Twitter Documentary Final Reflection

This was not as easy a project as I thought it would. It took a lot of thought and a lot of creativity. I did it, though. I picked the topic for this project because when I first received the prompt, this topic immediately popped in my head and I knew I could work with this. Usually, I like to stick with my first idea. This topic worked because everyone is dealing with school and most deal with twitter, so there was plenty of people to ask and make a valid argument. I immediately thought of shot ideas after I had my topic and I tried to stick with these original shots. My original idea was to make it look like "60 minutes."
If I had another month, I would have spent more time looking for a video editing software because this would have helped a lot. I wish I could have had some software to edit video clips because I wanted to fix the video with Devon to make the black bars disappear and fix the shot of him smoking a cigarette that was so shaky. I also would have made some shots brighter, like David's interview, and I would have improved the fade in effect of the speech after narration. I also would have tried to ask even more people. That way I could make even a stronger claim. I was kind of nervous it was too one sided, but this was the general idea of everyone I interviewed so with more people talking, the less one-sided it sounds.  Otherwise, I liked what I did in the time given. I think it was of plenty of time.
I was really happy that a lot of effects that I wanted in the video worked. My favorite was the ability for me to narrate over someone talking in an interview and then fade them in. It felt like a real interview that I see on TV. I think it worked well with what I did have. Another big problem for me was the audio. Some narrations, no matter how many times I recorded it, sounded the way it did. I could not fix the voice sound, but the music helped even it out. I think the music also helped because it helped with the mood of the video. It could make you sad, happy, rejoiced and even disappointed by listening to watching the documentary and hearing the music.
I liked this project. I underestimated the work it would take to complete, but it was refreshing work from the studying I had been doing the week before. I think it came out well and I hope you think so, too. Here's my best.

Twitter Documentary

Shooting Schedule/ Script

I'm doing my documentary over how Social Networking effects UK Freshmen success at school. I will interview a diverse group of people, but only show the ones in detail on the actual video for any extreme cases. This would consist of people who use it a lot and have really bad grades, people who don't use it much and have good grades and vise verso for both. Questions I will as them will consist of, but is not limited to:
-How often do you use social Networking?
-What Site do you use?
-Why do you use it?
-How does it affect you emotionally, physically or mentally?
-Does it distract you?
-Does it benefit you? How?
-What do you feel it does for you success in school?
-How do you work the two together?
-How are your grades?

I have a few people I already know I will interview:
Tuesday- Steph (TWitter user)
Tuesday- David Myer (None social networking user)
Tuesday- Emily Carpenter (Twitter user)
Wednesday- Timmy Ford (Limited Facebook user)
plus more....

I plan on interviewing people who dropped out already, but that will not be able to until thanksgiving break.
I also will get shots of these people either doing homework, chilling on campus, using their social networking site, or living their life today.

I plan on starting it with a short compliation of person after person looking at the camera and say either their number of tweets or amount of Facebook friends if they use that more. If they do not use it, I will have them say 0 tweets. Then, from there I will start the documentary. I plan on adding statistics and bio between interviews as well.

proposal

   I will be looking into how social networking is linked to a Freshman UK college student's, because most have a social networking site, success in school. This is something very important because freshman year is how most people set the bar for their entire college career so this important to see what the effects are. This will take me through fields like partying, drama and distracting. I will see if it is negative or positive on a student's success at the university.
   I will analyze both facebook and twitter and may go back to myspace for some information about how people were effected in the beginning. The people I will talk to will be some frequent users of social networking sites, some occasional users, and people who do not have an account on a social networking website at all. I will ask what they feel about the topic and see what their grades look like linked to their social networking use. I will also see what their use of the sites is and what it can commonly result in. Then, I will compare these to people who do not use them at all. I would like to ask someone to go from frequent use of social networking to try not to and see what changes in their productivity. I hope to see that if they are not on these sites, they do not get distracted or tempted to go out. I also want to see people's reasons on why some people do not have these sites and if it linked to any issues that people on these sites are having.
   Most of the recording will be one on one interviews, but I would like to get some shots of the people I am interviewing in their everyday life. All of the interviewers are college students so it will just be them around campus or in their dorm rooms doing work. I was putting into consideration recording those who have had negative effects on a gloomy day and those with positive effects on a sunny day. I hope to have all the recording done in a week because I will be done with class early everyday. I will put it in the order of asking everyone vague questions and then as the video progresses, the people interviewed will dig deeper in the topic and make their own conclusions about the topic. I want to end with me talking about the topic and having final thought coming from the people interviewed.
   I think it will result in discovering that constant use of these sites causes stress and other problems along with distractions and temptations that lead to the sufferance of your grades. I hope my audience will take this documentary as an outside view of the world of social networking and use it to consider how to use their own social networking pages to benefit themselves the most. I will make sure to let the range of use by the interviewers to be diverse enough to let any freshman connect to it.

Dark Days response

This documentary was very good. It had an edgy feel to it and brought me into a world I had no idea about. Everything the director did from shot choices, color, audio and plot were very well thought out and super effective in bringing so many emotions from the audience and making the audience think about their own lives in perspective. This documentary showed us the life of homeless people in New York, but the director chose to speak of a certain group in an old tunnel. It helped the audience build a relationship with these people by only focusing on these few people, which helps play on the people's emotions.
First thing that caught my eye was the choice to make the entire film in black and white with poor quality.When I checked the date, it was 2000 so I figured the director chose this on purpose to make it feel a bit darker and sadder of a film. It also goes with the theme of poor people, having a bad quality of video. Even if it was hard to see in the darker scenes, it turned out well.
The director also chose specific scenes throughout that were very important to his meaning. The most memorable for me was the two men digging through the garbage and finding food to eat. They were literally eating it right out of the bags. It then immediately shoots over to two rats finding food in a discarded bottle and eating it. It was showing how low their quality of life was. Another scene that was powerful was when the woman cried over her children dying, but then went straight to smoking crack a numerous amount of times. It's just powerful things to see like that.
The scene orders overall was also very well done. He made a story line out of it. It helps play on the audiences emotions to see these people go on a full journey and not just see them go through a bad time. It starts with them introduced. Then, it is no way happy, but a bit more upbeat feeling when you see how they are managing to survive, like the one man making $70 on a weekend, and when you see they can eat and have homes. While still less than our standards, they still seem proud of making it by. Then tragedy strikes them and makes it seem depressing, first with the fire, then their own personal stories of jail and their families and finally their eviction. But at the end the director brings us straight up by showing them with apartments, food and excitement for what the future holds. The director's emotional journey really makes the documentary.
A few things I have taken away from this that I will try to use will be the use of different emotions, a story line, and frequent examples, like all the people he used with all their own personal touch to the topic. This will go along with how important sound, specific scenes power, and effects like fading out and having someone talk off screen. It was a good example to learn from.

3 ideas

1. How big is social networking in your life?
2. Why do people use twitter?
3. What makes up people's social identity?

video remix