1st Video Assignment

"Barbers Tales" & "Linking Gaza To The Outside World

 

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/06/16/world/1194840995653/linking-gaza-to-the-outside-world.html?ref=egypt
http://www.monocle.com/sections/business/Web-Articles/Barbers-Tales/

 

As watching both of these videos I would like to talk about the differences among them based on :

 

Strength

Weaknesse

Voice

Perspective

Structure

 Tone

 Pacing

 

Both videos are unique in their own, but each serves a different purpose to tell a story. Making a video to tell a story has become such a successful way to describe different events or stories. I believe that having the ability to use such a medium has encouraged many journalists to be unique in their own ways.

 

Linking Gaza to the Outside World

This video has a special purpose that involves showing us life at Gaza and how people are able to survive after all these years. The video tells the story in a way that shows different scenes of the smugglers as they try to deal with the underground tunnels. In addition to the way it could be so hectic for the smugglers to have a job that requires helping thousands of people to survive, while exposing their lives to danger for only a low amount of remuneration in return.  The video also shows us how brave those smugglers could be to survive under such conditions.  It follows the structure of the inverted pyramid by presenting the most important information first then continuing to different examples. It gives us a view of the authorities’ opinion about the underground tunnel and their fear of weapons to be smuggled. This video follows a clear attitude that shows the situation Palestinians go through and how such tunnels have become a source of business for those smugglers and people importing those products through the tunnels by hiring different labor. This video has offered a clear story with many different sources, scenes, and examples of the life at Gaza. As for the weaknesses I cannot find any. I believe it is a well done video.

 

Barber's Tales

The barber’s tales video follows a different goal in telling the story. It takes us around 4 different cities that have offered great personal grooming services for their clients. Barbers and hairdressers that have excelled in their work. This video obviously serves as a different purpose than the last video because it is more centered on happy moments rather than the last video that shows scenes of how people in Gaza and smugglers suffer. This video takes us around 4 different cultures of hairdressers and barbers that offer unique services for their clients in their own way. The background music used in the video was a smart way to tell this story. It clearly isn’t arranged as an inverted pyramid because the story continues placing different examples of the same importance on the other cities.  It is a nice human interest story because it lets us experience all these 4 cities with the most famous hairdressers and barbers. The Sources interviewed are only the owners of the salons if they had included some outside sources of the clients experience at the salons it would have been great. For this video different reporters speak for the different cities, unlike the last video where there is only one reporter speaking for the whole video.