After viewing last year’s student videos, I now have formulated different ideas and have a better understanding of what to do when the task is ours. I have stolen ideas that I believe will create a nice video and have ditched some that I think will deter a video.
The two videos I found most successful are “The Terror” and “Signs of Crisis in the Gilded Age.” The reason I found “The Terror” appealing is because of its visuals. All of the images are directly related to the commentating, allowing a viewer to engage using another sense. For me at least, I find it much easier to grasp concepts by being able to view whatever is being told or explained, so this video did a great job of keeping me engaged. I also enjoyed “The Terror” due to how concise and specific it was. Focusing on only Peru, I never found myself confused. I found “Signs of Crisis in the Gilded Age” just as engaging as “The Terror” for many of the same reasons. One, being its appropriate use of visuals throughout the video. I also noticed that the video was done very thoroughly and I felt a sense of interest in the topic by the creators. Showing interest makes the video, obviously less boring, but a much better and engaging video overall.
On the other hand, the two most unsuccessful videos of 2014 I found were “Speaking Truth to Power” and “Cuadillos Versus and Nation State.” As opposed to my two favorite videos, these videos did not incorporate any visuals, making it difficult to follow along. Like I said before, visuals excel my ability to learn, so these videos didn’t do much for me. It was also very unfortunate during the end of “Speaking Truth to Power” when the audio did not match the visual, creating a glitch. This made the video difficult to understand and unwatchable. Sorry!
When watching the terror, I was also impressed by their use of visuals. I kept wondering where they got the images from, and I wish they had cited all of the images at the end of the video like some other groups did. I also think that you made a good point about how concise the video was, I felt that it stuck to its topic really well, and didn’t distract the viewers. Now that’s something that I’ll want to make an effort to do in this year’s video.
I also believe that the visual aids on “Terror” helped me to understand the situation and did not make me bored. In contrast, “Speaking Truth to Power” was not too excited to watch as the voice was monotone.