Month: March 2019

This breathtaking piece, published by the Egyptian web magazine “Fasla”, starts with a wide establishing shot of a quarry, slowly zooming in, while a very powerful soundbite is playing in the background: “this job is just inhuman”, and then black smoke is released from a chimney. Music is setting a mood of suspense, and supports the surprise when the smoke erupts.
We see portraits of workers, with their faces covered. These portrait shots are interrupted by 3 random detailed, sometimes blurry shots of the work environment.

The narration continues with another short, yet powerful quote: “If I’m fearful, I won’t work… and If I don’t work, I won’t eat”. The music becomes faster and more upbeat to establish a transition to more action. We see the workers covering their faces with masks, preparing themselves for this hard job that we already know is scary.
We’re introduced to the protagonist after 40 seconds, whom we never see in the usual interview (talking head) frame. Instead, he’s walking in a beautiful slow tracking shot, away from the camera, and towards a wide area of white stone.

Movements in the shots are subtle, most of them are smooth zoom ins/outs. In one shot, the filmmakers used a moving object, a ladder held by two workers, and put the camera on it to capture the point of view of one worker.
When the protagonist talks about the dangerous powder he and the others have to inhale; the footage reflects that by showing a worker walking into white dust and powder, barely visible, to demonstrate the intensity of this substance.

In the last quarter of the piece, we hear a new voice, a younger one. We see a few portrait shots of other workers until the person who’s talking is revealed. It’s a 14-year-old worker taking off his mask and sunglasses, smiling. The viewers get to have a personal connection with him in the last second, after they’ve witnessed the hard labor and the collective experience of the workers. This connection was effective highlighting the contrast between vulnerability and this harsh and tough environment.

This video is a documentary journalistic piece in which many cinematic techniques are used. However, its high quality cinematic sequences strengthen the fact that this story, and people in it are real. This cruel whiteness is their daily life.

This story is produced by Great Big Story. In 2:30 minutes, GBS shows the special bond between Mencia Uranga, a professional horse rider from Basque, and her horse, while preparing to compete in a 100-mile-long race. This story also features Dubai, the city which Uranga is currently based in, since the video is a part of a series sponsored by “Visit Dubai”.

The story begins with a wide shot of a group of horse riders in slow-motion, which establishes the main theme of the video. Uranga follows shortly with her voiceover saying that since she moved to Dubai, her life was centered around horses.

The video prepares the viewers to see Uranga with a sequence of a closeup on the horse’s head, another shot of her hands on the lead rope, and then her face is shown, followed by more detailed shots of the horse’s legs, and wider shots showing her while riding the horse. All shots in the introduction of the video are in Slow-motion, which shows the movements of the horse beautifully, and drives attention to small details. Details make the moment more significant.

The video introduces the protagonist with a video portrait of her on the horse. The interview shot is only seen for a few seconds, in which she is sitting on the floor in a traditional Emirati lounge, symmetrical in it’s lighting sources- windows- and furniture, which is a simple deliberate background.

At Min 00:52, there is a beautiful shot of Uranga surrounded by other horse-riders. However, horses are either out of focus in the background, or their faces are covered by a piece of cloth. Uranga stands out in the crowd as the protagonist, and as a metaphor of the serenity she experiences while horse-riding. Uranga poetically describes how she wanders in space and feels united with it, as if they were one.

A new block in the story begins at minute 1:22, the music changes after a couple of seconds of silence, as if the story breathes and turns a new page. Uranga talks about her relationship with Dubai, with an establishing shot of Dubai’s waterfront while a motorboat passes through. The video uses some still photos from Uranga’s past ten years in Dubai. The storyteller chose this method to portray her intimate decade-long connection with the city and its horses.

At minute 1:34, there is a captivating sequence of her leaning on the horse’s neck, and her fingers gently touching its hair. These shots create a sense of intimacy, suitable to the affectionate interaction between Uranga and the horse.

The visual storytellers chose to use time lapses at the end of the video, when she describes her fascination of the contrast in Dubai between the city life and the desert. The video shows two time-lapses that depict the nature of this contrast.

Drone shots of the desert in the end are a great interpretation of Uranga’s quote: “the landscape is yours, find your path”. The extremely wide camera angle provides a sense of liberty. A wide space open for everyone to find their own path

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By Emily Hoard[embeddoc url=”https://blogs.uoregon.edu/mmj7/files/2019/03/Foundations-Post-1-Hoard-116geoe.docx” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]

By Emily Hoard

This is a bit different than the journalistic documentaries we usually look at. Photographer Jordan Matter makes these 10-minute photo challenge videos prime for social media. He takes ballerinas, circus performers and other athletes along with him to create as many stunning photos as he can in just 10 minutes. This one is in a subway station: THRILLING 10 Minute Photo Challenge with Daredevil Ballerina. These videos are pretty simple but are entertaining and fun, which is just necessary sometimes.  

Here are a few techniques used:

1. Cinema verite

The video uses the cinema verite technique to make it seem like we are witnessing something happening in reality. With the shaky footage and the photographer sometimes talking to the camera person, we get the sense that the video is a slice of unadulterated footage.

2. Present-tense storytelling

The video is told in the present tense in a literal sense, including a countdown clock on the screen. This gives the viewer a sense of the urgency the photographer and the performers are feeling to get as many shots in as they can in 10 minutes. It also makes the viewer think, what happens next? Where will they go in the subway next? What shot will they get? How many can they do in just 10 minutes? These questions keep the viewer watching through to the end, which can be hard for social media videos to do these days. See timecode 2:17 to 3:00 to see an example of the rush to get to one of the shots.

3. Witness Point (Point of View)

 

The camera operator becomes a character in this video just by hand holding the camera and trying to catch up to the subjects as they run around the subway station. This highlights the filmmaker’s viewpoint and adds a sense of authenticity, making us believe this is all happening in one 10-minute period of time as we’re promised.

 

4. Camera movement

The camera person is holding the camera by hand as he/she runs behind the photographer and films the ballerinas doing their tricks. As Wes Pope writes in his “Reframing Online Video,” “When we see shaky video posted on YouTube or Facebook, we have the sense that we are witnessing something real, captured by an amature. It looks as though it must have been shot by a bystander – a witness to real events.” This is exactly the feeling this video is trying to evoke and it does this effectively.

By Emily Hoard

“Behind the Curve,” a documentary by Delta-V Productions that can be found on Netflix, inspired me to think about how to produce stories that enhance understanding of people who might be seen as different. This one is about people who think the world is flat. It would be so easy to laugh at these conspiracy theorists and dismiss them, but these filmmakers made a point to portray them with empathy and to hear them out, while making it clear that of course the world is in fact round. I think we can learn from this about how to treat our subjects with respect and understanding, even if those subjects have completely different worldviews — literally.

Here are some of the techniques used to enhance the story:

1. Interview

The documentary follows interviews of several flat earth society members throughout a period of time, as well as clips of their own flat earth videos, and footage of them at different situations and events, including the 2017 eclipse and experiments trying to prove science wrong. It also includes interviews with scientists as well. These interviews are effective in letting us hear from the subjects in their own voices, and it helps the viewer understand where they’re coming from and why they believe what they do.

3. The hero’s journey

Though our hero is a bit misguided, he is still likeable and I found myself caring for him by the middle of the video. His story is one of the classic hero’s journey: he starts out as an everyday guy living on a round earth, but then something changes and he finds a book about the earth being flat instead. (See timecode 7:30 to 9ish). Then, he goes off on a mission to share that “knowledge” with the world and ends up inspiring a lot of people to become flat earthers. This is an effective way to tell his story because though I’m not going to start rooting for his particular mission, it makes me want to root for him as another human being trying to figure out this world.

 

1. Cinema verite

The video also used cinema verite to follow the subjects around and see how they interact with the world see as flat. It was effective in allowing us to experience real moments happening in their lives, like witnessing the main character being amazed by the eclipse (above, timecode 1:04:18 to 1:05:17). This technique gave us a sense of who the subjects really are, and it ended up making them more sympathetic characters.

 

4. The unanswered question

Though we know the answer to the question, this video takes us along the journey of a group of flat earthers who are trying to use scientific experiments to prove that the world is not a globe. The unanswered question here is, “what is their experiment going to show them, and more importantly, how is this going to affect their beliefs?” The video used real footage as well as animation to show this. Spoiler alert from the very end of the video below (the last 2.5 minutes):

 

Here’s what the flat earthers’ wanted to prove:

Here’s what actually happened:

The main person behind this experiment was practically speechless. All he could do was stare at the camera and say “interesting, that’s interesting.” Then the video cut to the end credits. Throughout the credits you hear more from him, trying to explain that the experiment didn’t go his way because there were leaves in the way, etc. Ending the video like this was effective because it gave us the payoff of seeing the experiment and getting the reaction, but also left us with the feeling that even when clearly proven wrong, the flat earth society will continue on anyway.

In Hands Up, Chin Down, Matt Houghton uses split screens throughout his piece to show how Jerry Mitchell, the amateur boxing coach and protagonist o  f the film, has two sides to his coaching: aggression and care. Watching two perspectives of his coaching at once is what invites us to hold two conflicting truths in our mind about who this man is.

Houghton starts the video with a big close up on the left and a medium long shot on the right, both rock shots (as with all the shots in this video), both of Jerry Mitchell. Match action editing between shots on the screen creates the impression that this is parallel action, different perspectives of the same thing happening simultaneously. On the left, we see the intensity and focus of his eyes watching the boys practice, a shot that demonstrates devotion, yet in the image on the right, we see that from behind, his body posture is slightly hunched and ready for combat, denoting aggression.  Houghton does this repeatedly throughout the film, positioning different shots of Jerry taken from different distances and angles beside each other to connote his two boxing personas. At 42 seconds, he pairs a shot on the left, a close up of Jerry in which half of his face is cut off as he boxes, with a medium shot on the right, a kinder half of Jerry conversing with a boy. The crop on the left shot feels intentional – a way to visualize that what you see there is only a part of Jerry. He does this a third time at 1:42, but pairs two close-up shots of Jerry shot from opposite sides, one that looks more serious with another that looks more playful.

It becomes apparent about 20-25 seconds in that the audio doesn’t match the visuals. This is disorienting at first because what you’re hearing is similar enough to what you’re seeing, both taken from similar scenes, just mismatched.  While confusing, mismatching the audio and the visuals enables Houghton to juxtapose the two sides of Jerry against each other, one in the audio and one in the visuals. For example, around 1:29 the audio of Jerry laughing and teasing a boy for being out late the night before, is paired with a visual that shows him seriously coaching another boy. This technique also makes the viewer do more work to make sense of the story, and in doing so, the piece feels more abstract, more artistic.

While this piece is full of punching sounds that Houghton could have easily cut his shots to, most of the time he doesn’t cut on the beat. This sets Houghton’s style apart from most action sports videos. I wonder if Houghton does this to intentionally pull the focus of the video away from pure aggression. Only one time does he do this overtly (47 seconds), matching the sound of a punch and Jerry yelling “hit me” with a cut to two shots of people boxing (one where the bag is the focal point, another medium shot from the side, of Jerry boxing with a student). Only doing it here, elevated the moment above others. He breaks his own rule, and it has an impact.  

Throughout the piece, Houghton creates the illusion of matched action sequences. At the 35 second mark, we see a punching bag swing on the left. Then a medium long shot pops up on the right that shows students’ with their backs to the camera, while in the foreground a punching bag swings. The cadence of the swing nearly matches the swing in the shot to its left, but just as we realize this might be an illusion, he cuts to a new shot. He does this again at 53 seconds, when he adds in a cutaway of a bucket of bloody Kleenexes to show the tough side of boxing. To its left is someone throwing punches at a bag – both the bag and bucket shake at a similar rhythm, suggesting matched action. Putting these both on screen also provides a bit of foreshadowing, giving us a suggestion of what might be this boxer’s fate. Finally, I also love how he contrasts this bucket shot with the shot that replaces it, of one boy wrapping another’s gloves for him – a pure juxtaposition of aggression vs. caring.

At 1:12, Houghton plays with using composition and depth staging to show two sides of Jerry. To the left we see a medium shot of Jerry from below, while on the right is a medium long shot of him from above. By framing the left shot from below, Jerry towers over most of the frame, signaling to us that Jerry is large and in charge. However, the right shot taken from above makes him seems small. By using depth staging here, Houghton is able to obstruct the jump-roping figures in the background in the first shot so that we only see Jerry, while revealing them in the second.

 

Artistically, I love what Houghton does next, where he continues with the jump-ropers on the right in a match action sequence, now only showing their feet from a medium shot taken near ground level. He pairs this with a shot on the left (also just feet, same perspective), but of what looks like figures boxing. The two shots are mirrors of one another in terms of composition and framing, though they are taken from two different scenes (conceptual match cut?). One scene suggests tough play, while another innocent play.

I was drawn to what Houghton did at 1:25, when he took one shot of Jerry and mirrored it against itself on the screen, demonstrating Jerry’s dual personalities. Houghton has also played with depth staging here to create a bit of magic. We can see in the mirror a man being coached by jerry, but that person lives only in the mirror, absent from the rest of the shot because of how the shot has been split. I love this technique, because it almost suggests Jerry is speaking to a ghost, or maybe to his other half.

Houghton ends the piece with a shot of Jerry sitting alone at what looks like a bus stop (2:21). He uses a conceptual match cut here between the two shots on screen. On the right, we see a car’s headlights in the distance coming toward Jerry, while to the left we see a close up shot of the lit windows of a bus or train whizzing by. The two complement and play off of each other nicely. The train exits the screen to reveal what must be Jerry’s window, through which we see a silhouette boxing late into the night. Similar to the bloody napkin cutaway earlier, Houghton uses the two frames on screen to play with time, simultaneously showing us Jerry waiting for a ride home, alongside a shot of him already home and boxing.

Ora Dekornfeld’s New Yorker video, Fighting Cuba’s Boxing Ban, is a beautiful example of how to effectively use pacing and camera movement to mimic the boxing experience and transport the viewer into the sport. The result is that the video feels lively, creative, and keeps the viewer on their toes. It makes you feel a part of the story, and in turn, like you can truly get to know and empathize with the characters.

After a few contextual shots at the beginning, Ora introduces us to our main character, a girl joined by her brother. She follows them down the street with her camera from 10-30 seconds, and rather than use a stabilizer, she uses the camera movement to help us feel like we are there walking with them. As the girl starts to punch toward the camera, you start to feel like you as the viewer are ducking punches. Since this is our first intro to these characters, Ora gives us three medium close up perspectives of them walking – front, side and back, cutting on the action. This allows us to get to know them and also get a sense of the neighborhood, providing context for where the story takes place. She does this again later in the film around the 6:35 mark, replicating the same shot from behind, but now with her mom, creating a visual thread between the moments she shares with people who support her.

 

Ora starts playing with audio at around 30 seconds, using a J-cut to fade in the audio from the next scene of a man playing drums on his bicycle. She quickly cuts to other medium and close shots of the neighborhood while the drumming continues in the background. In this way, Ora makes us feel the fast-upbeat culture of Havana. She does this again from 3:10-3:23, cutting quickly between jump cuts of boys getting ready to box, matching the beat of a drum, making you feel the exhilaration they feel as they get ready. Again, at 6:45, she pulls this in, cutting between different angles of medium boxing shots, some even shots of different people punching into the camera. Combining all of these angles allows you to see the entire scene, and makes you feel like you are in the action. Finally, at 3:30-4:30, she cuts again between match action shots of the girl boxing, while cutting in interview shots of her punching toward the camera, bringing to life the girl’s quote “it’s really fun.” She even ends this scene with a quiet moment that jumps right back into quick match action cuts before the match ends. This way of slowing down and speeding up replicates the uneven pace of boxing.

I love what she does at 44 seconds, linking two scenes together through music. She brings us into a new scene, following a man as he puts in a CD and turns up the volume on his stereo system. At the same time, she raises the volume of the drumbeat that has been playing over other footage. Though we know this beat is coming from somewhere else, she magically makes us question its source, making it seem as though he has the control.

 

Ora strategically uses conceptual match cuts from 48 seconds to about 1:40, to make us see boxing differently. She switches back and forth between a sequence of boxing and a sequence of dancing to bring to life what the man in the audio is saying about how important dancing is to being a good boxer. She switches between close and medium shots (instead of wide), so we as viewers are forced to look at boxing and dancing differently, strictly focusing on how their body parts move so we can draw comparisons between the two. The fact that Ora also cuts this sequence over a melodic Cuban ballad also helps us see boxing as more like dancing.  

From the 2-3-minute marks, Ora plays with different types of camera movements to add variety to her shots. Around the 2-minute mark, she uses a beautiful mounting move, moving around the girl’s head to reveal rays of sunshine. This nicely mirrors another moment at the 5-minute mark when she does this a second time with a different character. Later, around the 2:55 mark, Ora uses a motivated movement, following boys as they move off-screen behind a wall. She cleverly uses this movement as a transition to the next scene, where a motivated movement in the opposite direction follows a new character onto screen. In this way, two completely different scenes blend into one another. Finally, she uses motivated movements again from 4:30-4:50, by tracking the girl and her coach with a medium shot, which makes you feel like you, the viewer, are in the ring with them boxing.  

Ora ends the film pulling together all of the editing techniques she’s introduced so far, to make the viewer feel exactly what the girl is feeling as she approaches her big competition. First, we see the girl walk to her match, as Ora jump cuts between shots of the girl walking, to make us feel that time is passing and that we are getting closer and closer to the competition’s start. She jump cuts between medium and close up shots of the girl and other kids getting ready for the competition, matching her cuts to the sound of the girl’s inner mantra. This makes us feel like we are there getting ready with her, practically in the girl’s head. At 8:28, Ora uses depth staging, with the boys out of focus in the foreground and the girl poised in the background, to make us feel the challenge our main character faces as the only girl fighting. Finally, Ora cuts back and forth quickly at 9:40 between archival footage of the girl’s dad training her and shots of her fighting in the competition. The cuts speed up as the intensity of the match speeds up, so we feel it. All of this combined makes us feel like we are in the girl’s thoughts, thinking back on all that has led her to this moment, which makes the viewer really understand how important this is to our character.

 

Alex Lockwood’s 73 Cows is a beautiful portrait of a close love between a man and his cows, in which the director uses POV and composition to give each sequence of shots both a literal and metaphorical meaning.

He starts the piece with a match action sequence of Jay, the main character, making his way from his farm into his home. These shots move from wide, to medium, to close within the first minute – starting at a distance with Jay as a speck on his large farm plot, and finally zooming in on a photograph of his father in the kitchen window beside him. This sequence instructs the audience how to take in the rest of the story: Jay’s farm, this big plot of land that surrounds Jay, closely impacts him on a personal level.

The next few minutes introduce us to the primary conflict of the piece – Jay is in the business of beef farming, which harms the very animals he loves. Lockwood cuts back and forth between medium shots of Jay lovingly nuzzling his cows and close ups of the cows’ eyes. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, and Lockwood uses these closeups to show us the humanity that Jay sees in these cows, making the audience empathize with Jay’s resistance toward killing them. Lockwood includes a wonderful wide shot at 1:50 to visualize the moment Jay says he can’t disconnect his feelings for the cows from his work. In the shot, Jay and the cows stand on opposite sides of a fence, Jay speaking to them lovingly despite the divide. This divide acts as both a physical and figurative one – despite Jay being human, and them animals, their love transcends the species divide, and endures the harm he causes them.

At 3:30, Jay talks about the guilt he feels for betraying the cows on the day he sends them off to be slaughtered. While he speaks, Lockwood shows us match-action shots of Jay preparing the transport wagon, oscillating back and forth between shots of Jay from inside the cage and from outside the cage. Visually, Lockwood tells us the story of Jay’s struggle between his need to make a living (outside the cage shot), and the feelings of the cows (inside shot). He also introduces close-up shots of Jay’s eyes as the story digs into the effects this is having on him, paralleling the earlier close-ups of the cows’ eyes, and again bringing to life this connection.

At 2:20, Jay uses composition to visualize the role of a new character, Katja. She has come to the farm to help Jay find a path out of this work and into something less emotionally challenging. Lockwood introduces her with a simple wide shot as she rounds a building and walks in the direction of two arrows that sit on signs by the building’s exterior. Not only is the shot gorgeous, but the movement toward these arrows acts as a nice metaphor for Katja’s purpose in helping Jay find his path.

Minute 6 marks a clear transition in the piece. The screen fades to black, after the two have decided to sell their cattle and start fresh. Beneath this narration, a crack of light appears on the screen, the door to Jay’s shed being cracked open. Lockwood was uniquely creative with this transition in a moment when many directors might just fade back into the next scene. I loved inching back into the next chapter as the door opened to reveal the next frame.

Finally, in the last chapter of the piece, Lockwood introduces mounting movements and camera movements for what feels like the first time. The shots at the beginning of the piece were simple, letting the characters move within them. Now, the camera makes motivated movements, in many cases utilizing drone footage (e.g. tracking Jay as he walks across an empty field looking for answers, moving past the two from overhead as they get to work on a new garden).  Again, Lockwood does this with intention: as Jay and Katja begin moving forward along a new path, Lockwood moves with them.

“All Things Must Pass” is an interview-style documentary film where the story of the rise and eventual fall of the Tower Records chain of stores is told by the company owner and former employees. The significance that Tower had wasn’t just on a handful of music enthusiasts in California–the company had a much more profound impact on the music industry itself, and that story is told through this film as the now departed Russ Soloman recounts how he found his way in the business.

For me, I found the warm lighting and color choices that were used, almost as if to match the archival footage from the 60s and 70s, to also evoke feelings of warmth and emotion. I grew up in the birth place of Tower Records, Sacramento, and lived there until high school. I’m not entirely sure that people outside of Northern California feel the same tie to these stores that I did, but the scenes during the 1970s of high school students at the Watt Avenue location probably include my parents. I vividly remember going to that store with them in the 1980s and 90s. When I moved to Chico for high school, I spent my lunch breaks browsing CDs at the Tower there with my friends.

This extra wide opening shot of the first Tower Records location in Sacramento establishes a sense of place. We see the large strip mall complex that’s pretty much taken over by Tower and the large parking lot it has, which tells us that’s how busy the location could get. And even though the lot is empty, there’s this warm yellow glow from the inside that makes it feel like the lights are on and someone’s home. It feels like home.

The next shot in the opening sequence is a tighter shot of the red Tower Records sign above the front doors. The sign is pulsing slowly, just like it always did. The camera pans down to the two glass doors covering the entrance, and they’re both propped wide open. The camera begins to move closer to the entrance, and the viewer can see a neon sign that says “classical,” and rows upon rows of empty shelves.

It stops there. Instead of going into the store and seeing the size of it and the rows of empty shelves, we see a cutaway of Russ Soloman’s wallet on his dresser and hear his voice begin telling a story as a woman packs a suitcase. He’s explaining how young people used to collect music, when suddenly, we pan from the dark into the empty record store on what I think must be some kind of slider.

The camera passes through a couple of rows of empty record shelves before it finds our interview subject, Russ Solomon, in what I’d say is a pretty wide shot. He’s sitting in a chair for his interview with his entire body in the frame, inside the Watt Avenue Tower Records store between rows of empty CD shelves labeled “rock/pop.” I couldn’t dream of interviewing someone more in their element. I absolutely love this shot. The slider that they use going into this shot, for me, conveyed a sense of anticipation, and I think for those unfamiliar with the store also helped contextualize the size of the location. The lighting is a combination of natural and unnatural. The natural light coming in from the behind the blinds and the way it hits the light-colored wood, as well as the warmth coming from the sign behind him are all elements that work well here.

Another great idea I picked up on in this film was how to handle visuals when your interview subject is telling a story that took place decades ago. This documentary uses a lot of great old footage, and we should all hope to be so lucky, but another trick they used was showing the scene in modern day, and then matching the frame to a historic photo. In describing how he first got started, Soloman mentions Tower Theater (a historic landmark in Sacramento) and mentions his father had a drug store there. The filmmakers went out and shot a beautiful modern era sequence of the tower theater to show as b-roll while Soloman says all of this, and this sequence ends with this particular shot of the building:

This shot sits on the screen for a couple of seconds and then it switches to this historic one instead:

The impact of doing something like this is it transitions the viewer back in time with the storyteller, who in this case is the interview subject. It’s an interesting way to get around having a lack of old footage too, since it was far more engaging to watch than to just see one or two old photos. This way, you still got a feel for the building and setting but you also got the point that it was important in the 1940s as well.

There were a number of old stills they incorporated in creative ways, and I think it’s worth showing a couple here for inspiration because they present some better-looking options than simply filling the frame with the shot. I also just think they look cool.

You can watch “All Things Must Pass” with a University of Oregon or Multnomah County Library card on Kanopy here.

–Amanda Rhoades

Written by Omar Rivera
2020 Elections: What You Need to Know by The New York Times

What these videos succeed in doing is informing their audiences of the candidates who have formally announced that they’re running for the democratic nomination of President of the United States in the 2020 election. Each video is around two minutes in length and they briefly inform their viewers of the candidates, answering any question: who are these candidates?

The first thing that is consistent within the series is the animation style. We see multiple layers of stills and archived news footage stylized with a color palette complimentary to the democratic party’s color. The consistency between the videos bring a sense of unity, one of the many things these candidates say is a theme and priority in their campaigns. The approach to the series is traditionally journalistic, using archived clips that give the viewer a synopsis of the candidate throughout the years—highlighting their strengths and the challenges they face against the other announced candidates. The videos also include what the current president thinks of the candidate, with video clips of him criticizing them and their positions on certain issues.

One thing that I do think The New York Times needs to do is feature more democratic candidates who have formally announced a 2020 bid. So far, they only have five videos, featuring Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker, and Amy Klobuchar. According to CNN, as of February 28^th, 2019, a total of 13 candidates have announced so far.