Documentary

While I was filming my documentary, I had trouble deciding which direction I wanted to take it in. I could have discussed the pros or cons of social media based off of my film. A lot of people that I interviewed looked at social media in both a positive and negative light, which influenced me to do the same in my documentary. However, I couldn't just outline the pros and cons of social media, I had to pick a clear and concise message, so I tried to discuss some of the benefits of social media and then close in on how those benefits have actually worked against us. I'm pleased with how my documentary turned out as far as the technical aspects of putting it together. Flashing the names of my subjects at the bottom of the screen gave it a more professional look. I wanted to add music, but I really could not think of an appropriate song; although, I don't think that not having music took anything away from the documentary.

Also, I am not sure that I was able to communicate my message clearly enough solely through what I filmed, which is why I added a message at the end of the video so that my viewers weren't confused. If given more time, I think I would have interviewed more people and done multiple interviews with each person. By doing this, I would have been able to use the 30 degree rule and kind of manipulate the film better, and I think that my subjects would have been more relaxed when talking to me. There is one section at the end where the film jumps, and I wish I could have fixed that, but I didn't know what picture I could use there to distract my viewers. With more time, I could have also followed my interviewees around to observe their use of social media in a typical day. I wanted to add more pictures (like the tweets with audio playing simultaneously), but I did not have enough time to pick through the interviews again and extract small clips. Overall, I must say that I'm pretty satisfied with my work. I'm proud to say that I was able to make a mini movie.

Shooting Schedule

I plan to do most of my filming on Saturday around noon and carry the latter half of my filming into next week, however, all filming will be done by Wednesday evening so I can review my film and begin putting my documentary together. Most of my filming is going to take place in the Kirwan tower, since that is where my friends live. There, I will be interviewing my friends Shauntionne and Je'Esha. Shauntionne is someone who is very social but uses social media minimally, while Je'Esha is social but never uses any social media. During the week, I plan to interview Whitney at Blazer or, weather permitting, outside. Whitney uses social media a lot. I want to interview people on both ends of the spectrum (and in the middle) so that I can easily recognize their personality differences and analyze the role that social media plays for them in communicating. Over the break, I am going to interview my dad. He is the ultimate Facebooker, and I want to ask him about any instances in which he may have experienced some type of miscommunication on Facebook. I also plan on asking him about the ways in which social media has helped him reconnect with friends and perhaps made him more vocal.

Honestly, I feel like when I write my ideas down, I'm kind of all over the place. I want to highlight the ways in which social media takes away from communication, but I also want to look at how it is really helpful for those who are shy, and how it reopens (or continues) communication between old friends. Maybe I'll start off my documentary by looking at the negative aspects of social media and end with giving my audience hope by looking at the positive aspects of it.

Revised Documentary Proposal

For my documentary, I plan to examine the major personality differences between those who frequently use or depend on social media and those who refrain from using it or use it minimally. I expect to find that those who use social media frequently are a) very social and outgoing or b) people who have a difficult time communicating in person. Furthermore, I expect that people who don't use social media often are perhaps busier than those who do or just simply well-informed via watching the news and keeping in touch with relatives.

The importance of this documentary is in the idea that verbal communication is changing. People are becoming less social and personable as a result of depending on texting and Twitter. Speaking is a skill that fewer and fewer people have now. Twitter and text messaging reduce our language to less than 200 characters, forcing us to omit letters from words and exclude important details from messages. Let's not forget to mention people are speaking in IM!

My audience is UK freshmen, specifically those who rely heavily on social media. I want people to see the effect that Facebook and Twitter have had on our society’s language.

I plan to shoot a few scenes in the dorm rooms or possibly at the library to have a personal interview with my subjects and find out why they do or do not use social media frequently and how their personality differs from a person who does the opposite. I’m hoping that I can film a shot of girls saying, "OMG" or "IDK." Also, I want to film some shots of my shy person texting or instant messaging a family member or friend as opposed to calling them. My goal is to shape my documentary to show the potential negative long-term results of using Facebook and Twitter too much.

Dark Days

This documentary really opened my eyes up to a world that I didn't even know existed. When I saw The Dark Knight Rises this past summer, I thought that the whole sewer palace that Bane lived in was completely ridiculous. No one can really live underground; it just doesn't happen. But clearly, after watching this video, it does happen. Those people had a whole community down there! I mean, they would go to each others houses for dinner! Nonetheless, this was still a great documentary–I see what Owen was saying about how we're interested in things we aren't familiar with.

I really liked the way this documentary was shot and edited. The black and white filter helped to make me feel like I was actually in the dark myself. It also gave me this cold feeling and made me feel like I was alone, like the people in the documentary. In the beginning, there was a lot of darkness, which kind of made me feel hopeless for the characters, but once they moved into their apartments, the shots were brighter, so I felt hopeful, like it was a second chance for them to improve their lives.

I noticed the "shaky cam" thing, too, and I thought it added to the authenticity of the documentary. No one wants to see something that has been staged. It looked like Marc Singer had just lived the life of a homeless person for a month or so and just played back his film. Another thing that added to the authenticity of the documentary was the part where one of the guys introduced Marc to his friend and said, "This is my friend Marc." Some people use "friend" loosely, but even to do so, one would have to feel pretty comfortable around a person to call them a friend.

The documentary kind of reminded me of the movie Crash, where each person had their own story but they all ultimately ended up being tied together through different events. Character building made the documentary more personable because there were several different types of people, so the audience could choose a favorite person that they were more or less rooting for. The resolution was more favorable because the audience got to see his/her favorite character have the desired fairytale ending.

This documentary is different from the other documentaries we've watched because this is the first one that really seems to have been filmed over a long period of time, which allowed the story to be resolved in the end. Also, this documentary examines the lives of multiple people at the same time.

Documentary Ideas

For my documentary, I was thinking that I could maybe examine why people post what they do on different social media websites. I was also thinking that I could look at the lifestyle and personality differences between people who constantly use social media and those who don't.

TIB Music Video

Video Games

At first, I was kind of skeptical to say video games are art. I mean, what's artistic about Grand Theft Auto? Maybe it's the way the blood gushes out of each victim you kill, or the way that prostitutes switch when they walk. Art has such a vague definition that practically everything can be defined as art, including video games. The definition that my lovely dictionary (provided by Apple) gave me is "Art–the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power." According to this definition, video games are indeed art. There is no doubting that they are an expression of the imagination and that they evoke emotion from their users.

I think it is because video games evoke such emotion from users that they can sometimes tell stories in a better way than a book or an orator can. Growing up, I used to play Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? From that game, I learned about Egypt, the printing press, the vikings, etc. wayyy better than I did by reading a textbook or listening to an instructor. Video games are exciting and help disguise the fact that you are learning. Not to mention, you are more likely to retain something that was fun to learn about, opposed to something that you had to force yourself to stay awake and take notes on.

Since video games and movies depend on visual literacy, they are similar in their effectiveness in telling stories. A lot of video games actually show movie clips right before you are given a task to complete to add to the overall narrative of the game. I think that in this respect, video games can be more effective in telling stories because they actually involve the user, whereas movies require that you simply look at a screen.

Honestly, I didn't even want to write what I wrote, but technically video games do fall under the category of "art," and they can actually tell stories better than some other forms of art. However, this is not to say that I am in complete support of this idea for all video games. In fact, I think a lot of them turn your brain to mush.