Slug & Lede

The basis for Cats need homes lies around Frank Currell and his wife’s love of cats. The video further outlines why he must get rid of the 90 odd cats now occupying his Scarborough residence. His health and the death of his wife offer reasons as to why he can no longer keep up with the extremely large number of feline friends parading around his home. 

There were many great elements to this piece. I really appreciated Pawel Dwulit, the videographer’s, use of angles in his shots of the cats. You can tell he really put himself into character as his angles seemed to be in the perspective of the cats themselves. This idea really led the main focus of the story to be about the cats, which I felt were the most important elements of the story.

I also felt Dwulit did a great job of editing the material, the transitions flowed quite well and I never felt awkward instances of voice overs or placement of pictures.

Some elements however I felt should be changed. When Dwulit was taking medium shots of Curell sitting on the couch, it seemed to distract me when he would cut of the very top of his head. I’m not sure if this was to be a creative element, but I felt he should have been more cautious of these small errors.

I also wish the video would have offered more information on where the cats will be going now or how he will deal with their absence. I feel this information is vital to the story and it may have given a much needed depth to this piece.

I really enjoyed this piece as a video, I feel the presence of the cats and how they occupy the home were essential to understand visually. 

Overall this piece was put together very well and I found a great interest in the story. I also felt this piece was much too sweet to be overly critical!

The “Cats Need Homes” piece on TheStar.com was incredibly adorable. I loved the idea of the topic, and I love that this guy has that many cats. Also, I love cats.

I think this video starts off at a good place in terms of what Frank Currell is saying. It gives the context to the piece - that he has somewhere near 90-100 cats. That starts the piece in a really unique way, because not many people have that many cats and it thus makes me want to hear more.

The parts I thought worked well were when the artist associated words with pictures. When Currell said “my wife passed away” the editor showed a picture of the wife. That was a great use of the b-roll. Then when he talks about his boys, it shows his children interacting with the cats. It was also really effective to show all the b-roll of the cats around the house.

I also think the editor did a good job with interchanging different kinds of shots. There are some zoomed shots and panned shots- and there are close ups which are very effective. And the wide shots work to provide the setting. I think, however, in the beginning he didn’t use a tripod because some of the shots seem a little shaky.

Although I enjoyed the beginning of the piece, I don’t think it should’ve started with a zooming in on him. I think it would’ve been more effective to start with a video of the cats, or maybe a video of the house. I would’ve loved to see what this house looked like either from the outside or the inside. Preferably I would’ve liked to see more shots of cats being everywhere inside the house.

Another thing that could be worked on is the transition between the different clips the editor uses. You can tell when different parts of the interview are grabbed. Then I also think the ending is a little subtle.

Although the video has its flaws, I loved the idea. It is sad though that he has to give the cats away.

The Cats Need Homes video on thestar.com was a topic that could have lead to a visually exciting piece.  But having near 80 cats in a single home wasn’t as interesting to look at, or learn about, as it could have been.

I think the weaknesses are easy to spot.  The first thing I didn’t like was how the video started with the video linked with the audio of the man speaking.  A better start to the video would have been an establishing long-shot from the outside of the home, or a close up of a bunch of cats in a small space.

Also, the shots weren’t very interesting.  There was too much interview to keep the piece interesting and not enough cats.  Though there are a lot of cats in the video, they all seem to be camera shy and they don’t really move around much or interact with each other.  Their weren’t many long shots or close-ups.  I would have like to have heard more of the room tone or cat’s meowing to really put me in the room with cat man.  I also didn’t see any sequential shots in the package.

The things I did like were the low level shots where you can see multiple cats under the dining room table.  I thought the low angle tilt shot of the man’s sons was a bit awkward and the white balance seemed to be a bit off on that shot too.  I also really like the fact that the video was only a little over 1 minute long.  If it were longer I probably wouldn’t have watched it the whole way through.  The interview was framed pretty well because the man was situated to one side of the frame instead of the middle.

Overall, I think this could have been done better to make it more visually stimulating.

Cats need homes is a video piece done by Pawel Dwulit of The Star.  The video is about Frank Currell, a man that owned over 80 cats. Currell had to part with  most of them because his wife passed away and he now has cancer and he is unable to take care of them.

A strong strength of this piece is the story itself.  Having over 80 cats is quite interesting.  However, the shaky camera was very distracting.  It was hard to pay attention.  Another strength was the changing of the camera angles to show how many and what kind of cats there were in his home.  It was nice to see those low angles to get perspective of a cat. It was nice to see a photo of his wife and a jump to his sons when they were mentioned in the story as well.

Even though I did enjoy the short length of the video, there are a lot of questions unanswered in this piece that really could have added some more depth.  I want to know where and what size of a place he lives in.  I would have loved to see a wide establishing shot.  That wider shot would have a lot more impact on the viewer.  More interaction of him with the cats would have been great, especially from a different location in his home.

I think this piece could have been done as a photo and audio slideshow.  The photographer could have gotten some really great off-moments and impacting interaction of Frank and his cats.  This way, the movement of the camera would not be so distracting for the viewer.

This video was about a man named Frank Currell whose wife recently passed away and now he is unable to care for their 80 some cats!  However, in the video, Frank never identified himself, and I was only aware of his name from the text below the video.  Right away, you know the story is about cats because they are everywhere.

I think this story could easily have been told as an audio slideshow as well because the video itself was pretty boring.  It showed old Frank sitting there with a bunch of cats the whole time and that is pretty much it.  I think it would have been better if they showed Frank up and moving a bit more or went more into his personal life.  They could have shown a picture of his wife or him playing more with all of those cats.  I did enjoy the shot of the cat with it’s tongue sticking out.

I also think this video was too short and that more things could have been added to make it better, like showing his sons playing with the cats or something.  This video looked very amateur and a lot could have been done to make it better.

 I found Cats Need Homes to be a very unique piece. The video was about a man that owned over 80 cats, but due to being sick with cancer and his wife’s death he now needed to find the cats new homes. The story was very short yet through the angles and images I was immediately interested.

The camera changed angles frequently which helped the story flow. One issue I did have with the camer was that it was shaking a lot. Since the camera was shaking so much I assume the video was shot by a beginner. The camera would frequently get a close up and then shot wide angle frames. This was great because then you could see what the house looked like with so many cats roaming around. The feel of the video was very natural and the camera allowed the audience to step into this mans everyday life with his cats.

There were some good interviews during the story but you could not consistantly hear what was being said, I don’t believe the microphone was close enough. The camera also did not use the 1/3 rule which I now understand the importance of because it is the best way for shooting an interview. The unique thing I did like about the interviews is that as the main character spoke the camera shifted between various angles to show all of the cats. I also really enjoyed how the camera was low to the ground so it was as if you were roaming through the house as a cat.

Even though it was fun to view things at the cat’s level when the camera shifted back to an interview the camera was cutting off the top of the man’s head. You should always make sure you aren’t cutting heads out of a camera shot. I also feel that when the film started and ended it seemed extremely abrupt. It was as if the camera was just turned off and then back on.

This was a very captivating piece and filmed nicely. Video was by far the best medium for this story, if there were no visuals the story would have been extremely boring.

“Cats Need Homes” was an interesting, short human interest story about a man who owns over 80 cats.  His wife had recently died, and since he was a Cancer patient himself, he was unable to care for them.  The video fit the “feel” of the story very well, it was quiet and simple, much like the story was. The video had many interesting angles and types of shots, which helped the story greatly.  The interviews could have been improved in a few ways to add to the story.

The video had a wide variety of shots that helped give a “cat-like” view to the audience.  There were extreme close ups of the cats’ fur, ears and eyes.  This gave a unique, and sometimes cute view of the cats. I thought it was neat how the cats were allowed to freely roam in front of the camera lense.  They didn’t try to fix the fact that this man was living with almost 80 cats. The unedited feel actually added to the story.  There was also a variety of wide and medium shots, a few where you were able to see many cats at a time, or the body of one of the man’s sons. This added variety to a video where it would otherwise possibly be dull.

The angles were also a great strength of the videos. The angles, like the variety of shots, gave a cat-like view.  Many of the shots were looking at up at people as the cats would.  I also like how the camera man was even with a cat’s eyes at the kitchen table, as if he was looking at the cat straight on.   The many different angles added humor to the video, displaying the cats’ many personalities.  I loved the shot where the two cats were sitting amongst the cans in the pantry, that especially showed just how many cats there actually were and how they live almost everywhere in the house.   

The interviews were okay, but they could have been improved with a better use of the rule of 1/3’s.  Some of the interviews of the owner were straight on, giving too much of a centered appearance.  Sometimes the man being interviewed was also looking into the “smaller” 1/3 of the screen, giving it a cramped, awkward appearance. 

The video was also relatively shaky, especially when zooming in on certain cats for close-ups or the shot of the man’s wife’s picture.  The shakiness made it look homemade, unlike a professional video for news should look like.  I would have also liked to see more interviews from the sons, and their comments on their father’s lifestyle.  

One more improvement could have been a very wide shot of the whole living room or the house.  I think to see a multitude of cats all over the house, all at once, would have made a much stronger impression on the viewer. 

Overall, “Cats Need Homes” was a well shot video, with an interesting mixture of angles and shot styles. Video was also the best medium for this story as the audience was able to see the many cats in action, living in their current environment and interacting with their owner that must soon give them up.  Simply photo and audio of cats would make for too dull, too common of a story.

Pawel Dwulit’s video piece, Cats Need Homes, features the interesting story of Frank Currell, a Scarborough resident who has over 80 cats living with him.  Now, after years of caring for the stray felines, he has to give most of them up due to the death of his wife and health reasons.

One thing that I really liked about this video was the different shots of the cats.  Instead of just viewing them lying around, Dwulit showed one peeping out from under the kitchen table, two black cats behind a set of canned goods, and a close-up of one with its tongue out.  This variety of shots kept me from getting bored.

Another part of the video that I thought was done well was the use of b-roll.  A more specific example of this is when Frank is talking about “his boys” helping him out, and the video cuts to his son and possibly his son’s wife in the kitchen with some of the cats.

One detail that I noticed during the piece that I feel could have been done better was some of the audio editing.  About halfway through the video there was an awkward pause that didn’t really have any good nat sound or anything.

A second small thing I noticed that I didn’t really fit into the video was when the picture of Frank’s deceased wife.  I felt like the shot was forced and it was also tilted at a weird angle, so that made it kind of awkward to look at.

If I had edited this piece, I would have only done a couple of things differently.  Mainly, I probably would have gotten a better variety of shots with Frank in them.  I might have shown him feeding the kitties or cleaning the litter box or something other than just sitting on the couch petting a cat.

I think that a video was the perfect type of media for this story.  I don’t think that text really could have conveyed the enormity of how many cats this man has.  I think that actually being able to picture what a house filled with over 80 cats looks like is much more effective than simply stating, “Frank Currell owns more than 80 cats.”

I thought that Pawel Dwulit’s video about the 80 cats being given away for adoption by a a man named Frank Currell in Scarboro was interesting, to say the least. I was a little shocked at first by the mere idea that an owner could own that many animals in one place, and was even more surprised to see through the video that the animals and home seemed to be in very good shape.

We’ve all read and seen videos and news stories about the horrors of homes with 100 dogs or 50 cats, and in a way, I suppose this video was able to give a face to the names of all the people we read about that hoard animals.

Though I thought that the story within itself was interesting, I was quite disappointed by the lack of context provided to the viewer during the progression of the piece. Why did Currell and his wife have so many cats? How did they manage to take care of them all? Do the pets have names? Have they ever faced ridicule or problems for having so many pets? I just felt that there were far too many unanswered questions left for the viewer to speculate answers for. 

I thought that the dialogue given by Currell was very good, I just think that Pawel Dwulit should have expanded upon the story of the man and his wife to clarify what happened to her, and how his having cancer has affected the lives of the animals.

Monkey and Meesha play with twine on a chilly fall day.

Monkey and Meesha are my neighbor’s barn cats. They have grown so much since I took this photo last year! They are so sweet and love attention. I wish I wasn’t allergic to them!