Interactive Video Over the 2008 Elections

This week in my Journalism 4720 class we were assigned to watch the interactive video presentation put together by the New York Times and give our thoughts on the video and how we think it was done. The content of the video was pretty good; however, the way the presentation was pieced together was by far the best thing about it. It definitely sucked you in and held your attention throughout the entire presentation. I believe this was edited and put together using Final Cut Pro and I also think they used Flash to do it as well. The presenation was pretty much a narrative story over the 2008 election going all the way back to when it first started being talked about and campaigned over last year. It covered everything involving the elections all the way up until the election day on November 4, 2008. The presentation was extremely good and easy to understand and follow. This looks to be a very hard presentation to put together and yet the Times did it extremely well. They used great photos, interviews with the voters, pieces of video, natural sound, bits and pieces of audio from the candidated themselves, and it was narrated by one of the reporter from the Times who helped put it together. I thought the use of graphics was extremely cool and efective for drawing in viewers. It also helped make it easier to be understood by the viewers. The first part where they layed it out with a map was really neat. I wish I knew how to do that and I hope I will someday be able to learn it because I would definitely use it in my own videos and presentations. The graphics also helped move the story along and I think the good photos made a big difference and helped it to be even better. Overall I think this story was great and I definitely recommend it to everyone to watch it and see what they think about it. Here is the link to the video:

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/politics/2008-election-overview/

Add a comment November 10, 2008