The greatest shot in television: James Burke had one chance to nail this scene (2024)

电视史上最伟大的镜头：詹姆斯·伯克只有一次机会拍好这一幕（2024）

The 80-second clip above captures a rocket launch, something of which we’ve all seen footage at one time or another. What makes its viewers call it “the greatest shot in television” still today, 45 years after it first aired, may take more than one viewing to notice. 上面这段80秒的视频捕捉了一次火箭发射的画面，这是我们每个人在某个时刻都曾见过的影像。尽管距离首次播出已经过去了45年，但它至今仍被观众称为“电视史上最伟大的镜头”，其奥秘或许需要多看几遍才能察觉。

In it, science historian James Burke speaks about how “certain gases ignite, and that the thermos flask permits you to store vast quantities of those gases safely, in their frozen liquid form, until you want to ignite them.” Use a sufficiently large flask filled with hydrogen and oxygen, design it to mix the gases and set light to them, and “you get that” — that is, you get the rocket that launches behind Burke just as soon as he points to it. 在视频中，科学史学家詹姆斯·伯克（James Burke）讲述了“某些气体如何燃烧，以及保温瓶如何让你能够安全地储存大量处于冷冻液态的气体，直到你想点燃它们为止。”只要使用一个足够大的容器装满氢气和氧气，设计好混合并点燃它们，你就能“得到那个”——也就是当伯克指向身后时，火箭恰好发射升空的画面。

One can only admire Burke’s composure in discussing such technical matters in a shot that had to be perfectly timed on the first and only take. What you wouldn’t know unless you saw it in context is that it also comes as the final, culminating moment of a 50-minute explanatory journey that begins with credit cards, then makes its way through the invention of everything from a knight’s armor to canned food to air conditioning to the Saturn V rocket, which put man on the moon. 人们不得不佩服伯克在讨论这些技术问题时的从容，因为这个镜头必须在唯一的一次拍摄中实现完美的时机把控。除非你了解背景，否则你可能不知道，这其实是长达50分钟的科普旅程的最终高潮。这段旅程从信用卡讲起，随后串联起从骑士盔甲、罐头食品、空调，一直到将人类送上月球的土星五号火箭等各种发明。

Formally speaking, this was a typical episode of Connections, Burke’s 1978 television series that traces the most important and surprising moves in the evolution of science and technology throughout human history. Though not as widely remembered as Carl Sagan’s slightly later Cosmos, Connections bears repeat viewing here in the twenty-first century, not least for the intellectual and visual bravado typified by this “greatest shot in television,” now viewed nearly 18 million times on Youtube. 从形式上讲，这是伯克1978年的电视系列片《联系》（Connections）中的典型一集，该系列追溯了人类历史上科学技术演变中最重要、最令人惊叹的转折点。虽然它不像卡尔·萨根稍晚推出的《宇宙》（Cosmos）那样广为人知，但在21世纪的今天，《联系》依然值得反复观看，尤其是因为它展现了那种以“电视史上最伟大镜头”为代表的智力与视觉上的大胆尝试，该片段目前在YouTube上的观看次数已接近1800万。

Watch it enough times yourself, and you’ll notice that it also pulls off some minor sleight of hand by having Burke walk from a non-time-sensitive shot into another with the already-framed rocket ready for liftoff. But that hardly lessens the feeling of achievement when the launch comes off. “Destination: the moon, or Moscow,” says Burke, “the planets, or Peking” — a closing line that sounded considerably more dated a few years ago than it does today. 如果你多看几遍，就会发现它还运用了一些小小的“障眼法”：伯克从一个不受时间限制的镜头走入另一个已经预设好火箭发射画面的镜头。但这丝毫不减损发射成功时带来的成就感。“目的地：月球，或莫斯科，”伯克说道，“行星，或北京”——这句结束语在几年前听起来显得相当过时，但放在今天却别有一番意味。