3 Minute Comparison - "Mixed Emotions" and "Best Gift"

Compare at least two talks in terms of presentational style. What choices were made in order to support their content? Are these choices effective? Which style(s) do you prefer – Why?

 A Story of Mixed Emotions

First of all, the way he wrote his story using only characters and acronyms was really cool.  The speaker, Rives, was wearing business casual, and had a 9 o’clock shadow.  This works well with his speech because it is a relatively formal, but the way it is written is informal. For the snippets we see of him talking he is using his hands. He also has a deep monotone voice that works well with the content of the speech.

The story of the TED talk was an awkward male who was trying to ask a girl on a date and fails. His speech reminds me of a kindergartener teacher reading a picture book to their students. All you can see is what is on the screen while Rives narrates the story. This also works well because as a living he writes pop up books for children.

The choices he made of worked well with the material. I liked how when the story was being told all you saw was the screen and not the Rives with the screen. I know this is just editing but it works well for the message of the speech. I liked how  it was not just pictures on a power point but the pictures changed to what he was talking about.

The Best Gift I Ever Survived

This was a great story of a woman, Stacey Kramer, who took an awful series of events and spinned it into a positive experience. She starts off describing an unknown object which changed her life. It isn’t until the end that we learn that it was a brain tumor. After watching it for the first time, it made me want to watch it again knowing that what she is describing in the beginning was a tumor.

She wore a black dress which works well with her content because what changed her life was life threatening. It was a very emotional speech. The picture she used after the surgery was very powerful and kind of hit you in the face just after she told us she was talking about a brain tumor.  She did not move around a lot but she did not need to.

The choices she made were effective in her speech. This is a story that only a woman could tell because of the nature of the speech and the message she was trying to get across.

I liked her style she had during her speech but I doubt I could recreate it or would want to.