Alex's+concept+-+do+something+crazy

For my documentary I will look into the effects of social networking on the art of conversation. I will investigate how facebook, ChatRoulette, and the Internet in general have changed us and the way we communicate with each other. I want to investigate whether using technology to communicate depersonalises conversation, and reveal the miscommunications that can occur when contacting people through the internet. To do this I will interview people of other generations, to fully understand the differences between our society today and society in past decades, as well as people my age, to get a full understanding of the issue and what other people in my generation think about it. From these opinions, I aim to come to the conclusion that the internet is indeed changing the way we communicate, but I will explore both the positives and the negatives to this issue. I also aim to show the issue of the hidden security there is online, and reveal how many people say and do things they would not usually in real life. This can be bad, such as cyber bullying, but it can also pave the way for people to talk to people they might otherwise feel too intimidated by. My target audience will be of all ages, appealing to both my peers to whom this technology is so familiar and older generations in an attempt to help them understand my generation’s ways. I will also interview at least one expert, to make my film seem more professional (this will make it appeal to those of the target audience that are older and prefer more informative material). It will also appeal to my target audience because everyone in our world now is affected by technology and the internet, so everyone will be able to relate in some way. I will do research into different articles on the topic, in attempt to find interesting facts and to avoid points that have been made in the media too often. I will check out ChatRoulette, the online webcam chatting site, to see how it works and who really uses it. I will also research into who would be a good expert to interview on the topic, and see if it is possible to get in contact with them. My main issue would be getting in contact with the New Zealand Film Archives, and tracking down some old footage of old ways of communication – such as ancient phones and people using the first computer models, which you had to programme yourself. I also need to find out if there are any copyright issues involved with using this and other material from other sources, but as I am not planning to submit this into a competition I think it should be fine. As well as this I will need to include other visual material to keep the viewer interested, such as stop motion cartooning, clips from the South Park episode surrounding facebook, and clips from movies that reinforce my idea about communication and the internet’s affect. I will need the camera on several different occasions depending on the schedule of my interviewees, and will film a lot of the extra visual things around the city on a weekend hopefully in the 2nd or 3rd week of filming. An issue I may encounter is clashes in schedules of both my interviewees and my other group members, as we all have commitments such as work and family. To get around this we will film interviews individually if need be, preparing the questions beforehand. I intend my film to be around 8-10 minutes long, as I hope my interviewees will have a lot to say on the matter, but the film will not be entirely interviews. In total I hope to have about 20 shooting days maximum, including reshoots of any material that is not adequate. For this I will need an HD digital video camera, a microphone boom, and lights for filming inside. I will use Final Cut Pro to edit my work. This will be used for post-production, cutting up my footage to make my movie have a smooth style to it, and adding soundtrack. For the soundtrack I intend to include well-known songs relevant to the topic or just good as background music, which will range from a variety of eras. I will film interviewees in their own environment as a representation of the type of person they are, which items in the background that represent their life/lifestyle, to help the audience understand what kind of person they are. I will do some filming around Auckland city, to show students in Albert Park (or that kind of place) all using their laptops, suggesting that the matter is getting a little extreme when people can’t just sit in a park and enjoy nature – they have to be connected, always, to the internet. To film in these places I will need permission from the owners, to film in Albert Park I may need Auckland City Council’s permission. For my film I will most likely not need actors, because it is a documentary not a work of fiction. However, if unable to source relevant archival footage I will need actors to create re-enactments of what it used to be like, using old phones and typewriters as props. This will involve the actors wearing old fashioned clothes. My documentary will have a professional but light mood to it. I aim to explore the ideas that I have mentioned in the concept, rather than creating a very informative feel to the whole thing, as most people my age know quite a bit about the subject matter itself already. It will have an expository style, using the interviews as a narration of the text, with no apparent film maker. The re-enactments will have a somewhat slapstick feel to them, to reinforce the idea of them being set in the past. Rather than have a linear narrative, we will just show a series of interviews on each different topic. VOICEOVER The voiceover will consist of the voices of the interviewees, rather than a specific narrator. The voiceover will occur when I want to show images to reinforce what the interviewee is talking about, and will link together smoothly. It will help keep both the visuals and the audio interesting, as well as helping the audience to understand what the interviewee is talking about, and helping me to introduce a new topic without a cliché narrator having to do so. ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE/RE-ENACTMENT I want to use archival footage to add to the formalness of the film, as it adds truth to the documentary and also an informative insight as to how people in older generations survived without the internet. If I cannot find appropriate footage I will use re-enactments, and make the footage ‘slapstick’-like, with grainy quality and sepia colour. VOX POPS I will use vox pops as a way of collecting a large range of opinions on the issues from the wider public. To do this I will film on Queen St, getting willing participants to do these short interviews, to really understand how the population feels about these matters. INTERVIEWS Will be the most important part of the film. By interviewing people such as my peers, my parents, people from older generations and even people younger than me, I gather enough thoughts and opinions to splice them together for each matter. The interviews will lead the film into every next matter, as they are the narrators. This means that I will take all the information relevant to each certain topic and group them together, so the documentary is structured and clear. Subjects I will talk to my interviewees about include facebook, MSN/Skype, their experiences with such social networking sites, how often they use them, and what life was like without these devices. MONTAGE I will use a montage to show many shots of different people that are using technology in public. This will include people on their laptops in parks, people on their iphones/ipods using wifi while out with friends at the same time and people using cellphones (calling or texting) instead of talking to the people around them. I will use this to show how society is now, to really highlight how unsocial “socialising” is to people in my generation who think it’s normal now. My film will satisfy the brief as the internet is a large part of my target audience’s lives and many of them could not imagine life without it. Because of this, the film is very relevant to today’s society and very current, so it will be easy to relate to. Because there will be a wide range of opinions, the audience will also understand the subject matter by the way that interviewee of their similar age will talk about it, so we will not be leaving out older generations. The purpose is to challenge our generations to think about the way we are now compared to how things used to be, and this will be successful because we will have interviews telling younger people how it used to be, and the older audience members will have an insight as to why younger people depend on the internet so much. I believe the film will be insightful for both me and the audience. The practical details of this film are very achievable as there is very little extra cost, plenty of time to shoot, and a realistic duration for the length of the film. I have the experience and skills to make this documentary, as I have been through the whole film-making process last year, and come out successful but eager to develop my skills from last year.
 * CONCEPT **
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 * JUSTIFICATION**