Mass Surveillance

I chose the topic from week 4 for my final video, the topic “A balanced perspective is the key to understanding the contemporary surveillance society in which we live.” I wanted to talk about both sides of the topic, I spoke about the pros and cons of the current surveillance systems and spoke also about the potential dangers of the future of surveillance. In my second video I used the topic of AI I think my undoing in this assignment was how broadly I tried to look at the topic. That is the main reason I chose this topic this time around, I knew I could focus in closer on specifics within the topic.

At the start of my video, I chose some music from the royalty-free (CC) site http://www.bensound.com the song I used at the start and the end was called “sweet”, I made some title cards and some end credits. I tried to find music that matched the tempo of the video I was producing I didn’t want anything too upbeat and action themed. I also didn’t want anything that was going to put my viewers to sleep. When watching videos on youtube and if there a “sit-down” style I personally find it distracting when the angle changes or the composition. When composing my video I tried to stay central in the frame always trying to occupy the middle third of the frame. I made sure my head wasn’t too tight to the top of the frame and the other thing that I did in the last assignment that I tried to avoid was having the camera too high above eye level and pointing down on me. This time placed the camera at eye level with a large window behind the camera, so that my face would be well lit. The natural light looks a lot better than the artificial light I have used in the past. I tried to engage my audience by using persuasive language when talking about my topic I also used statistics to engage the audience. When talking about the topic I tried to use examples of how the effects of mass surveillance would affect the viewer. In my previous videos, I didn’t use an opening title card and end credits, I feel like the inclusion of these made the video seem more professional. When planning out this video I wrote out a complete script and tried my best to memorize lines from the script, this didn’t work so great so I used parts of my script to make dot points to jot my memory about the point I was about to cover. I feel like this topic was more accessible in terms of finding research to study the topic. It was a lot easier than the artificial intelligence topic which I think I tried to narrow my focus but still spoke too broadly. this time in editing I used some fading edits but I prefer the look of a cut edit rather than a fade every time. I think the cut edit looks a lot cleaner.

What I learned this time around was the importance of music and credits and how much that adds to the production of the video. In the planning stages, I wouldn’t have written a whole 700-word script just to condense it to dot points this was a massive waste of time. I would have planned to do something a little extra I think I aimed to meet the requirements but certainly, didn’t aim to smash them. I think I should have weighted the importance more on the quality of the output video not focusing on the script. I think that I generally spoke well to the camera and that’s something I think I have done well across all of my 3 submissions. I made the change from DSLR to iPhone for this assignment due to the lack of quality from the DSLR for the amount of hassle it was to set up and use all the tricky settings. I found I was spending more time trying to set up the camera with the best settings and still the iPhone was getting a better shot. I definitely prioritized the story over the production quality of the video. I would definitely choose the same topic again because it was really interesting I hope the interest of the topic shone through in my video.

References;

Van Dijck, J., 2014. Datafication, dataism and dataveillance: Big Data between scientific paradigm and ideology. Surveillance & Sociecty, 12(2), pp.197-208.

How to draw a pillow

if you are confused by the title please hang in there because hopefully, it’ll make sense by the end of the video.

I chose the topic New Intelligence (Artificial Intelligence). I tried multiple times to explain everything about Artificial intelligence and the shortest I could get the script was about 4 minutes so I scrapped everything and I started again.

I decided to focus on the part of artificial intelligence that I found most interesting (least threatening to the human race) which is the machine learning. I played lots of games and apps that show examples of machine learning. The Google “Quick, Draw” game was so much fun and I think it simplified the machine learning experience.  Here’s a link if you want to play with “Quick, Draw”.

In my video I showed gameplay from the Quick, Draw game I overlayed footage of me. I was commentating throughout the game and I also had the audio from the game playing.

In this video, I tried to create some interest by changing the background after the gameplay. I think that the editing process was the hardest for me because I read of bullet points and I re-read most of them multiple times so I had to go through all the footage to find the best takes. I took on board the feedback I received about the audio from the camera. I tried to use my phones audio but it sounded a lot worse. the sound from the iPhone was much quieter and tinnier. I found the time constraint of 3 minutes to be the hardest thing to work around. There was so much more I wanted to say about the topic I feel like I only got to scrap the surface of what would be possible for such an interesting topic. Hence why I narrowed my focus so much on the planning phase and decided to teach my audience about one specific sector of Artificial Intelligence and to show them a really fun and engaging example.

I faced a few challenges which through researching on youtube (ironically) I found tutorials that got me out of the sticky situations I was in. For the first video, I made I used iMovie which was very user-friendly but not very precise when it came to cutting clips and other more technical aspects. I made the big leap to premier pro which was really hard to get used to and I still don’t really know what I am doing. But for the editing of this video, it worked quite well. I felt much more natural talking directly at the camera in this video compared to the first. As I spoke about previously I still see room for improvement with the audio quality I have started research on how to get the best audio out of my current setup.

All in all, I have definitely made some good progress from my previous video and I have aimed to adapt my shortcomings in my previous video.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed the video.

Learning to speak about myself on camera

 

In the making of my video, I aim to use humor to preface the type of video I am making. Youtubers may call this style of video a “sit down” and as I joke about in the beginning I’m not a super high energy personality like Logan Paul. If you don’t know who Logan Paul is you are lucky in my eyes. I try to convey my normal self and a tone that I would use in day to day life. I chose to speak about very everyday things about myself whilst trying to show my personality. I would consider myself leaning more towards the introverted personality type.

I composed the video to have a natural background shooting out of my bedroom window. This shows a little about me and where I live. I had initially started shooting it actually outside but the wind factor quickly killed that idea. I originally had images on the wall next to me and behind me but I thought they were too distracting. I aimed to use a pleasant framing with enough room around my head so the framing wasn’t too tight. I used a Canon DSLR camera to record the audio I trialed syncing this with iPhone audio but the camera picked up better audio. I shot the video in the highest resolution possible. I used as much natural light as I could and also added some lights from my bedroom and a small lamp which I used a sheet as a diffuser on.  Next video if it’s in the same “sit down” style I will probably aim for a more ambitious background. I think I did well in the framing. I am really looking forward to working more on my transitions and other more in-depth skills with my movie making.

I started the recording process in a windy backyard and threw the towel in pretty quickly on that one. I then decided the best backdrop in my house was the view out of my window and I knew the acoustics in my room were satisfactory. I started out my video with a very scripted approach and I ditched this approach for the use of dot points and a more conversational style. I didn’t have trouble looking to the camera as most people said they experienced I would say the only mental hurdle I had was getting comfortable talking about myself, I think even after many takes it still felt weird. I usually try to avoid talking about myself as it can come off as very arrogant and egotistical. practice definitely made (close to) perfect when it came to talking about myself.

Overall I’m happy with my starting point in this unit and with my progress in the unit in the first week I attempted some “sit down” filming and it looked very bad. After watching the weekly videos I tried to emulate the shots and framing used in those videos. I’m really looking forward to working more on pre-production, filming, and editing.

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