Generation Z

I've been doing a lot of research on social media addiction, and the results did not surprise me. As we had thought, Generation Z is the generation with the most social media usage.
The first generation to grow up with the constant usage of social media. 
"Generation Z spends an average of 3 hours 38 minutes online on smartphones, almost 50 minutes longer than the average Intern user." It is a generation that has grown up with technology constantly around them. Furthermore, I found this in an article that I found to be very interesting...
"Research has shown that there is an undeniable link between social media use, negative mental health, and low self-esteem. While social media platforms have their benefits, using them too frequently can make people feel increasingly unhappy and isolated."

So because we know that there are extremely negative correlations between social media addiction and depression, we can talk about this in our documentary. We can sort of introduce it as it is, and explain the negative factors that come with it. 

Furthermore, I found the websites most commonly used by this generation...

1. Youtube
2. Gmail
3. Snapchat
4. Instagram 
5. Facebook

This is helpful information that we can discuss in our documentary, explaining the gravity of the issue. 

Topic Decision!

Hannah and I have been constantly brainstorming, and have finally come to a decision on our topic. The topic we ended up agreeing on is… Social media addiction! 

We believe that this is a very relevant issue that we can bring to life in our documentary. Being part of a generation that has grown up with social media usage, we have seen this addiction firsthand, allowing us to know what we should mainly focus on. We have planned some of our potential interviews, and think that we can interview three different groups of people: parents, teenagers, and teachers who have to withstand the students with their addictions. By interviewing parents, it will show how prominent the issue is, and how many people are going through it. With teachers we will be able to show how the addiction carries on in many different scenarios, not just at home. And finally, we’ll show the addicted person’s P.O.V and opinions. 

I found a documentary released in 2019 that talks about the dangers of social media. I haven’t been able to watch the whole documentary, but I saw the key art and got a sense of what this documentary goes for.  

So as you can see, this key art focuses on black and white colors, with the danger of social media being the main theme. Because we are doing social media addiction, we can get some inspiration from this documentary by looking at their color shading. We can get ideas for possible editing techniques that will maximize the effectiveness of our documentary. 

I'm going to be doing some more research on social media addiction, so stay tuned to to the next post as it will be specifically about social media addiction and the effects that come with it.

Interview Research

This post is mainly about interviews, and what can be done to make them look as clean as possible. The first and crucial thing, is that the subject does not look at the camera, and instead looks to the side of the camera. This makes it seem much more realistic, not staged.

The rule of thirds is also something that I want to make sure we use. Not centering the subject in the interview is going to make the shot look much more aesthetically pleasing. Here is an example of a documentary I found online, that has the subject placed in just the right place.

If we use interviews like this, it makes the background of the shot relevant, giving us more creative space. For example, if we use a simple shot with the subject in the middle, it consumes our whole shot. However, with the subject on the side, we are allowed the chance to put things in the background, adding to the mise-en-scene of our piece.





Finally, I wanted to show another thing that I found from an interview. This interview uses the rule of thirds, yet blurs out the background. While I don't want to use it in all cases, I feel like using it in an extremely important interview is not a bad idea. Here is how it would look...

This adds relevance to the subject, making what they have to say that much more important.

Research

So I've been doing research on documentaries, and have especially been reliant on notes I took earlier in the year. My notes were extensive, so they have been very helpful.  What I have learned for conventions for example, is that if I want to give off a sense of extreme realism, hand held camera would not be a bad idea. Hannah and I talked about this, and said that if we can manage to pull a shot like that off, it would look great for our documentary. As I had previously mentioned in my last post, we also agreed on indirect interviews.

What I have been really thinking about however is selective editing. I know how important editing is going to be for our final product, and I think that sounds and colors are really going to come into place here. We want to follow the tone of our documentary with the color saturation of the video. We also found crosscutting from one scene to another to be a good idea.

So what I can conclude from all of this research on my notes is the importance of good editing. we have to follow our tone throughout the editing process, and while that may be very difficult, we understand that it will make the final product that much better.

Documentary!

 I'm more than excited to be announcing my final project: I will be creating a documentary with Hannah Lassner. We were deciding between a music video or a documentary, but we decided that a documentary has more potential. We are starting to decide upon what we want to have our documentary revolve around, yet have not made a final decision yet. The first idea we had was a documentary on adolescents who coach recreational sports, but we did not officially decide on that. What we both agreed is on is that we would have indirect interviews in our documentary, and not direct interviews. We believe that this will give our documentary a more clean look.
Some of our other ideas include:

1. Youth sports coach
2. Student athlete 
3. High school students who have jobs 
4. Addictions
5. College application process 
6. Social media usage with teens 
7. Vaping 
8. immigrants
9. Kids raised in single parent households 
10. Teachers 

Even though we have not decided on a definitive documentary, we think that it may come out from one of these. I will be updating my blog with any new updates regarding our documentary, so stay tuned!