Today I wanted to “deconstruct” a video to show how there is so much thought put into social media and online video content. The video I will be talking about is on this page by Womens Health. It is an article about the benefits of taking BCAA’s as a supplement while training. The video is halfway down the page and talks about how to read nutrition labels on the foods that we buy.
Strengths and Design: The first thing I noticed was that the video definitely uses the rule of thirds in the layout of the video. The text in each shot takes up about two thirds of the frame, either horizontal or vertical, and the visuals takes up the last one third. Another strength in the video is that there is a lot free flowing white space. There are not blocked corners and the background seems to flow nicely without being choppy. The color scheme is very integrated and simple as well which adds to its appeal. The video is very informative and supplements what the reader is already looking at in the article.
Weaknesses: One thing I noticed that is a little odd is that the video is about food and health but the colors in the video are not complimentary to that. Blue is not a great color to incorporate into food related subjects because its not an appetizing color. From our human instincts, if you were to come across something edible that is blue, it most likely has gone bad, like meat or mold. I think the video could have had more red, green, and yellow in it so that it seemed to be more food related when first looking at it. McDonalds does this, everything is red and yellow, reminding us of warm yummy food. I do understand that the video is about food labels so its not QUITE about food but its close enough. Appetizing colors could pop up when giving an example of healthy foods and labels that go along with them.
The video is trying to show off quick information about reading nutrition labels so that you can benefit for your health. I think the clean design and the uniform color scheme adds to this idea of being neat and clean about your health. The main thing that will show that this video is successful is how many views there are on the article and how many times it has been shared on social media. Since it is an in house video and not published on Youtube or social media its kind of hard to determine that.
Overall I thought this was a really cute video and one I enjoyed watching through to the end. I think its a great example of a native video for a health and fitness website, it holds some great ideas.
Makenzi Holland 