I spent most of today with a camera and production crew for the new Discovery Channel show Dr. Know<\/i>. It’s sort of a medical version of Mythbusters<\/i>. I was chosen to represent the typical heavy computer user; someone who spends a lot of time starting at a monitor, and who is known to play games for hours at a time without much rest. The idea was to find out if prolonged exposure to monitors (or televisions) could do harm to the human eye.<\/p>\n
The crew and staff were very professional TV people, but I think I learned more about television production than I should have if I ever wanted to see the industry as some sort of magic.<\/p>\n
First, they weren’t really that interested in capturing the real me. The science is the star of the show. I was just a prop. My responses weren’t scripted, but I was prodded to do things with and at my computer that I never would in real life. Any gamer who sees the episode (sometime in 2006) will notice them immediately. I put up a bit of a fight when they wanted to see me pretend to use the computer in the bathroom, but, they reminded me, they want to keep the show light and a little exaggeration makes the point better than me holding forth about my regular habits.<\/p>\n
Second, television production is boring. It was to me at least. Take after take after take. Look here, don’t look there. We went to an opthamologist’s office and I spent most of the time sitting reading magazines, since I was only needed for a couple of brief shots.<\/p>\n
In short, the whole day will be edited down to a few minutes. I knew this was likely. I’m no pollyanna. So why do it? I was asked to. My day was free. I haven’t been on TV since my high school quiz team a decade and a half ago. Mostly, I thought it would be interesting to see how these light science programs are made.<\/p>\n
I’ll let you all know when the episode airs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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