While at the beginning of the term I can’t particularly comment on the content of the videos, as an avid watcher of media I can get a feel for what I want to watch, and what I don’t.

Having said that, and bless their hearts, “The Meeting of the Two Worlds” comes across as a joke 25 seconds in. It is the first video I am watching, and I will not continue, and absolutely not finish. I understand that not everyone is a public speaker, and I do not want to make any value judgments against the person, or people involved, but the quality of work is not of a university standard. The work is not rehearsed, therefore the speaker stumbled frequently and seems to not be able to read what they have written. The intro title is partially cut off, and frankly, in the first 30 seconds the person has convinced me that since they haven’t put in the time to create a good piece of work, I should not waste my time in actually watching it. Without watching any other videos, or much of this one, this one is the worst.

In “Speaking Truth to Power”, it was similarly difficult to get through. I’m not too interested in seeing people’s faces via webcam, and the use of pictures and video from other groups showed that you do not need to do this. The second half of this video was completely inaudible, therefore impossible to critique or listen to the work. I would say that these two videos are the worst.

While the quality of the video, and the commentary seemed to be done well “Commerce, Coercion, and the American Empire” had a watermark throughout and I found that very distracting.

As for the best videos, I am going to choose “Towards an Uncertain Future”, and “Independence Narratives, Past and Present”. For the former, I really enjoyed the media, clear speech, and background music – while keeping everything in balance (the music wasn’t too loud, the speech was great in speed too). The latter video while possibly not the best with “production value”, I enjoyed how passionate and into the video was. I liked how instead of just telling us information, they decided to create more of an informal script, talking to each other. I found that interesting and it made me want to listen to more. Bonus points go to “The Export Boom as Modernity” for the best intro ever, but unfortunately fell pretty flat with the monotonous voice that followed.

I guess my favourite videos were the ones were I didn’t have to look at the presenters, but showed me what exactly they were talking about via video and pictures. If the video was supposed to be of our faces… well why wouldn’t we just do presentations in class?

The task at hand is really difficult, I’m not one for making videos myself. As much talk as I have right now, I realize that it is an immense amount of work and those who did a great job really deserve a pat on the back.