Good Morning America Video

[luar]

Found this old television video item of Miyata Sensei and Kawashima Sensei. For those of you who don't know, Good Morning America is one of these early morning wakeup shows where the hosts are insipidly upbeat and clueless as you can tell by the questions they ask.

[David Dunn]

The presenters may have been clueless, but the piece was excellent. Thanks Raul, that's now stored in my geek directory

[Ewok]

Glad I stopped watching morning TV shows, those hosts were shocking. I hate it when they try and talk about something to do with science or computers here and end up wildly wrong... otherwise the kenshi all came across well.

[Sunndew]

Did anybody else notice where she refered to him as a 2nd degree BROWN belt?!?!

The morning show host did not do their research on this one and it shows but our Kenshi did a wonderful job.

[Ero Sennin]

That was horrific to say the least.

[tony leith]

I couldn't get the sound to play, so I was spared the presenters' inane waffle. Trust us, clueless presenters on TV are NOT a uniquely American phenomenon, not by any means.

I always think there's a difficulty in public demos, or at least some tension, between showing off the dynamism and fluidity of technique, and actually letting people see what's going on. Obviously there are ways round this, but I'd be interested in what everybody thinks is the right sort of balance between 'gosh wow' and something more illustrative of how techniques are built up.

Tony Leith

[Ewok]

Originally posted by Sunndew
Did anybody else notice where she refered to him as a 2nd degree BROWN belt?!?!

I just assumed my monitor was broken :P

[judepeel]

I once did a demo for a student TV programme, apparently I do "Shrinky Kenpo"

[luar]

Originally posted by Sunndew
Did anybody else notice where she refered to him as a 2nd degree BROWN belt?!?!

The morning show host did not do their research on this one and it shows but our Kenshi did a wonderful job.

For some reason I did miss this. The media will translate such things to an un-informed public rather than going into lengthy explanation what a Ni Kyu is.

With that said, I replayed the video several times and I have to admit it's not clear to me what this actor's rank is or if what the announcer said was incorrect. I use an ancient laptop and this video is of such low quality that its hard to distinguish brown and black. When I look at the Hoi's, they appear black rather than brown. I suppose the final clue resides in looking at his technique. I initialy thought his take down on Gyaku Gote was too physical and Harai-Uke too stiff but attributed this mostly to nervousness.

I'll ask Kawashima Sensei next time he stops by.

[luar]

Originally posted by tony leith
I couldn't get the sound to play, so I was spared the presenters' inane waffle. Trust us, clueless presenters on TV are NOT a uniquely American phenomenon, not by any means.

I always think there's a difficulty in public demos, or at least some tension, between showing off the dynamism and fluidity of technique, and actually letting people see what's going on. Obviously there are ways round this, but I'd be interested in what everybody thinks is the right sort of balance between 'gosh wow' and something more illustrative of how techniques are built up.

Tony Leith

This video is highly unusual because it involves a celebrity. The attention really is about him and not Shorinji Kempo. In fact Shorinji Kempo is merely a backdrop. No one cares about it. They just care that there is this TV actor who does martial arts and can do some cool kick-butt stuff. Also the media still has the final control over what gets shown and more importantly, how much time you have. It really becomes hard to get your message out in this kind of setting. The best you can do is give them some flash to catch their attention and then present a URL for more in-depth knowledge.

[tony leith]

Hi Raul - I haven't had the (good?) fortune of trying to project ShorinjiKempo through the electronic media, but of course I understand the point about the material they present serving their own editorial purposes. I noticed on the Swedish federation website is that they have stills of Kaiso himself cooperating in the making of a biographical TV show and games shows in the 50s, and he also was involved in the making of 'Killing machine'. The last of is a classic case of the end product being somewhat at variance probably with Kaiso's hopes and intentions, but being a hard headed pragmatist I suspect he was prepared to live with it for the sake of getting the message out, in however distorted a form.

We once had a reporter come along to a session at the University club here. Our attempts to get across the philosophical aspects of SK resulted in us being described as 'tree hugging touchy feely martial artists' or words to that effect - maybe we should have just brought out a few planks and tried breaking them over each others' heads. Or if we'd been thinking more clearly, the reporter's.

My point about demos was intended more generally, and so probably should have been a new thread.

Tony Leith

[luar]

Well my point was that I did not think this video is a good comparison on how to do a demo. To be fair and not leave anyone thinking I was being negative, I think he did a good job trying to explain the art. I like what he said about "returning to harmony." I would have preferred that the senseis do an embu rather than repeat the techniques and give out a web address to learn more.

[MikeWilliams]

I reckon for a mainstream TV magazine-style feature, it was pretty damn good.

You guys should be very pleased with the way your art came across. The presenters were unsurprisingly moronic, but the actor-fella dealt with them exceptionally well, and was a fine spokesman for SK.