Nothing happens, several times over.

Somewhere between listening to the class' reactions to "The Onyx Project" and realizing I was spending the bulk of the time we watched it trying to decide if he was reading a teleprompter (verdict: at least half the time, but he did a really good job of not making it painfully obvious. Not surprising, though, cuts down on the time they have to pay him for). I actually spent most of the time watching it trying to figure out exactly what sort of equipment and time frame they were working with.

And I started thinking, huh, this is a visual presentation in which nothing really happens. Just a big long interview/confession. Why is it that this can't hold my interest while other works about nothing can.

Part of it was there was only one person, and there was 5 hours of him to be had. All the other examples of Nothing Happens that come to mind involve multiple people. Even if it's just people taking turns monologuing interviews (eg "Sisters in the Resistance" last semester at the theater department), having more than one person gives you a (false) sense of variety, and it helps hold interest. The other thought that occured, people very rarely are truly doing nothing. They're talking while baking cakes, playing with coins, fighting their boots, something happens visually, no matter how small.

In mulling over it after the fact, what with him making ominous references (apparently) to The Onyx Project and how all his guys died on the mission, and the political drive behind it, wouldn't it be interesting, if he were under some sort of house arrest? Or in the middle of a forced confession? About to go on trial for crimes of war? Had been forced to drink Veritaserum? *Something,* something to give the viewer a sense of something at stake, of something compelling, to make it worth watching, something more than an overglorified lovechild of 60 Minutes and Pop-up Video.

It struck me as a unfortunate case of "some people go both ways," trying to embrace an innovative medium of the future, while still assuming an attention span and information processing from several years back.

It's not to say I absolutely hated it. I just think that if you're trying to push a new, dynamic medium, you need an equally dynamic subject and visuals to go with it.