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.
I agree with Cher’s comments about A View From the Pulpit concerning how Ben de la Cruz focused more on the views and feelings of the people than the candidates in this story. And it was a story. I liked the video particularly because in editing the videographer was very organized and captured all angles that the African American community is viewing this campaign. Although he interviewed a number of people, it was very conversational and it didn’t feel like you were just listening to a bunch of quotes. And from this organization I could see how many of the women were more concerned with gender and race issues where the male leaders were focusing on choosing a candidate who would ultimately effect change and improvement for the race.
I thought it was clever to split the screen for example while interviewing one religious leader, the other side of the screen would have a picture of Obama or Hillary or President Clinton depending on what the person was talking about. I think the shots of the people in the church and the emotional clips the videographer chose also kept my interest in this video which was 5 minutes long. Ultimately I think the video was very stylish and polished and newsworthy because these black religious leaders do influence how their congregations view candidates and vote.
I understand what Cher meant when she said A Day at the Beach with GOP voters didn’t really have an arc. I liked the video because it was showing the issues people thought about and unlike the first video, these people weren’t leaders or talking about how they made their decisions based on church. I think this video had a more light-hearted feel which was also nice. I think the shots of the surroundings at the beach were very appropriate because it supported the tone and body language of the people being interviewed. You will talk and behave differently if you’re at the beach than if you were dressed up at church. But I can see how Cher would say it made Republicans seem less serious than the black leaders in the other video. So I appreciated the shots of the children on rides or the jerseys on the wall of the restaurant.
I also thought the videographer did a nice job of being selective with what parts of the interview he included. The people he talked to expressed themselves well and told why they were supporting one candidate or in some cases undecided.