I Critique Me!

Now that I've had a chance to critique a number of videos from the point of view of story, I decided to revisit a video I had created last semester. I wanted to take a look at it again in light of what I am studying this semester. This video was created to provide an introduction to my UC Denver portfolio, and in it I tell a story of what I hope to accomplish as an ILT professional and a teacher of physics.

Though I am writing as if I were a neutral observer, I am, of course, well aware of the effort I made and struggles I experienced producing the video. What I want to see is if the video holds up under scrutiny several months after the fact.

I referred to Jason Ohler's list of possible digital story evaluation traits to examine this story. I used three traits: flow (& organization and pacing), media grammar, and writing.

Flow: The video was well-organized, and flowed evenly and briskly with excellent pacing.

Media grammar: Media grammar refers to the conventions and rules of use in a given medium. In this video, the media grammar was handled reasonably well except for the section starting at 0:22. In this section there were obvious bumps and inconsistencies as the producer tried to achieve certain effects. In the section starting at 0:12, the coordination between what was described verbally and what was presented visually was incorrect. The images needed to correspond to what was being said. Finally, a higher-grade video recorder would also have improved the image quality in the first and last sections where the speaker was visible.

Writing: I can definitely say that there was a script and a storyboard. The writing was competent and concise, the overall plan of the video was sound.

A final comment: I was particularly happy with the audio portion. The quality of recording was good, and my voice was expressive and appropriate for the task. I also composed and played the two pieces of music. The change in music signaled the main transitions, and the music effectively set the mood for the video.