I want to write about James’ elevator pitch because it stood out from the others for multiple reasons. The first and most obvious was the way he delivered his speech and the confidence he projected when speaking. He paced back and forth throughout the classroom and made meaningful gestures with his hands, creating a sense that the pitch he was giving was completely natural and that he did not have to actively think about it very hard. In turn, this confidence makes it very easy for the audience to understand the message he was getting across as he was speaking clearly and didn’t fumble his words very much.
His analysis of the artifact itself was also spot-on, which I found very impressive given that he challenged himself with an entire movie to analyze in two minutes or less. While it was impossible for him to get into the gritty details, he made good points about how the cast was representative of the movie’s message. He further proved his analysis by going on about how the movie’s title, “Us”, was able to tell the audience everything we need to know about the movie’s intentions with only a single word.
There is not much I would add to improve his presentation, but I will say that it is not always the greatest idea to completely memorize a speech. Though he did a fantastic job with it, there was one point where he forgot what he needed to say and had to double-back to his laptop. In the context of the classroom, this mistake is ok to make but in other situations it won’t be. It might be best to plan spontaneity extemporaneously to avoid this while still giving off the impression that the speech is memorized.
I really liked this elevator speech as well! The delivery and content were both very strong. I like how you highlighted the time constraint, as I forgot about how difficult it would be to analyze and entire movie with such limited time.