Obama Better Than a Rock Star--A Note on Appearances

The McCain campaign and the Republicans have a lot of fun with Obama's "rock-star" and "celebrity" status. But Obama did not look like a rock star during his speech at Invesco Field tonight.

He looked better. A lot better.

When I see telecasts of bands playing the Super Bowl and other stadium venues, my first impression is almost always that the band is physically overwhelmed by the massiveness of the space.

That didn't happen to Obama. Most of the time, the cameras stayed fairly tight on his face and Obama filled up the camera with smiling, impassioned, tough, and determined expression. It was a stadium speech in front of more than 80,000 people.

Even when cameras panned away from Obama to his backdrop, they did so in a way that did not diminish Obama's physical presence. Obama was helped by the bright blue flooring. It had an electric, bright, bouncy feeling that went along very well with the beginning of his speech. He was also helped by the way he was placed out front, by himself in such a way that background visuals couldn't clutter from Obama's presence.

The people who arranged the cameras also had a way to pan to the audience without making Obama look as small compared to the stadium as he actually was. It looked like the directors had the cameras pan to fairly small sections of the large crowd rather than try to capture the crowd as a whole. Obama would have looked small if he had been justaposed to the whole crowd. Arrayed against small sections, he looked comparatively larger.

Partly because of brilliant staging, Obama dwarfed the stadium.