I also find a world’s of difference between talking to the camera and talking to another person. I can rip off a great lengthy “sound bite” that is inspired by another human’s attention and non-verbal feedback. And their questions can have a lot of focusing power too.

I don’t mind the quick cuts — as it’s a style that definitely maintains the visual ADD attention, and has been fine tuned by Ze and the Ask a Ninja folks.

I haven’t asked Kent, but it certainly looks like AAN uses a number of digital zooms. Like they set up one static shot, and then zoom in during post.

And I’m sure if you do it long enough, it’ll evolve and mature.
Just check out a couple of old Ze videos:
http://www.zefrank.com/valentine/
http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/extras/redalert.html

You can still twangs of his presenter voice in his first show:
http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/03/031706.html

And now by the end, it’s much more polished.

Sometimes, though, I walk around and see what I can make of my surroundings.

I’m new at this sort of off-the-cuff work. My only proper film in college was fully scripted, a one-episode sitcom ripping off the Arrested Development style.

I also want to develop better one-shot monologues and see if I can replace the jolt of quick cuts with my own spastic form of delivery.

I ask because I saw Ze tell the NY Observer that “I don’t write anything. I wouldn’t call my shows improvised, but I construct them sentence by sentence. And I also try not to precede a day with an idea, because part of this whole is trying to understand this rapid creative process as well.”