The Finch Formerly Known As Gold

7 November 2002

Yours for a pledge at the $360 level

Those of us who blog swear by, and occasionally at, our templates. Yes, I know, I did this site for years with no content-management system (and, some might say, no content either), and there are still manually-maintained blogs out there, but the point seems relatively inarguable just the same, and I assure you, I didn't spend a great deal of time reinventing the wheel every day. Data-entry types, of course, are hopelessly tethered to various Templates of Doom.

Then again, that's all computer stuff. Do other more-or-less-cultural activities have the same need for ready-made, fill-in-the-blanks packages? Michael at 2 Blowhards is persuaded that there's some sort of PBS Documentary Kit out there, and all you need are the following:

  • Shots of sunsets.
  • Shots of water.
  • Shots of empty Colonial-Williamsburg-style interiors.
  • Shots of nothing in particular framed by leafy trees.
  • Tracking shots over old piano keyboards.
  • Slow zooms back from old sepia photographs — repeat this move endlessly.
  • Nothing-in-particular passages from letters, to be read in nothing-in-particular "period" tones.
  • Period songs, to be performed in a prissily nostalgic style.
  • For background music, lean heavily on the plink-plonk of a lonely solo piano, or the pulseless noodlings of a ruminative guitar. If you really want to knock 'em unconscious, have a banjo player pluck a few strings really, really slowly.

Time to set free the Ken Burns within you, say I.

(Update, 10:26 pm: Reformatted slightly, but no textual changes.)

Posted at 8:58 PM to Almost Yogurt