Week 4: What makes a good video podcast? A Review of My Fav.

National Geographic: Octopus

This is a video podcast by National Geographic and the topic of this video is about octopus. The beginning of the video is showing a fight between a octopus and a shark, the octopus won. Octopus has the largest central nerves system, and it can change its skin's colors instantly by expending or straining the million pigment cells, and also it can change its body's texture by changing its tiny muscles. The filmmaker, Mike Degruy, dived into the sea tried to feel this amazing sea creature. To let more people understand the abilities of octopus, they built a special tank just for it to move around so that we the audiences can see clearly of the movement. The semi-circled glass is made for watching how the octopus eats. The octopus's legs move its meal, the crab, to its month and give the crab a toxic bite just to remove the shell, and then it can enjoy its meal. To observe the octopus's movement, the glass tubes allow us to see how this no bones sea creature moves inside such a small space.

This video podcast is all focus on a natural creature, octopus. The video is not too long, around six minutes, which is enough to show everything that they wanted to tell their audiences. The first thing in the video that attract to keep watching it is the enigmatic sea background, and then is the attack of the octopus which makes me shocks. The audio at the back is some relaxation meditation sounds with the sound under the sea, plus the filmmaker dove down the sea which all these would show the realism and let the audiences feel like they are with the camera, watching every motions of the octopus directly. In the whole video there is almost no text lines prompted up to interrupt. The narration is speaking clear and not too fast, also the narrator did not talk too much which the video has shown us. The video is well structured; it is mainly separated into two parts: the sea and the lab with the big tank. The two parts are very well related together, e.g. when we cannot see how the octopus eats in the sea, the camera will move to the lab and watch that clearly under the glass. For the total quality of the video is very good, it is clear and the sounds are good. This video podcast has introduced the audience the abilities, this expose us to something new.