Tuesday, June 5, 2007

A bit disappointed

I watched the Not For Sale documentary last night, and I'd say it is OK. I was a bit disappointed, though, by a couple of things.

First, while the excellent book of the same title by David Batstone covers several organizations that are fighting against slavery, and the documentary covers the same organizations, in some cases the documentary hardly mentions slavery. If you were to watch the video without reading the book, you could get the idea some of the organizations help poor people but not necessarily people who have been enslaved. Obviously it is great if they are helping poor-but-free people, but when the documentary is all about fighting slavery, I would think that the people making the documentary would establish that point more clearly.

Second, the documentary is set up as eight separate segments, each focusing on a different organization and most being interviews with the heads of those organizations. But sometimes the people ramble a bit, and tighter editing might have helped. What would have helped most, though, would have been for a narrator to carry us through the documentary instead of just having eight talking heads take a section each. I'm a journalist, and I think that one mark of an amateurish article is when the writer simply strings together a bunch of quotes separated only by attributions. As I watched this video, I felt like I do when I read one of those articles.

But the information is good and helpful, and when we hold the first meeting of the Clapham Circle of Lancaster County, I think I could show one or two segments without losing people's attention. Other organizations also have videos, however, and I may see about using one of those in addition to, or in place of, this one.

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