Hi everyone!
My name is Christiana and I’m a second year student within the faculty of Arts. I’m interested in all things culture/music/politics/social issues related (just to name a few), so naturally, LAST 100 seemed like a great elective to take. In taking this course, I hope to broaden my perspective on Latin America as I’ve recently come to realize that I know very little about it beyond what is portrayed through popular media.
Although I liked many of the student videos, to keep this blog (relatively) short and sweet, I’ve decided to give a few of my thoughts on only 3 of my favourite videos:
Caudillos by Anna Wilmann, Elyse Doyle, Emma Elsner, Isabel Masters, and Rachel White
I appreciated the hand-drawn graphics within this video – it reminded me of a production of Crash Course, but with more basic production quality. I also like the background music used as it complemented the information given in the voiceovers well but didn’t overpower it. If I were to improve the video in any way, I would prefer to have a more steady camera since the transitions between images were a little shaky and less background noise in conjunction with the voiceovers as I found it a little distracting and it took away from the production quality. Overall, the students presented the information in a creative, clear, and engaging way; making their video one of my favourites.
The Meeting of Two Worlds II by Jackson, Spiro, and Chica
The expressive music of this video was extremely engaging and the information was presented in a clear and coherent manner – I enjoyed the mix between the graphics and information points in the first half of the video coupled with the lesson like voiceover and moving graphics in the latter portion of the video. The voiceover was extremely smooth with no discernible background noise which made it very easy to focus on what was being presented. However, the appearance of the [insert title here] at the beginning of the video as well as the spelling mistake took away from the content a little bit (in my personal opinion), and I found the ending of the video a little abrupt.
The Meeting of Two Worlds IV by Thomas Seagrave, Daniel Fielburg, Jasmin Jhaj, Rick Cheng, and Christine Santa María
This video immediately caught my attention by the undisturbed sound quality and smooth voiceovers. Their descriptions of Columbus’ journey as well as the repercussions his ‘discovery’ created for the indigenous people were detailed and the pronunciation of some of the names were flawless. I really liked the mix of images that went along with the commentary as well as the interactive elements within their video coupled with unexpected humour injected into certain parts of the video, given that their topic was quite heavy.
Thank you for reading!