In Jacob Swinney’s “First and Final Frames” video essay, he makes a compilation of the opening and closing shots from 55 different films. Swinney uses a multi-screen (side-by-side) technique and one slow, peaceful song for the audio throughout the video. While Swinney does list the names of the films and the timestamp of when they appear in the video in the description, I think using text on screen with the names of the films would be helpful to the viewers, but I could also see why he would decide against using text in order to allow viewers to focus completely on the similarities/differences of the two images on the screen, and adding text may subtract from that experience. It’s also interesting to see which films you can identify just by seeing a few seconds of the first and last shots. Furthermore, I think using the audio from the films would be interesting in this case, and could reveal more about the films than just the using the visual aspects. Again, I can also see why the essayist would decide against this, as having the sound from both shots could be distracting and omitting the sound altogether allows viewers to focus just on imagery, and not get distracted/overwhelmed by comparing the audio as well. Overall, I found this essay extremely interesting, as it brings light to something that not many people would consider or would be able to consider had it not been compiled into a video essay. It’s rare for me to think back to what the first shot of a film looks like, so having side-by-side images showing the similarities and differences allows audiences to consider the themes of the films in a new way. In the description of the video, Swinney explains that some of the opening and closing shots are strikingly similar and some are vastly different, but all of them serve a purpose in communicating themes. I think it would be interesting to see if he had just made a video with first and final frames that were similar, and then a different video with shots that are different.