Slug & Lede

Sin City Shooters is a video clip about a group of shooters who hold contests at the Desert Sportsman’s Rifle and Pistol Club. The piece does an excellent job of featuring individual shooters in interviews and then putting their voices over clips of the people in action on the range. This technique is used several times and mostly the people are talking about their excitement over the sport and their love for it. The first women interviewed shows good emotion and energy and that is captured on camera well, also a young man in a black shirt gives a thoughtful explanation of why he participates and what that means to him.

The action shots used are extremely valuable to the piece and really are the reason behind it being successful. Many of the clips show impressive scenes of the shooters in action and these also include some of the gear and targets are shooting at. Viewers catch a good look at many different types of wepons that might interest them and targets that look out of the ordinary. Also, the camera angle used is impressive including scanning of the scene following people as they go from station to station on a course and the camera angle which gives the perspective of being shot at by one of the contestants. Even during the interview sections the background is intriguing, but not overly exciting to take the attention off of the subject that is talking in the scene.

Although many things where done very well in this video, several things could have been improved. One interview in particular added very little to the piece as a whole. The man in the red shirt mostly just said he was from somewhere else and usually shot at other places but had come there today. I know this adds the aspect that people come from other areas to participate, I thought that it took to much time in such a short piece. I would have preferred to see a manager or someone who had some kind of authority interviewed and asked questions about the people who come to the site and the atmosphere of the community. Also, the women interviewed at the begging and end of the segment pretty much repeated herself. She had good energy and excitement but not nearly as much as seeing someone shoot and blow up targets, I would have preferred that segment to have been changed and have asked her another question or put it as a voice over with action shots of people shooting.

Overall, I think the piece was good and the camera work was the best part. I do feel however that when working with such a short segment that better quality material could have been shown during some of the video.

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.

The video-online content piece “Coal Plant Strongly Opposed”, created in early 2008 is, in my opinion, split between providing factual information regarding the Mesquite coal plant proposal, and acting as a rhetorical speaking board for Mesquite locals and other protesters of the plant proposal.  However as a whole, the piece was successful in many formal areas, and was sufficiently interesting to maintain my interest in a topic rather unrelated to my own day-to-day issues.

The first of the formal issues that I personally enjoyed was the use of still frame photography in the piece.  These stills were slightly animated by something akin to the “Ken Burns” effect, and in certain areas were quite clever, such as focusing on a small group of people and then pulling back to reveal the full size of the protest.  Further, as a matter of personal opinion, still images allow one to capture the emotion (even those experiencing boredom) of the people in the audience far better than full video.  With video any amount of motion would become distracting, and prevent full analysis.  While photography may capture a single moment, that moment is in powerful clarity and allows (in my opinion) for a more robust visual experience (that and people sitting around and being fussy isn’t always so exciting).

However, the rhetorical aspects of the piece are far less clear cut in their success.  While this is a piece on community outrage, many speakers featured in the video are espousing nothing more than sheer opinion, claiming it to be fact (the individual Doug Alger, while a charismatic speaker, is a prime example of this: “That’s a fact.”).  While many of these individuals are labeled as “protester”, their claims are left un-refuted by the pieces’ editor, their accusations left lingering in the viewers mind despite a potential lack of factual basis for many of them.  In this context, more personal concerns such as Lori Faldmo’s become much more compelling then those that assert to have scientific “legitimacy” but lack evidence other than vague claims.

Further, the online page for the piece hosts a headline reading: “Are EPA coal emission standards strict enough?”. This asks a question that is touched on for only a few moments in the actual piece.  While this is an important question, the piece makes no conclusive arguments about it, rather, it shows the upset members of the Mesquite community bombast their city council, and lists the potential poisons in coal emissions. With a half-hearted attempt at balanced coverage, the piece grants a few moments of airtime to a member of the Toquop Energy, Frank Maisano, whose quotes lack some crucial context.  To me, this is a one-sided piece about a community’s reaction to a power plant proposal, rather than an answer to a larger question of EPA standards.

I thought that “Last Call for Haircuts” was an overall good, nostalgic video depicting the last days of a barber shop ran by twin brothers. The video had good interviews with the shop’s “regulars” and had some pretty good shots. However, there were a few shots that did not work as well into the rest of the video.
I thought the interviews were the best aspect of the video. They added a lot of details about the shop and lent credibility to the video. The interviews with the customers give the video a nostalgic feel, and really allow the viewers to see how long the shop had been around. It almost gives it a sense of closure. One example was one of the older male customers who said he had been coming to the barber shop since 1959 and how it was going to be hard to find someone as good as “the twins.” It was effective for them to use a lot of the older customers who had been coming since the shop opened to evoke the sense of nostalgia and tradition of the shop’s last days.
Another effective interview was the one with the kid and his dad. I thought this one worked well because it presented a contrast with the interviews with the older men and stood out from the others. Although the subject of the interview was younger, I thought it evoked the sense of tradition just as well as the interviews with the older men, as if he was beginning his tradition.
The video also had some effective shots throughout the video. Some of the close-ups worked well, especially those during the haircuts. I thought these were effective in showing the process and allowing the viewer to see a typical day for the barbers. The shots of the tools used were also effective in the same way.
Although there were some good close ups, some of them felt random and as if they did not really add anything to the video. I could see how some of the close ups of around the shop would be used to enable the viewer to get a feel for the shop and allow them to visualize it in its entirety. Even though that is a good idea, I felt as if it did not really work. There was one shot in particular I felt that really did not work that was of the front of the store. There was a car driving by in the middle of the shot and the front of the store was not framed very well.
Overall, I thought “Last Call for Haircuts” was a generally good video. It portrayed the emotions it intended to very well through the use of the interviews. Although some of the shots could have been done a little better, it was a well-prepared video for the most part.

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.

Jennifer Crew

Multimedia

019:088:002

Nick Bergus

November 21, 2008

Video Story Critique

http://www.thestar.com/fpLarge/video/541321

This video was a movie preview done by The Star’s movie critic, Peter Howell.  Throughout the piece Howell previews the best movies being released for the holiday season.  The positives on the piece were that when Peter Howell was shown for his speaking parts he was not centered.  He was in the right third of the screen sitting on a chair and I feel that was a necessary element, otherwise if he would have been centered, it would have looked off.  It would have also made him seem too close to the viewer.

Another element in this piece I liked was while Howell spoke about the videos, they were being played along with the sound bites of the videos themselves.  I liked that the sound of the movies were played along with Howell’s voice; it gave the viewer an option of watching and listening to the movie or just watching the movie and listening to Howell’s voice.  The volume on the movie clips were loud enough so that the sound could be heard, but not loud enough that Howell’s voice could be discerned as the primary focus.

Negatives about the piece were that the background on Howell was extremely boring.  You could tell that it was thrown together quickly so he could say his piece.  I feel that the background could have been decorated with some popcorn, movie reels, or in some sort of festive way considering that Howell was commenting on upcoming movies to be released for the holiday season.  Along the lines of the background being boring, Howell’s attire was lacking as well.  His shirt and pants blended into the background too much.  If he would have worn brighter colors, or even colors that weren’t in the same color palate as the backdrop it would have been completely fine.

Finally, I didn’t care for Howell’s tone of voice.  He didn’t seem excited in the least.  No, previewing upcoming movie premiers is not the most exciting of things, but the viewers can pick up on the blandness of Howell’s voice throughout the clip.  If his pitch/tone would have risen at all, the piece would have been a lot better.  Instead all I wanted to do, as a viewer, was tune Howell’s voice out and listen to the clips of the movies.  Overall, the piece could use minor improvements, but as a whole and what it was used for, I think it served its purpose.   <a href=”http://www.thestar.com/fpLarge/video/541321″><PeterHowellmoviepreviewTheStar</a>.