Bush's War and Obama's War

With these videos we get to see two different, yet similar structures of films. Both Frontline episodes captured my attention but Bush's war seemed to capture it a bit more considering that it was able to piece together clips more appropriately in order to evoke the proper emotions from its audience.

Bush's War began with the music introduction, just like Obama's War, but began with clips of 9/11 piecing together to create a picture of Bush himself, signifying that he was in charge and the face of our country during this time. The clip placement in the beginning and through out this episode made me get emotional. The zooming in of clips to signify specific people and events played a rhetorical role for viewers to grasp the meaning and people behind the solving of the 9/11 attacks. In a lot of the clips in Bush's War I felt like the sound effects played a vital role in making the audience feel like it was live rather than clips and photos. The air noise in the background as photos of the attacks came on screen allowed viewers to become involved in the scenes and feel emotion. With the muffled radio commands in the background of scenes where a voice over had just said military was arriving made the audience feel like those radio sounds were commanding the military to go and the audience was hearing it first hand. Also, much like Hearts and Minds, in Bush's war clips of interviews were placed purposely with clips of real life footage in order to create a direct link between the two. One example, among many, was when other people were discussing what Bush had just said and then directly after a clip of Bush saying a statement was placed to create a link between the two. All of these structural elements of Bush's war drew me in emotionally and visually.

For Obama's War I felt drawn in but not to the entirety I did when viewing the structure of Bush's War. The introduction to Obama's war was not as intense as the pictures creating Bush's face, but instead were soldiers shooting back and forth. The director of the episode seemed to have placed the clips of our soldiers and then their soldiers shooting each other to make us think that these specific soldiers were in real life shooting directly at one another, which could or could not be the case. As far as music and noise as a developing part of this structure I felt it was more a necessary part of Bush's war's structure than this one. The helicopter noises in the background did help to image we were there, but for me did not create the same emotion as the sounds in Bush's War. One emotional part for me was when the marine was shot and killed and they gave the name of the soldier. To me they gave that name intentionally to evoke a stronger emotion from the audience. Also, when they spoke of the tough conditions soldiers were facing then immediately showed their living conditions it made it an emotional part as well. These emotional parts were placed at good length from one another, as well as others, to create a structure for this episode that made the viewer keep getting drawn in by these parts of the whole video. Towards the end of the episode when they shot parts of Afghanistan back to back it seemed like they were showing parts of the whole, almost what I saw the whole structure as being. Much like Bush's war this drew me in in more ways than one.