My Homework Assignment 3/10/2009

Intended Consequences is a multimedia story on mediastorm.org. The story, by Jonathan Torgovnik, is about the survivors of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda of the Tutsi by the Hutu militia groups. The story was told through the eyes of the women whose families were killed, were raped by the militiamen and ultimately became pregnant as a result. There was both a dramatic question and emotional content. The question was to the rest of the world as to why they did not give help and aide when the genocide went on. Because the rest of the world sat by and watched while people were being killed for no reason other than being Tutsi, many families were annihilated. The emotional content wasn’t all the same. Some of the women spoke of how they truly loved their children that were conceived by their attackers while some did not. One woman was in fact thankful for her son because she had been so severely injured by the attacks, that she could not go get food for herself or her child. Some of the voices of the women were recorded and translated within the piece. But others were voice overs by other women who were also affected by the genocide. The voices were powerful and gave much depth to the piece, adding emotion. There wasn’t really any kind of soundtrack music, but instead something that was more subtle and eerie, adding an intensity to the story. The piece also had economy in its content. It was easy to find the patterns of the story in accordance with the images and video that was being shown. And lastly, the story had great pacing. However, in certain parts the pacing was either a little too slow or stretched out too long. But overall, this was a great story and very compelling.