 17 LM. The camera could be commanded to move up to follow the ascent, but the command had to be given ahead of time, from the MOCR, to coincide with the launch, which was commanded from the LM. The audio from the LM was delayed, as was the video from the camera, and the command would take about a second to reach the camera on the moon.

The full series is on Archive:

https://archive.org/details/bbc-connections-1978/Connections...

It still holds up for the most part, though of course some of the takes, being almost 50 years old, may seem a bit quaint. It's certainly worth watching the first series at least start to finish. Burke is an interesting guy.

I wonder if this show is the ”Connections” in “Technology Connections” [1]. I can’t find a reference on it but I wouldn’t be surprised.

[1] https://youtube.com/c/TechnologyConnections

James Burke is one of Earth's treasures. Connections is the best docuseries I have ever seen.

I watched this show religiously as a kid (by then in reruns in the early 90s), along with Star Trek: TNG, Jeopardy, and playing Civilization for PC. The most formative years of my life were spent absorbing as much science, technology, and history as my growing brain could muster. I think that's why I'd grown up to be so optimistic about the future.

I think there's still a lot of room for optimism, despite all of the pessimism in the media, and I'm not even talking about AI. There are a ton of other things which have benefitted enormously from ubiquitous, efficient, and powerful computing that hardly get talked about anymore, we've come to take it all for granted.

If you haven't seen it, there was a new season of connections made in 2023 as well.

https://www.space.com/connections-with-james-burke-docuserie...

I loved Connections so much as a kid, but I'm so tired of this clip. There's so many better clips from this show.

So he nailed a 13 second countdown. Who cares? Newscasters do this at every commercial break. Sports announcers do this without a script and they still nail the cut to commercial almost every time. Yes, there's a talent to timing your speech to a countdown in your ear, but it's a talent that people do thousands of times a day around the world on far less preparation than Burke had here.

The fact that this article calls a simple cut a "sleight of hand" just terrifies me. Does the public really not know what editing is?

really miss the time when the documentaries take the audience as audience.

Wow, I've only known the Carl Sagan shot in Cosmos. I'm happy to know the original now.

I grew up watching Cosmos and Connections (and a bunch of stupid prime time on the one TV in the house and something like 5 clear channel [PBS being the best]).

[dead]

Fake. They filmed a rocket landing and he spoke backwards as soon as it touched down.