Slug & Lede

In Sin City Shooters, the positives significantly outweigh the negatives.  The variety of angles and different camera shots really help to keep the viewer’s interest.  Specifically, the shot where the camera is in front of the shooter while he is shooting and the bullets are coming directly towards you.  That seems like it would be a hard shot to get, but it was very well executed.  However, the scene at the beginning when the camera panned to follow the running shooter was a little too fast.  It made it hard to follow the main focus of the shot, or anything on the screen for that matter.

Another positive quality of the video was the mix between actual footage and interviews of the people in the shooting league.  Since some of the interviewees were a little boring, I think putting their voices as the background at various parts was also a successful idea.

I would only change two things about this video.  First, I would take out the high-speed panning at the beginning and go for a different approach.  Instead of panning, I’d go for a wide shot positioned in front of the shooter.  This way, you could watch him run and do the shooting course without getting motion sickness.

Second, I would take out some of the interviews.  Sometimes I felt like they were kind of rambling and not really providing any necessary information for the piece.  I think taking a little of that out would really clean up the video and make it even more entertaining for its viewers.

“Sin City Shooters”is a 2008 video shot by the Las Vegas Sun about the Sin City Shooters club in Summerlin, Nevada.

The video is extremely well done because of the good mix of different camera angles and shot types.  This was the major strength of the piece. Two shots that were used particularly well were the wide shot and pan shot. The wide shot was used appropriately to give the viewers an idea of the surroundings, which appeared to be the sweltering Las Vegas desert complete with beautiful mountains in the backdrop. The pan shot was used very well to follow two of the shooters as they moved from target to target. This can be a difficult shot because you have to follow at just the right pace and keep the camera steady will doing so. The camera operator did a good job of keeping the camera from shaking and moving at just the right speed as he/she followed the shooter.

The interviews were excellent, the “rule of thirds” was followed perfectly. The interviews were a big part of why video was the right medium for this story. Hearing the voices of the shooters, especially the woman, allowed people to hear the excitement in her voice firsthand. I also liked the gunshots that could be heard throughout the piece, the gunshots weren’t too loud and didn’t disrupt the piece at all. This was very important because the interviewers, especially the woman, described the sound very enthusiastically as an important part of shooting.

It was hard to find weaknesses in this piece, but I feel that there were a few. The first has to do with the caption below the video, which mentioned something about the club holding bimonthly shooting contests. Nothing was ever mentioned in the piece about shooting contests, it was about the enthusiasm the these people have for shooting.

While the story used many different types of unique shots, there were a few that could have been done differently. At the 37 second mark, there is a very wide shot of a man shooting in the direction of the camera. The wide shot was unnecessary, it showed a couple of people standing around behind the man as well as some parked cars, and the surroundings had already been seen in a previous wide shot. A medium shot or even a close up illustrating the facial features of the man probably would have worked better.

Feb. 7, 2008—Las Vegas Sun’s “Are EPA coal emission’s standards strict enough?” video produced by Matt Toplikar is well-produced and covers an interesting topic for that market because of its local impact.

The video focuses on Mesquite, Nevada and the surrounding community’s fight against the instillation of a coal plant. They were worried because they believed CO2 emissions would pollute their air and ultimately cause global warming.

I would like to discuss the positives and negatives of the package by taking you through the video piece by piece.

The first few scene setting clips are good because they establish location and are edited well. They sweeping motion ends before the clip cuts away to the next scene. However, some of the B-Roll of the men speaking into the microphone looks a little shaky; perhaps the videographer did not have a tripod and therefore, it appeared unprofessional.

I thought the use of the graphics to display locations of the towns and the plant where very good because audiences needed to know where exactly this emissions plant would be placed. Its locality could effect their health.

Next, Toplikar decided to use a still image with audio and I think that it works, but it is not as effective as a movie would have been because this topic creates emotions in people’s faces when they speak in anger about it. As an audience member, that would have been intriguing to see.

The first SOT had excellent framing, as well as the second one. I really thought the second SOT’s angle was interesting because the camera was pointed upwards towards the pink sky. The man being interviewed was talking about solar power…I sense some irony.

The use of the multiple bars and copy as graphics did not work for me because it was too much to take in during that amount of time…and I am not sure about whether or not it was completely necessary to include all of the statistics.

I thought the flashing images of the people at the meeting worked to establish just how many people attended this meeting and were upset; however, there were too many images of different people. The first 10 would have been enough.

The framing of the SOTs during the meeting were great, but each one lasted too long for this package. I did not pay attention to what they were saying after they spoke for more than 10 seconds.

I really enjoyed the coal plant graphics and the big list of the chemicals. It was presented in an interesting way; one that really impacted me as an audience member.

The last SOT was not framed well because the lower thirds were sprawled across the man’s face.

Overall, the piece was important journalistically to present to the public because it was such a concerning issue.

The Las Vegas Sun’s interactive “History of Las Vegas” feature immediately draws the viewer’s attention with the large flash based banner mixing famous landmarks of Las Vegas, including the iconic “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign which flashes as you mouse over it.  Titans of Vegas entertainment like Elvis, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Wayne Newton, Cirque du Soleil and Siegfried and Roy, appear and disappear, a metaphor for the changing face of Vegas throughout the decades.   Down below, three buttons reveal stories of interest:  an interactive map, the neon graveyard, and implosions, which seeks to appeal a wide variety of viewers, those who like to visually see and interact with the evolution of Vegas’ casinos, people who like to see the nostalgia of neon lights in a panorama, and for the teenage boy who loves watching videos of tall landmarks implode. 

The text below the welcome banner is a short summery of the history of Vegas, from the city’s founding to the entertainment capital of the world.  To the left of the story is a table of contents, which is helpful if the viewer is looking for a particular topic on Las Vegas and doesn’t want to spend extra time savaging the site.  Down further is a video player, which has the about a dozen videos to view.

The interactive menus, like the map and the history of the mob are a little confusing to use at first.  But with a little point and click exploration,  the operation becomes obvious.  However, the timeline has tabs at the top which redirect you to different locations in vegas (the Strip, Downtown, the Valley) as well as through different decades, which I had completely overlooked the first time I looked at it.

From the first initial interaction with the site, it is a lot to take in.  Where do you go first?  However, the Las Vegas Sun has done a nice job in collecting a wide variety of stories and subjects in various formats to appeal to anyone.

The video I watched was about Geocachers in Nevada who hide and find treasures using GPS coordinates. Geocachers may hide a “cache” of something, be it a small treasure or box filled with things, then punch in the GPS coordinates of where they hid it and post it online for other people to find. This video focuses on a group trying to find a cache that someone else had posted on the internet. The video is fairly short and I was disappointed by that. I feel as though it did a good job explaining what it was, but it didn’t give us much of the experience of doing it.

The video does have good wide shots of people trying to find treasures and does some nice tilt shots from the rocks looking up at people cascading the mountains and also looking down at a woman talking to another man. The wide shots really capture how cast the wilderness is in Nevada and the territory they are working with. The also do a nice panning shot of people walking along a ridge after an interview.

The closest shots are those of the people they interview. The interview a man named Lynn Storton who is the Geocacher coordinator and the camera does a nice job of framing him sitting on the rocks while he speaks. It gives the viewer a good feeling of the atmosphere and surroundings. The other interview is with a woman named Judi McDonald, a geocacher in the group. They focus on her a bit throughout the video, but I feel the footage of her giving the interview is too shaky and doesn’t frame her well. While she is in the first “third” of the shot, her head is a bit cut off.

The do eventually show what a cache looks like, but it’s a mere few seconds towards the end of the video. I wish they would’ve shown us more of the entire process. The interviews were good from the coordinator’s stand point to a person who is just a fan of participating in the fun. Overall, it was a nice video.