I thought the power plant story had beautiful footage that although beautiful, didn't make sense with the story. I was also unable to completely make the connection between the Vermont and Georgia power plants nor the use of portraiture by the creator(s). The piece went on a bit too long and tried to tackle too many characters without much purpose. I lost interest in the piece far before it had ended.
I liked the deepwater video (spilling over) better, though I felt like the mother figure was a bit melodramatic, which bothered me at first. (Much less the second time through)
The pregnancy piece confused me. It wasn't explained why the mother was giving up her son, nor why the adopting mother was able to breast-feed him. A miscarriage was very briefly mentioned, is this why she was able to do so?
"Open adoption," though the point of this piece, is not explained. I left the piece really not having much of an idea about what an open adoption is.
I thought the start-up piece was really quite good and I initially thought this should be the one to bring home the gold, though I agreed with Spilling over to get the gold once I'd seen it through for the second time. I am a bit disappointed that there was no underwater photography because though the one scene skimming over the water showed the oil inside, I was left a bit wanting. It fails to show how big of a disaster this really is.
I also was left wanting with the toxic fumes/respirator angle.
There is nothing in the piece that legitimizes or explains the dangers posed to residents by this disaster (outside of damage to the tourist and fishing industry)
The start-up piece appealed to me innately because it was hopeful.
It showed a father doing what he could to combat issues presented by the recession.
I like that. It's more often in these projects that we see people in idle anguish, rather than in the combative struggle.
I honestly didn't feel the same way about the woman in spilling over.
The judges were moved by her; I wasn't. I felt like she was more of a fraud than a fighter.
The epilogues where they say that she's been going out daily to help in the effort, but it just shows her standing on the front of a hovercraft, which didn't help much.
And honestly, the first time around, I was lost during the scene where she was yelling at the politician. I wasn't taken and "there with her" as the judges were.
The second time around, I felt more in tune with that read of the project, especially noticing the man's body language. I attribute this to my lack of knowledge on the subject at hand, but feel that this is a failure of the piece as a venue for education on the subject in the same way as the open adoption piece.
