Barry and Hercules
Barry and Hercules, is about the Hennepin County Sheriff Department awarding a badge to their first canine on force. Richard Tsong-Taatarii of the Star Tribune created this, and I frankly don’t think he should be in anyway proud of it. The video is an elongated shaky mess of confusion.
In the first shots, Hennepin County Deputy Sheriff Barry Heikkinen is speaking, but he’s not in the shot. Instead, Tsong-Taatarii shows other officers. The actual dog, Hercules, is seventeen seconds in and follows a completely different dog. I enjoyed the shot of Hercules entering through the door because it was close. However, they must have had problems with Hercules coming through the door because there’s an unsatisfying cut to a different shot.
Following this, for no reason, he shows these shaky wide shots of Hercules and Deputy Heikkinen walking through the halls and speaking with an unseen visitor. For most of the film, the wide shaky shots are a consistent problem. I think a lack of steady shots seriously damaged Tsong-Taatarii. If he had a steady headshot interview with Deputy Heikkinen to go to between varying shots of Hercules, it would have been much more satisfying.
What would have worked best for this is about a minute and a half film that consisted of the badge, a steady interview with Deputy Heikkinen, and a shot of the ceremony itself with perhaps some shots of Hercules in action. That would have been perfectly sufficient. Not great, but sufficient.
I realize working with a dog can be difficult, but a need for tighter shots and interesting action went on for two and half minutes of the three minute film.
He had some opportunities near the end when Hercules is finally seen proving he can do something besides slobber, but it came off as the Blair Witch Project more than a news report. That could have been pretty cool, and used as the opening instead of the end.
You picked up on a lot of the problems and possible solutions of this video. I especially liked that you picked up on the shot of Hercules coming through the door as possibly bad because they switched to another shot. It took me a second watch to notice that jump. I also agree with the comment on the shakiness. It was very distracting and made the video hard to watch.
I like that you suggested interview shots and close-ups of Barry and Hercules as a remedy to the shakiness and confusion. This would work because the non-shaky shots in this video are alright, and because if the audience actually got to identify Barry and Hercules instead of having to guess it would make the whole experience less frustrating.
I’m really glad you said that the end of the video proves Hercules “can do something besides slobber” because a lot of the video was about slobber. One of the few close-ups was of slobber. When they describe Hercules, one of the words used is “drooling.”
mcmary
19 Oct 08 at 9:36 pm
You can see that Tsong-Taatarii got a ton of b-roll for this and, while the video may have been too long and he may have been overly reliant on the b-roll, I thought it was a nice little video. The shakiness can be a real problem with Web video especially since it tends to be a lower frame rate and a little more compressed. But I like the action shots and the final sequence. I thought the video as a whole game me a nice image of the dog’s personality.
Nick Bergus
20 Oct 08 at 2:52 pm