Outdoor Patio Installation....A Critique

You may be asking yourself "Kris why did you choose a video on patio installation to critique"?  Well my good friend, I will tell you.  My wife and I recently purchased a brand new home in the city and unfortunately, it carries a lot of outdoor work with it.  Last year I was able to tackle the deck and fence.  This year it will be a laundry list of other things.  Youtube and other video sites have been my best friend for getting a quick overview of the job at hand.  One of these jobs will be a patio off of our deck.  I have installed one patio in my life and ours will be very different from the last.  I found this video and it seemed to do a decent job of explaining the process of doing the most important part of the patio.....the foundation! So I know what you're saying, hurry up and get to the critique already, I can't wait to hear what you have to say! Ok, calm down, here we go!

Goals and Objectives

The clear goal of this video is to help people establish a good foundation for their patio.  They try to break each step of the patio foundation down so people with limited knowledge would be able to do this project.  This ranges from informing viewers of tools needed, type of base materials to use, and staking out a square and level surface.  They do a good job of explaining the pros and cons of laying pavers as opposed to pouring concrete.   A nice feature was having the homeowner present during the video to ask several questions along the way.  This prevents the video from getting too complex by keeping an element of simplicity.  Another goal would be to provide enough knowledge to allow people to save money on the costs of paying someone else to do the work for you.  By carefully laying out each step, minus the actual time of doing the work, the video gives the impression that virtually anyone could construct a well built patio to enjoy.

Production Techniques

Camera:  The camera incorporates a variety of different shots to thoroughly portray some of the details of making the patio.  They often zoom in to things like the type of sand to use or to demonstrate a task being done.  When more work is being done they often zoomed out to get a full shot of everything that was happening.  However, the camera is not on a tripod at any point during the video.  It made it difficult to watch as the cameraman was very shaky at several points. The camera man also did not take the rule of thirds into account as he often cut of people's heads or hands while they were explaining things.  Many of these problems could have easily been fixed by simply using a tripod.

Audio: 

The audio in this video is very poor at times.  They should have invested in a wind sock, individual mics, or doing a voice over.  The entire video could have actually been done through voice over.  It would have removed some of the "real life feeling" of being there but the audio would have been easier to understand.  There is a lot of echoing and background noise that could have been eliminated by choosing an additional method for audio.  As the camera man moved away from the subjects to bring parts of the patio into view it made it harder to understand the people.  At one point, a car honks in the background and it completely drowns out the audio. For the most part the video is audible but it definitely distracts the viewer and made is harder to concentrate on the task.

Editing:  The editing, for the most part was fairly well done.  Since this project can be be quite lengthy and can't be done in a short video, they managed to use time lapse and accelerated video speed to their advantage.  I found this very helpful as often DIY videos will skip over the work that they do.  This is very frustrating as some people are unaware of what actually took place unless they can see it being done.  Therefore, it was nice to have things sped up instead of cut out.  Also, when explanations are running too long or were irrelevant they cut out that material.  This was important to avoid the video from feeling like it was dragging on. Overall, the editing helped a long project seem shorter without removing vital content.


Overall Impression:  For a home-made do-it-yourself video I thought they did a pretty good job of explaining how to build a proper foundation for a patio.  Chronologically, it worked very well as they started by explaining the pros and cons of patio pavers, followed by the tools necessary and the amount of time needed, and thoroughly explaining each step of the process as they progressed.  The knowledge and factual information presented was definitely evident and made the viewer feel as though anyone with some basic handyman skills could complete this task.  Unfortunately, the sometimes sloppy camera work and poor audio detracted from the overall effectiveness of the video.  In short, the video was good for knowledge but lacked in how the information was presented to the viewer.  Since this is only a critique of one video I felt that I shouldn't continue to critique the second part of the video, where they lay the patio stones.  I think it would have been wiser for them to combine everything into one slightly longer video than create two parts.  It could make things difficult for the viewer to find the second part of the process and leave them stranded with a half built patio.