Documentary editing

To edit the final product of the documentary, we will be using the free software called "WeVideo."

I have used this website in the AS Level last year, as well as multiple projects in A Level. I have never had a major problem with this site. I believe it is easy to use and has every aspect that we will need to make the perfect documentary. 

It has a simple drag and drop method so all of our footage can easily overlap and could be placed perfectly. Also my partner and I could each work on the one project on the same day, just at separate times. 

Also, with our interviews, there are multiple text templates when we introduce our subjects so this software gives us many options to choose from.

Overall, I love WeVideo. With all of the other softwares, I am most comfortable with this one and I believe the editing process with be smoother when using this software.

OBSESSION

For our documentary, my partner and I decided on the title, "OBSESSION." We liked the one word title because it is more likely to stick to the audience and can describe what the overall documentary is about in just one word. 

The literal meaning of obsession is "an idea or thought that continually preoccupies or intrudes on a person's mind." This perfectly describes the social media addiction problem happening in today's society.

The unique font called "Allerta Stencil" we thought was cool for our documentary poster because it looks dark and concerning if that makes sense! It also looks like jail which could represent how Gen Z cannot escape the social media world. 

Dio and I also wanted to incorporate a short statement describing more of the documentary. "The social pandemic" has a deeper meaning to what social media addiction is. Instead of just saying it is an addiction, we wanted to have another work to make it darker to attract the audience.

Yes, we are going to remove the "Canva" watermark! I am happy we finished the poster and now we can put this on the website!

Website template

I feel like I am all over the place due to this unfortunate pandemic. My partner and I cannot leave our houses so the only communication we have is through the phone, which on somedays could be difficult. Our filming schedule has changed since we cannot interview people this week because of quarantine. 

However, since I already have the main idea for the poster, I wanted to start on the website to start finishing as much as the project as possible.

As I mentioned before, I am utilizing "WIX" for our documentary website. It is easy to use and has many templates to pick from.

This is the one we thought would be perfect for our documentary.

We thought the colors on the home screen goes perfectly with our poster since it is mainly dark blue and the pattern in the background was honestly pretty cool!

For our tabs, we are going to have the "Home" page, "Screenings," "About," and "Contact." We want the website to be easy to navigate and not confusing. So, by having only four tabs would be perfect. We are also going to include many images from the documentary throughout all of the pages. 

I tried!

Based on my last post, I wanted to try to create new ideas for our poster in order for us not to have to use real people. I have been playing around with Canva while I am quarantined, this is what I have come up with. 

I wanted to incorporate the real applications within our poster in order for viewers to automatically assume our documentary series is about social media. Also, the brain is associated with the addiction and obsession over these platforms.

We obviously still need to think of a title, but I like this start. I will start to work on more and converse with my partner so we can decide on which route we want to go. Hopefully he likes it!

Rethinking

Since the coronavirus is ruining a lot of our planning, we need to start rethinking our original poster ideas. 

Our previous poster ideas included real people as the main focus of the whole thing. However, since we cannot be near people at this point in time, I found another idea in which we can recreate our poster.

The Social Network is about the creation of Facebook. The synopsis states, "Harvard undergrad and computer genius Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) begins work on a new concept that eventually turns into the global social network known as Facebook. Six years later, he is one of the youngest billionaires ever, but Zuckerberg finds that his unprecedented success leads to both personal and legal complications when he ends up on the receiving end of two lawsuits, one involving his former friend (Andrew Garfield)." 

This film has to do with social media and does not include actual people for its cover. This will have to be the route that Dio and I have to take. 

Interview fail

So far the video interviewing has not been working out. 

Dio and I direct messaged a lot of popular Tik Toker's on Instagram, in order to get video answers for our documentary. Many of the influencers we reached out to were older in order to have a noticeable age difference between our interviewees. 

Since many of them live across the country and because of the coronavirus, we thought that this would be the only way to get in contact with them.

So far, the only popular "Tik Toker" who answered us did not understand our direction.

This is his profile. Dio and I believe that over 90,000 followers is adequate to be considered a "Tik Toker," so he was one of the individuals we reached out to.

Since he did not want to give out his phone number, we messaged him with the interview questions and asked if he can make a VIDEO answering each question we sent him.

Well, this is what we got.

We are going to reiterate our message of him making a video for us but now we need to dm even more people. This was a fail. I am stressed!

Interviews-ish

Due to the coronavirus epidemic, this project is becoming harder than ever. Because we need to interview individuals face to face, many cannot leave their houses due to quarantining and social distancing. My partner and I have been communicating the past couple of days, however, it is challenging to create a well-put-together documentary without being face to face with the people we need to interview. 

Before schools' closed, Dio and I brainstormed our interviewees and questions for the documentary. 

Dio and I wanted our questions to obviously relate to our social media addiction theme. We thought that these questions would generate sufficient answers from our subjects. Also, our interviewees all have a connection to the popular app.

We might need to FaceTime our subjects and screen record their answers if worst comes to worst and this global pandemic does not go away. I am praying it does!

Poster Inspo

My favorite part!

I do not know why this is my favorite part, probably because I love looking at movie and documentary posters. I think that the posters have a major impact on whether a viewer is to watch the piece or not. Because of the importance of it, I want to make sure my partner and I create an impactful poster.

I wanted to search up documentary posters related to our theme of social media addiction, so this is what I found.

The first one I found is from a documentary called "social_animals." This documentary is about a photographer, an aspiring swimsuit model, and a midwestern girl who are all looking for love, acceptance and, fame from their Instagram account. I love this poster. I think the social media theme is very clear being that the poster incorporates a white border, reflecting what the actual feed of Instagram looks like. Also, the title mimics what a username would look like on social media applications. Without even reading the summary of the documentary, viewers can immediately tell what the piece is about. I want our viewers to know what our documentary is about just by looking at the poster and our title, which is why I love this example.

The second example I found is from a documentary titled, "The Great Disconnect." This piece is centered on a group of people searching for human connections in today's technology world. A hard-working lawyer, attached to his cell phone, can't find the time to communicate with his family. A couple is drawn into a dangerous situation when their secrets are exposed online. I appreciate the aspect of the "like" buttons that are normally featured on the Instagram app. This feature in this poster made it clear what it will be about. The only negative thing about this poster is that it includes subjects that are much older than our target audience. 

I love that both of these posters include the "like" button. I definitely want to use this technique in our poster since this attracts our target audience who use social media applications. This will give our audience the theme of the documentary series with out the title literally saying "social media addiction." Our subjects featured in the poster will be teenagers or a single teenager. I cannot wait to start designing! 

Website Inspo

Before I start my documentary website, I wanted to get some professional examples in order to know what elements to add and how to format, etc. I will be focusing on the home page specifically because this is the first thing my viewers will see.

The first one I found is called "HONEYLAND." This documentary is about a woman who uses ancient beekeeping traditions to cultivate honey in the mountains of North Macedonia. Because the film is about bees, the website utilizes yellow, black, and white to go with the color scheme of the insect. The home page is simplistic with only three tabs to watch the trailer, about the film, and donate to the Honeyland community in which the film was about. I love the use of simple colors relating to the theme, however it may be hard to find the colors for social media. 

The second documentary website I found is called "The Biggest Little Farm." This documentary is about a couple who follows through their successes and failures as they work to develop a sustainable farm on 200 acres outside of Los Angeles. In order to market the "animal aspect" of the film, the background of the homepage is a montage of animal videos. I thought that this aspect was distracting since it was hard to read the home page with a bunch of moving animals in the back. Also, the many tabs made the overall website confusing. However, it is very unique since I have never seen this technique done before; I will not be using it. 

The third documentary website I found is for "Bisbee '17." This documentary is partially based on a true story Western, it reflects on the events of the 1917 Bisbee Deportation, 100 years later; it is set in Bisbee, Arizona, both in 1917 and 2017. This dark color scheme of the text coincides with with dark color grading of the actual documentary. I believe that these colors are necessary to market the documentary since it is a deep topic to discuss. I also loved how they added an actual picture from the documentary as their background. I love the look of this home page since it looks like everything matches. I will definitely be using this aspect in our website with our own color scheme. 

Throughout all three documentary website examples, each incorporates tabs that have "contact," "about," "screenings," and "images." The parts of the website are necessary to use for our own in order to market the documentary effectively. My partner and I just have to make sure our website goes with the overall theme of social media in order to market effectively. 

Dates and Design

It is already March 8th with means that we need to start getting everything together very soon!! 

Dio and I are going to start to shoot on March 20th to the 28th. This fits both of our schedules to where we have no distractions or anything to do. Since it is our spring break, we will have more than enough time to shoot everything possible and reshoot if necessary, since we do not have school all week. 

For our website and poster, we want to start working on it and get as much done as we can before our shoot days. I know that our main priority is filming, but we have two weeks to work on our other tasks. 

In order to create our documentary poster, we will utilize the website "Canva." This is a graphic design platform in which it allows users to create social media graphics, presentations, posters and other visual content. It is available on web and mobile, and includes millions of images, fonts, templates and illustrations.

It allows creative freedom which is why this is the perfect platform for our poster.

For our website we will use is similar to Canva. It is is a classic template website builder in which one can choose from over 500 industry-specific templates and make use of its incredible drag-and-drop editor. It is easy to use which is why we chose this site.

I cannot wait to start designing !! I will keep you guys updated of course.

tik .. tok .. tik .. tok ..

Time is going by so fast !!!!

I feel like we are super behind since we have not started to film yet but I promise we are getting there. Just so I feel more organized, I am going to lay out our main parts of our documentary: 

• Overall topic of our series: Social media addiction
• Our episode: How the designs of apps like Tik Tok makes users addicted
• Theme: biased - my partner and I are going to focus on the negative side of social media and why being addicted is bad
• Target Audience: Generation Z "the group of kids, teens and young adults roughly between the ages of 7 and 22"

Our teacher, Mrs. Stoklosa, gave us a really good idea about how to name our episodes since this aspect is vital for our website. We want to use alliteration for every episode in order to catch our audiences attention and create rhythm and mood on the particular connotations. This is what my partner and I came up with: 

1. 
   
2. Communication
3. Collection
4. Compulsion
5. Criticism   
6. 
   

We have most of the titles we want to use for our episodes. My partner and I still need to figure out what our intro and ending is going to be.

The one we are producing for our portfolio project is titled "Compulsion." We wanted this to be the title because compulsion means an irresistible urge to behave in a certain way. This goes perfectly with our social media addiction topic.

"Collection," if produced, would be about the data social media companies actually collect from user activity and profiles.

"Communication," if produced, would be about how one portrays themselves online and how this is not how they are in real life. Their profile may communicate a different message about their personality online.

"Criticism," if produced, would be about the online bullying and hate people give creators.  However, the users who give hate still watch their youtube videos, raises their views, so it makes the creator more famous.

I feel better now that I have most of our titles down. Now its time to really make a schedule for filming! 

Oh Gen Z...

Ok so since I have already mentioned that teens are vital to this topic and that we wanted to use them as our target audience.. 

I wanted to research how influential Gen Z really is on the social media networking app Tik Tok and why these social medias are focused on them as their own target audience. 

I found some statistics :

(Globalwebindex, 2019) 

 Tik Tok has decided to choose individuals under 18 as their target audience. With their target audience specified from the start, they’ve understood the habits and preferences of this age group which has led them to create a social media app that gives their audience exactly what they’re looking for. 

(BusinessofApps, 2019) 

This means that people are using the social networking app daily either for creating and sharing short videos of themselves, or for watching the thousands of videos uploaded on every "For You Page." Compared to other popular social media apps, Tik Tok is similar to Instagram with users spending 53 minutes and Snapchat being 49 minutes daily. However, with the addictive features on Tik Tok, researchers think the average in minutes per day is going to rise. 

 90 percent of all TikTok users access the app on a daily basis. Not only that, they are extremely active on the app. A study observing the behavior of TikTok users in the span of one month shows that 68 percent of TikTok users watch someone else’s video and 55 percent upload their own videos (Globalwebindex, 2019).

I am totally astonished by these data graphics. Generation Z clearly has a big impact on Tik Tok's success and I cannot wait to create a documentary surrounding this topic specifically. 

Narrowing down

Well this is awkward...

All the research I have been doing was not as important as I thought it was...
BUT on the bright side- Dio and I talked to our class and we now know how to approach our project idea! Having a group meeting with our class made us realize that we have to narrow down to a specific idea for our documentary and to do some research. We need to start ASAP so we do not fall behind. 

Some of the specific topics that was mentioned in the group meetings were: 

- Does instagram allow you to express yourself?

- Mental health around generation Z 

- Tiktok makes you addicted 

- Talk About ego- trying to prove themselves through social media 

- Designs of social media

I love all of the ideas that our class mates gave us. I am really interested in how Tok Tok makes users addicted and the designs of social media and it seems that these two are related to each other and have a negative effect on teenagers. So I decided to do some research to see if this is true.

In case you have been without a phone for the past couple of months, Tik Tok is video-sharing social networking service used to create short lip-sync, comedy, and talent videos. It has over 500 million active users.

I found an article on The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/style/what-is-tik-tok.html that explains certain aspects of the social media app that makes it unavoidable for its millions of users.

- ".. when you open the app: the first thing you see isn’t a feed of your friends, but a page called “For You.” It’s an algorithmic feed based on videos you’ve interacted with, or even just watched. It never runs out of material. It is not, unless you train it to be, full of people you know, or things you’ve explicitly told it you want to see. It’s full of things that you seem to have demonstrated you want to watch, no matter what you actually say you want to watch"

- "TikTok starts making assumptions the second you’ve opened the app, before you’ve really given it anything to work with."

For our documentary episode, I feel like the perfect app to focus on is Tik Tok due to its design and addictive features - it fits perfectly in our overall idea of the topic.

Time to get a move on!

People pondering

After watching the documentary in my previous post, I got really intrigued with this topic. I started to think about what actual people we are going to interview and how to find the perfect group. 

My partner and I have access to many teens since our school consists of almost 5,000 people, however not just ANY teen is going to work. 

I found an article on https://www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/social-media-addiction/ and it fit perfect to our topic. 

It states:

Although many people habitually use social media, very few are genuinely addicted. If you’re worried that someone may be at risk of developing an addiction to social media, ask yourself these six questions:

- Does he/she spend a lot of time thinking about social media or planning to use social media?

- Does he/she feel urges to use social media more and more?

- Does he/she use social media to forget about personal problems?

- Does he/she often try to reduce use of social media without success?

- Does he/she become restless or troubled if unable to use social media?

- Does he/she use social media so much that it has had a negative impact on his/her job or studies?

Using these six questions, we could be able to find a couple of teenagers who would say "yes" to most of these. We could also utilize these questions during our actual interview process in order to get real and truthful answers out of the interviewees. 

Now we just need to think of how to find adults to include or a professional source. Hopefully my class and my teacher can give us advice on this part so we can start writing questions and planning our film schedule!