Slug & Lede

“Intended Consequences” is a heart wrenching story about females who survived the 1994 Rwanda genocide and subsequently gave birth to unwanted children that were the result of rape.

One of the video’s strengths was that every image, whether it be moving or still, is composed and framed very well. Although there are some images that have people placed in the center of the frame it helps to make the story more resonant. Having their faces in the center is jarring in a way, against a black background it helps the viewer focus on their eyes and faces for the brief moment that they are on screen. Other shots follow the rule of thirds and thus allow the viewer to explore the images more fully.

The main weakness of the video is that there was a language barrier. Because of the language barrier, the interviews needed to have voice overs. Usually this isn’t a problem but there were so many different people being interviewed and only about three voices doing voice overs. This was a confusing combination because it became hard to tell the difference between people and stories.

Also, most of interviews were voice overs of other moving images. For instance, the woman being interviewed would be crying and looking into the camera while her interview was voiced over. This made the interviews less genuine because the viewer could not be sure that the voice was of the person featured. This is not to suggest that the interviews were fraudulent, but rather that they seemed assembled instead of presented; it became less natural.

Jonathan Torgovnik probably struggled with this decision a great deal because it would have looked jolty and inconsistent if he just put one direct interview after another. My suggestion, however, would be to either include less interviews or tell one complete story and move on to the next. That way the video would have flowed better for the viewer because they wouldn’t be wondering about the speaker instead of listening to what they were saying.