For our Digital Perspectives project, we were meant to make a brief video about social media that depicts 5 of me and my partner’s beliefs regarding social media, using somewhat advanced filming techniques. Before starting, we did extensive planning regarding both the social media and filmmaking aspects of this project. This can be seen in the slides embedded below.
Once done planning and filming, we got around to actually making our videos. We were meant to document the first 30 minutes or so of our rough draft through screenshots, to show the amount of work we had gotten done in that duration of time. This can be seen in the slides embedded below.
Linked here is the incomplete rough draft of my movie.
Rough Draft Reflection
1) The most important thing I need to work on to improve my film during next lesson is get around to actually finishing the film and then fine-tuning it and making sure everything is where it needs to be.
2)My final film is meant to be 2-3 minutes, this means I need to put in a herculean effort to try and condense my film to that length, since being succinct isn’t exactly my strong suit and considering the amount of footage we have.
3) Of my five statements about social media, the one that is the trickiest to communicate in the video is, “The effects social media can have on us vary on one’s individual priorities and how we use the platform.” I say this because unlike most of our other statements, it’s hard to act this out in a way that everyone will easily understand, and explaining it will require a bit more effort than the others as well.
Linked here is the final movie
ATL Reflection
Self-Management: I was already behind from the start of the project, since my partner and I had to use one class to film while most others were editing, since we had a lot of footage to collect. I then said to myself that I’d finish up the whole video during October break, since I was going to be in India for 5 days, with absolutely nothing to do. However, I’d still only barely started it when I got back, and I missed one lesson, which wasn’t ideal either. I then found myself on the day before it was due with almost nothing, struggling to concentrate. To refocus, I took short breaks doing things I like doing, such as playing guitar. This got me back on track, and I was able to finish the movie while still being pretty satisfied about the whole thing. Looking back, I really should have finished up the movie when I was in India, since I was virtually free the whole day. If not this, I should’ve at least completed little segments. of the movie day-by-day instead of saving everything for one big sitting.
Collaboration:The initial phases of this project were all about collaboration since we started off in groups of four, before branching off into pairs to plan and film. All this group work means that collaboration was definitely involved. However, two particular instances of collaboration stick out. The first was when I volunteered to be in someone else’s movie even though I had lots to film. The other group couldn’t find anyone, since they were all busy, so I chose to help them. I also told them how to improve the shot they were taking of me, which further solidifies this example of collaboration. The second instance was when my partner was completely out of ideas for his movie, so he asked me to help him give him some ideas, and then we brainstormed together. I first let him see my rough draft, and then we talked about what he could do. All in all, my collaboration was pretty good, but I maybe could’ve tried to help some other groups in their movie making process, even if they didn’t necessarily come and ask me. If I saw someone seemingly struggling, I should’ve tried to help a bit.
Communication: Overall, I’d say that the communication in my video is very direct and straight to the point. Instead of using metaphorical examples and being ambiguous with how I talked about the 5 statements, I made the focal point of the video the scene/skit happening in the background, since we filmed ours in such a way that would hopefully make it easy to understand for everybody. An example of this would be when I tried to convey the idea that social media can shape our perceptions and opinions very easily, and that it’s important to know who/what to trust. To illustrate this, I planned a skit in which a person starts following Flat Earth Society on social media, and gets brainwashed by them. He then tries to convince his friends that the Earth is flat, but after failing his science exam for stating that the Earth is flat, he unfollows Flat Earth Society and starts following BBC News, a trustworthy source. I think this gets the message across very well and is simple to understand yet detailed enough. If I had to improve one thing, it would probably be to have a bit more narration in my movie. However, I think that there’s enough dialogue and information in the scenes to compensate for that.