After reading over the two articles, our group came to the consensus that Esquire created a better story. First, most of us agreed that Thompson's lack of presence was important to the piece. We wanted a story about what happened after Sam Kophchak's mother called 911. Although it may be important to know about Terry Thompson in order to piece together the "how" and the "why" we didn't think his presence should be crucial in the story.
Chris Jones did a fantastic job building tension and suspense through his descriptions in the Esquire piece. For example, Jones constantly keeps his eye on the time. Jones writes, "It was fifteen or twenty minutes before five o'clock, two hours before dark" and he follows up with the 911 phone call "at precisely five o'clock." He keeps the reader informed about when this fiasco started and what happened hour by hour. This precise consideration of time really builds tension. Readers feel like "what's going to happen next?" The article in GQ felt much more like a documentary, whereas Esquire pulled you in as a good movie would.
In terms of multimedia, Esquire used much better pictures and the trailer was interesting as well. We liked that the pictures focused on the actual people involved rather than pictures of animals that were not housed by Thompson. The trailer made it feel like it was just the beginning of a Hollywood blockbuster.
No comments:
Post a Comment