News coverage of a politician on the campaign trail is often repetitive and boring, because the story itself is repetitive and boring. Every day, the candidate stops in a new town, makes the same speech, answers many of the same questions, then everyone piles back on the bus and drives to the next town.
Multimedia coverage of these events usually takes one of two forms: 1) A reporter doing a standup in front of the venue, cut with a few soundbites from the speech, or 2) C-SPAN-style raw footage with almost no point of view at all.
When I saw this video by Yousur Alhlou and Greg Campbell for the New York Times, I was intrigued by the cinematic storytelling techniques they used to cover what could easily have been just another stump speech at another campaign stop.
The video’s title, “The Appeal of Ben Carson”, creates an unanswered question right away: what is his appeal?
0:00-0:26 The video opens with a montage of thoughtfully-composed, portrait-style interviews using shallow depth of field to separate the subjects from their background. The quality of the cinematography immediately elevates the piece beyond typical news-style footage. It quickly becomes clear that this video is not about Carson himself, but about the people who admire him, which is a more interesting and unusual angle to tell the story from, especially in a likely swing state such as Colorado.
0:28-0:48 Here we see the dreaded speech soundbites, but they are handled artfully. The podium is not placed dead center, as I would be tempted to do, but on a 1/3 line, and the framing gives Carson space to walk into when he moves. Instead of simply showing a soundbite or two without context, the footage of the speech is cut with shots and sounds of the reactions of the crowd, to create a sense of matched action and present-tense storytelling.
0:55 A timelapse shot captures the sense of time passing.
1:02 A video portrait gives a breath to the piece and introduces a character using a technique other than interview.
1:13 Dissolves imply time passing again.
1:27 and 1:35 These shots of audience members are beautifully composed and lit with natural light to create engaging, storytelling portraits.
What other techniques do you see the producers using in this video to make it more than just another campaign trail update?
This was beautifully shot and it definitely left me feeling like I was about to watch a documentary on Ben Carson, or that this could be a promotional piece for his campaign.
However, that feeling also left me somewhat concerned. Does cinematic storytelling of mundane things, like political news coverage, disillusion the viewer? Of course, some would argue that it is the reader/viewer’s responsibility to investigate political candidates and issues to make their decisions, but in reality, this is not always the case.
Would you consider this a piece of objective journalism?
Thanks, Jessica! One thought since I wrote this post: “cinematic” is probably is not the right word. There are no slider or crane or gimbal shots here. In fact, our esteemed Professor Pope pointed out that he would consider this a standard “newspaper video.” Nonetheless, I think we can agree that the production value of this piece is higher than most newspaper videos.
As to your question: I don’t believe in objective journalism, as I often annoy all the J-school grads by saying. So no, I would not call this piece objective. But I do think it makes an effort to represent its subjects fairly and respectfully, and yes, errs a bit on the side of a positive portrayal (which surprised me when I first watched it). I think the intent is to illuminate a relevant voter segment (at that point in the election cycle), so it’s a worthwhile journalistic question. Honestly, I thought the people at his rally seemed pretty reasonable, but the stuff coming out of Carson’s mouth is what sounded ridiculous.