Should President Trump Fire His Video Team?

The official White House Instagram account put out a short video recently of President Trump announcing the push on his new tax reform plan. The video production team seemed to make some unusual choices in the filming and cutting of the video. YouTuber Josh Enobakhare for Olufemii Tutorials analyzes those decisions and whether they helped or hindered the President's message.

Enobakhare makes it clear at the outset that this is not a critique of the President (though he does seem to be speaking too loudly), but rather an analysis of the camera crew and the video production. The choices they made created an awkward presentation and took away from the message. Enobakhare analyzes the two camera angles the crew used and opines that they would have been better off sticking to one main camera. The video team cuts between both angles throughout the video but they're both medium to close-up shots, roughly the same distance from Trump. This is unusual as the more universal approach in these situations is to cut between a wide angle and closer up shot. Secondly, one of the angles is to the side which makes sense in an interview but doesn't work well in this case. Instead, the crew should have stuck to one camera with Trump talking directly to the audience.

What do you think? Did you find the cuts distracting? What changes would you recommend?

Aneesh Kothari's picture

Aneesh Kothari is a Houston-based travel, landscape, and cityscape photographer. He enjoys reading Fstoppers.com, traveling with his family, and making lists of things he enjoys. He yearns to be a Civil War buff but has yet to finish the Ken Burns series.

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