I compared two Washington Post videos that looked at voters and the candidates running on both sides of the party fence.

A View From the Pulpit edited by Ben de la Cruz.

I liked that this video focused on the people and not the candidates. At one point, a group of women were talking about how Hillary Clinton would be saying a few words. But this address wasn’t shown emphasizing that the people and their impressions of these candidates. In fact, neither candidate was in the piece directly at all. The story wasn’t a narrative one, per se, but I do think it was a story. And I like that. I liked that this seemed very balanced to me. The video addressed the historical aspect of the candidates gender and race.

I felt it was a news story about how an influential group of black Americans in the nation’s capitol perceive. The video opened with a response to Bill Clinton’s comments that seemed to attack Barack Obama, and it lead out from there on whether black spiritual leaders supported one candidate or the other. I felt it had a strong news peg and then branched out from that point. The story involved what the WHOLE black community might think, while the next video I watched seemed more focused on individual sound bites.

A Day at the Beach With GOP Voters

I chose a video that would be in the same news group also by Ben de la Cruz and found it to be completely on the other end of the spectrum, even though it was basically the same idea as the first video. What do constituent groups think of the candidates?

It opens clips of voters’ responses and then relies on text to set up the video. I’d be harder pressed to call this a story than the other one. There’s nothing cohesive in there to give the material some kind of arc.

There were several really weird shots included. While some imagery that in places is beautiful, some clips gave me the impressions that the film maker doesn’t take Republicans as seriously as he takes the black voters. The beach shots at the beginning are lovely. Yet, the fun house clips throughout serve to distract. I am sure they’re meant to give the context of setting to the video up to the sunset at the end. Two shots really hit me as plain odd: a man randomly running and screaming and a shot of a pirate ship while one Republican was talking about Hillary. I still don’t think this is a story because it seems to miss reaching the greater context that the other video attained.  I do think this is captures the viewpoints of a group of people and has strong news value for that reason.