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!

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.”

Cats need homes by Pawel Dwulit features Frank Currell, a man who lives with 80 or more cats. The video begins with Currell sitting on a couch surrounded by a few of his cats. I really like how it just starts off with him saying, “We always had in the numbers of 90 to 100 cats here.” It really grabbed my attention and was a strong starting point.
I think it was a nice touch to add the picture of his late wife while he said, “My wife passed away.” Currell was a little hard to hear and I had to watch the video twice before I could understand what he said when talking about being a cancer patient. Also, later on in the video he mumbles quite a bit. I’m not sure if this could be edited but maybe another piece of the interview could be used instead-a more understandable one.
I think it’s great that the cats are actively involved in the video and we can see Currell petting them. The close-up shots of just the cats (under the table, walking around, with cans, etc.) were great to see. It was nice to see more cats and showed just how many there really were.
The video was unsteady and the camera seemed to move a little too much which was distracting. I liked the background noise throughout the piece, especially when the cats started to make noises. It made it more realistic. I liked that Currell was the main focus of the video but it would have been nice to have the sons (who were pictured) talk a little bit about the situation as well.

The Star posted a video about an old man who is having to give away many of his beloved 80-some cats.

The video starts off and it is apparent that the videographer is not using a tripod. The camera is visibly shaky when it is panning out on the old man, caressing a couple of his cats. When the man tells about how his wife passed away, they have him speaking while getting a close-up of a photo of his wife. The camera is still not on a tripod, because the camera is still very shaky. If this was the case throughout the entire video, I do not think it would’ve been a problem. The man is quite old, and although he is not physically shaky, he still has a slow and turbulent voice. But instead of using this format throughout the entire video, they only did it for the first 45 seconds or so, and then they decide to set up a tripod. Then it goes back and forth from getting shaky shots to stable shots. The inconsistency was very annoying. He also switches camera angles of the man, which is okay, except the first shot of the old man shows him directly in the center of the camera, which is usually not a good place for the subject to be. Later in the video, though, he is on the left third of the shot, which is a better place for an interviewee to be situated in the shot.

The shots of the cats were a very nice touch, mostly because they chose to get on the same level as the cats. There were so many cats throughout the video, I thought that using these angles was very appropriate because that’s the main viewpoint seen in the house. They didn’t just get floor videos looking up, they got many different shots; cats on the couch, cats on the table, and what the cat would be looking at.

I wish that they would’ve got the opinion of more than just the old man, though. There is a shot where he talks about his sons, and then you see the sons hanging out in the kitchen, but you never hear from them. You hear some cats’ opinions throughout the video for background noise, which I thought was great. With so many cats in one place, I bet that’s just normal for them to hear hissing and purring all the time. Although the cat background noise was a nice touch, at the end the old man tells a funny joke, and unfortunately you can hear a woman laugh a little bit. I don’t know if that could have been edited out, but it was a bit distracting, especially because you don’t hear from any women (or anyone else besides the man for that matter) during the entire video.