Journalistic video response - Manu Bhandari

The video I watched was at the nytimes website.http://www.youtube.com/nicholaskristof

Kristof talks about the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant of of Sudanese head of state. I think the video was well produced. It really set the context with the first audio in the beginning, and then showed the subject of discussion after that. It had a good scene setter shots in the region of conflict. The videographer has made use of tilts also. The detail shots were nice. What I saw was that the subject being talked about had to be shown on screen. This would increase our understanding of the story.
However, I would have preferred less movement of the cameras here and there. so it can improve on this aspect. There could have also been better video pieces of the Sudanese president to suit the subject matter -for example, army cracking down on protestors or in fighting or something like that.
Had the piece been text only- it would still have been interesting. I thought the video told the kind of story which really did not need the video to enhance the story. So, in this particular case, I think the video did not add much to the story. However, there were two places where i found the video useful: one, when it showed the boy with no hands due to the explosion of grenade in his hands, and second, when it aired the opinion of people about the president.