When watching the video essays, the way the essays actually sounded didn’t differ to me greatly from the audio essays–perhaps because in a way it’s still an audio essay which is being said orally, but this time videos can be added to enhance the words this time around. “Grandpa” used home videos in its essay, showcasing the idea of family and the family the speaker never knew. The only thing different from this pattern was the beginning clip, where everyone is sitting at the table and fully painted. The speaker is blue, while everyone else is red–this visual is used to help show how the speaker feels he doesn’t really belong in either ethnic identity and the alienation he feels in his own family.
In “That Kind of Daughter”, very abstract and unconventional images were used. Truthfully, I found this video a bit dull from the monotone voice combined with the little variety of images, but the impact these visuals had was still interesting, especially at 3:09 when the speaker keeps rearranging the pieces to make different kinds of men. This visual was able to give a new meaning to what was being said, showing the different men that the speaker had just blown through in her sleeping and how similar they all were by being made of the same exact parts.
“Mangoes” was my favorite, and I found the visual variety in it to be very enhancing to what was being said. At interview was weaved throughout the essay, like at 1:30, where the landlord talks about how “gay” it is for men to wear baby holders. Using the interview helped bring in tonal changes and different perspectives to what the reader was saying, using someone else’s words to progress his own essay. This contrasted with the many videos of his baby helped show the two sides of his essay, from being “gay” and not being present as a father to how close he was with his son. In all of these essays, the videos helped enhance what was being said by giving visualizations that could often show double meanings to the words being said.