I think Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is one of the greatest speeches ever. However, the person (or people) that put together the video doesn’t really make it that comfortable to watch. Here’s why:
First off, let me just say, Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech is pure awesomeness. It’s very motivational and was very, very, important, as you can see from how many people were in the audience. Martin Luther King is a great talker. He put together his speech in a very powerful way and delivered it just as powerfully. For example, towards the end, when he starts his “I have a dream” part of the speech, he purposely pauses each time he says it and gets a really positive and cool feedback from the audience every time. Also, his content is great. Obviously, when he made the speech, the audience could really relate to what he was talking about. He started off with the end of slavery, and how it was “a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity” (1:13). Then he moved on to how years later, the colored people still “[are] still not free” (1:31). He talked about his great vision for the future and how he wished that in the future, “[his] four little children [would] one day live in a nation where they [would] not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” (3:13). I believe that a lot of the audience agreed with him, and personally, I think the points throughout his speech were very cool and very reasonable as well.
However, the person (or people) who made this video, “RARE FACTS”, failed to capture the true coolness of the speech. RARE FACTS distracted me over and over again and pulled me away from the actual speech!
For example, right at the start of the video, they show a truly AMAZING, BEAUTIFUL, and NECESSARY view of a guy feeding another random person some water in a water bottle. This is literally when Martin begins his speech! This really didn’t motivate me to continue watching the video, because I wanted to see more of the actual Martin Luther King, not a random guy who really needs to drink water! I thought, “If RARE FACTS keeps doing this, I will be very annoyed.” I thought this at the beginning of the video, so I was cranky for the rest of the video. Not a very wise choice by RARE FACTS, if you ask me.
Another example is that RARE FACTS didn’t even bother matching up the audio with the video. It really made me annoyed because I don’t like it when I am staring at someone talking on the screen and what they’re mouthing isn’t even what the audio is playing! It messes with my brain and while I really want to believe the message the video is trying to send to my brain, my ears want to send my brain a different message, which makes me confused, and therefore angry because I don’t like to be confused (It makes me feel dumb, in a way).
And as if THAT wasn’t enough, they FAILED to even match up the words of the speech to the actual either video or audio, whichever one they decided to even choose! So now, there are THREE voices in my head:
- The one who’s watching the video,
- The one who’s listening to the audio, and
- The one who’s looking at the words to the speech!
It’s maddening and I had to just open my closed captioning for the whole video to just watch through the whole thing and not quitting. The closed captioning blocks out the words to the speech that are on the screen, so now I only have two distractions, which is a lot better than three. I was sick of trying to follow along the badly-matched-up pieces of the video and I was literally about to close the tab.
I still managed to get through the rest of the speech, however. I stayed there and did not leave because I thought Martin Luther King’s speech was too good to be ignored… But I still think it would have been a lot better if RARE FACTS decided to put more effort in the making of their videos and actually tried to make the viewer more comfortable and less irritated throughout Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech.