Hello everyone!
Let me introduce myself. My name is Laura, I am 19, and I am on my second year of UBC, planning to major in Linguistics with a minor in Spanish. The main reason I am interested in Latin American studies is because I was actually born and raised in Brazil. But despite that, I feel like I have much to learn about Latin America in general, and that is why I decided to enroll in this course.
About the student videos, I have to say my favorite one was “The meeting of two worlds III”, because of the way it was structured and presented. The way the content was said was like listening to a story, and the tones and voices used by the creators made for an engaging video that was very interesting to watch, and kept me paying attention to the end. Another thing I liked about this video were the images and, most importantly, the videos. They were very representative of what was being said and the videos helped create this “storytime” illusion. This video is a perfect example of a simple, but effective video.
My second favorite video was ” The Meeting of two worlds: Aztec Edition” because of the amazing animations used to describe what was being said. The animations were a great addition because it really helps the viewer visualize and be engaged in what is being communicated. The only reason this was not my number one favorite was because I felt that this wasn’t as well-written and clear and the previous mentioned video, but they did an incredible job nonetheless. This makes me realize the importance of writing a cohesive and well thought-out script, which is not so easy to do.
Now to my least favourites. One of the videos I did not like that much was “The meeting of two worlds IV”. The reason for it is that, although it did seem like the person who made had researched and knew their topic, the execution of the video was not great. The majority of the video consisted of one person reading from a script and talking to the camera. Now that would be ok, except the intonation and mannerisms displayed by this person were monotonous and made the material they were talking about boring and hard to pay attention to. They did try to include some images, but they served more as awkward pauses in the video and I didn’t feel they contributed that much to my overall understanding of the subject.
Another video I did not like so much was “Caudillos Versus the Nation State”. The reason I did not like this video as much as some other ones was because of the layout. The two people are just sitting and reading from their notes into the camera, without much of engaging discussion or visual aids. The sepia color layover also does not do this video any favours. Again, the creators did seem to have researched a lot, and know what they were talking about, but in my opinion they failed to present that knowledge in an engaging way.