Blogs

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.