Legal Medicine in Motion: A Visual History of Forensic Science in Modern China (UPDATED)

By dan.asen, on 6 April 2009

5 Responses to “Legal Medicine in Motion: A Visual History of Forensic Science in Modern China (UPDATED)”

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  S.Kuriyama wrote on 4 May 2009:
  

  This is a clearly narrated, informative review. The period division titles are very useful. It might be helpful, though, to supplement each with a few sentences and pictures about the sociopolitical context of the period.
  On a technical note: it is generally a good idea, even in a live PPT or Keynote presentation, to maximize the size of the images, for greatest clarity and impact. Small images (and titles) are especially hard to see in the reduced frame of YouTube videos. A view of the entire scene, followed by close-ups of particular sections would make many of the pictures more vivid.
  With respect to content: it would be helpful to raise explicitly and directly, at both the beginning and the end, the basic questions that any such survey must address, namely, What is the most important difference between the present and the past? and, “How did this difference come to be?”

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  Carole.Reeves wrote on 14 May 2009:
  

  This has interesting and potentially informative content but there are a number of ways that a more exciting visual interpretation could have been explored. The captioning is too small and therefore unreadable for YouTube format. Use of still images alone make this a slide show whereas there is scope for travelling across the images, zooming in and out, etc. Careful and relevant movement would enhance the quality of the movie and help to focus on specific information in the narrative.
  Voiceover itself is somewhat lacking in expression. I do realise that this is not a professional presentation but voice and sound carries the moving image.

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  Kim.Price wrote on 21 May 2009:
  

  This is an important and interesting subject and it must have been very challenging to convey the complexities in 5 minutes. The early British coroner experience was quite different. It often involved a group of yokels piling into somebody’s front room and taking a cursory glance over the deceased – casting doubt over the accuracy of many coroner verdicts. Your film conveys greater conviction on the part of Chinese authorities and makes an interesting comparison.

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  Mike Stanley-Baker wrote on 23 May 2009:
  

  Daniel; As you know, I’m a fan of your work on wuzuo and the larger shifts in power and attitudes towards science that can be tracked through the “historical contingency” of these people. You have some really interesting material, and great pictures, and it would have been nice to be able to see them in more detail.

  I liked the titles for the pictures, but as others noted, the text is invisible in the youtube format. The slide bar covers them during playback, and as I had to stop a lot to follow your spoken argument, I only saw them the 3rd time I played through. I also suspect the endnotes would be hard to read even in a powerpoint. Carole’s point about the expression in your narrative occurred to me too, but I would add that it carries not only the image, but the attention of the listener. Pauses and inflexions do a lot of work to tell your listener where the stress in your argument lies in a particular sentence.

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  R.MacFarlane wrote on 25 May 2009:
  

  I’m in agreement with my colleagues above: interesting subject matter, but some tweaks to the presentation of the visuals and audio would help to hold the attention of the viewer.

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