Too Much – Social Network
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVBGaXnyJ44&feature=player_embedded
Sanjay Mistry
Writing Across the Media
Video Rationale
12/1/13
Today people are using technology and social media more ever, even maybe more than they should. Constantly, we see people looking down at their phones while walking, a classroom full of laptops, and students talking about social media all the time. It has become something that it hard to live without. What I decided to do is to interview students on the University of Illinois campus and talk to them about how much social media and technology they using and how. At first, it was a hard to decide how I was going to present a negative view on how much we are consuming, but I then became to formulate a way to make question the audience while showing them different interviews.
I then created a order and flow of all the interviews that I thought were the most useful. First, I ordered the interviews by time. I wanted the longer more detailed interviews to go first while I have my audience’s attention. When editing, I wanted to follow Hampe’s guidelines. That is why majority of my footage told the story through interviews, with little commentary or narration from us trying to explain what we were filming (Hampe, 52-53). As the video goes on, I then would add the shorter interviews to make it seem I am not be redundant. Then, in-between each different interview I added questions before and after the slide to engage the audience and to critique the interviews positive questions and answers negatively. I wanted my audience to analyze a interview from a negative perspective immediately, and I feel like I showed that from interview to interview.
Throughout my video all my interviewees generally talk about how positive they use social media and technology. Since the quality of the video wasn’t that great I did not play music over the interviews, instead I played a faded a song in and then out of the beginning and end of the video to show when the video was going to start and end. Then I put questions that highlighted the negatives of overusing social media and technology before and after each interview. Overall, all of our interviewees said they could not live without a phone (laptop, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), but I wanted to show how social media is not the core of your life. It is good to indulge online and fast, however there is a line of going overboard. We do waste more time on certain things, but we could be using this time for more important things.
I wanted my audience to reflect on these interviews and step back and compare their opinions to my interviewees. Basically, I wanted my audience to agree with the fact that they love social media and they spend X amount of hours on “Social Media Site” first. My second step was to trap my audience and then offer another question and they compare themselves to a person that had similar responses. In addition, I tailored each question to pertain to each different interview. Depending on what thing they over-consumed, I tried to formulate a question that would turn around what they say. Moreover this worked as well because interviews made it easier for the viewers to place themselves into the scene according to McCloud (37).
As McKee discussed, music is one of the best ways to establish emotion in situations because each viewer interprets it in a way special way (McKee). After our introduction I used the famous song Creep by Radiohead from the “Social Network” to cue my video and then end it in fade. I figured it would bring a mixed element of seriousness and mystery to my video. I wanted my audience to connect with song and then automatically associate with the video. This was a huge addition for my video because it brought a sense of humor as well. I wanted to throw off my audience and then question what this video could be about.
Regardless if you use social media and technology a lot or a little, I wanted to show my message that you can be using your time with something else, and a little less social media here and there can go a long way. Through these interviews, it was not hard to show much time people use their devices without even knowing. All of the interviewees think it might be all good, however I would recommend using social media less in class, and start paying attention when you are walking down the street as well. I am tired of bumping into people who are tweeting instead if walking.
Works Cited
- Hampe, Barry. “Visual Evidence.” Making Documentary Films and Reality Videos: A Practical Guide to Planning, Filming and Editing Documentaries of Real Events. Henry Holt, 1997. 49-68.
- McCloud, Scott. “Ch. 2: The Vocabulary of Comics.” Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. Harper Collins, 1994. 24-59.
- McKee, Heidi. “Sound Matters: Notes Toward the Analysis and Design of Sound in Multimodal Webtexts.” Computers and Composition 23.3 (2006): 335-354.
Sanjay Mistry 