The videos made by the students last year were all very
informative and based on interesting topics. There were however, two videos
that stuck out to me as the most intriguing within the bunch. The first was The Terror. Visual engagement with an audience is key within a video, since
it’s quite easy to lose viewers attention. I however I never felt like this was
the case with their video. There was a lot of footage that set the scene for
the events, and that played a great role in ensuring my attention was always on
the subject matter. It also was quite case specific (focused on Peru) and that
made it more detailed and concise. By focusing it down to a specific period and
place allowed for the creation of a political timeline, which I believe, aided
the flow of the entire video. The political timeline also helped create a
mental picture of the political affairs of the nation at the time
Another
video that stuck out to me was “Towards
an Uncertain Future”. Although less specific than The Terror, it gave some tremendous case studies that were well
detailed and documented. Their visual aids also helped greatly in not only
keeping ones attention, but also in setting context for the events they
discussed. There also appeared to be a great depth of research put into this
video, as there were no brief overviews of each case study, but in depth
analysis and recordings that backed up all their claims.
Two of my
least favorite videos were Caudillos vs.
the Nation State and Speaking Truth
to Power. Although both were quite
informative, they lacked the element of intrigue. Both videos lacked any visual
aids, besides the two narrators reading in each, which ended up taking from
both the videos. There also was a lack of connection between the material and
the narrators, which made the videos rather uninteresting to watch.
