In this video, I hoped to convey the hope that technology can bring. It was my goal to present the ways in which society is fixing the digital divides created by already-extant inequality. To show that technology is as much a tool for good as it is for ill.
This time, I took a much more planned approach. I spent the weeks preceding searching for useful sources, both for media and information. I scripted my entire voice over, rather than taking the bullet-point approach of my previous entry. I decided where to place the images, where transitions were needed more than other places, the lone video I wasn’t going to edit the sound from. I stopped short of storyboarding, as there were so few ‘shots’ to plan out, it seemed unnecessary. I came across some source material totally by accident, case in point, the Nigerian boys who went viral were on the front page of Reddit a few days before I began working on the assignment. My lone source for videos was a heavily filtered YouTube search, specifying only Creative Commons licensed videos, and while I had some idea of what I wanted the content of those videos to be, I was a little more vague on what I was going to get. But with so many non-profit organisations uploading footage of homeless people and refugees, it wasn’t hard to find good-quality footage to use. I briefly considered running background music through the entire video, but struggled to find Creative Commons music that fit the tone and theme of the video, and instead opted for music over the credits. And of course that recording of a dial-up modem.
During this process, I learned that Youtube is actually a great source of Creative Commons works, though a critical eye is needed, as anyone can upload a video and say it’s Creative Commons. In searching for footage of Steve Jobs presenting the iPhone for the first time, I came across thousands of official videos, but once that Creative Commons filter was turned on, it was down to some random German channel, and another guy with seventy followers. So I opted for an image from Wikimedia Commons instead. My biggest problem in this assignment was the highly unintuitive interface of Lightworks. My knowledge of video editing was until now limited to some basic knowledge of iMovie from my Year Eleven Media class, some fifteen years ago. Of course, as with all things, Google can tell all, so every step of the way, I had a different YouTube video, or entry on the Lightworks forum instructing me how to speed up the credits so the video was under three minutes, or how to cut clips down in the first place.
All in all, jumping into a video project head first has been the quickest learning experience of my life, and I look forward to using what I know, and learning even more on the project.
Sources:
Voiceover: Cameron Brogden
All other media used under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
Music: “Sneaky Snitch” by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Video:
“3D LED EARTH GLOBE” by Pigment Ajans
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E-eqE7-ZV8)
“The Hellish Sound of A Dialup Modem Connecting to the Internet” by Lucinda Lewis
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og592KWBR2o)
“Smart Monkey Using A Smartphone” by Shitty Tube
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj921mNdRIw)
“Salesforce helps The Big Issue start-up a Sydney Call Centre” by Salesforce.org
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LYnmzTG1Ew)
“A Look at Syrian Refugees, March 2015” by Doctors Without Borders
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCqcJDYijKQ)
Images:
“Steve Jobs WWDC 07” by Acaben
(https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Steve_Jobs_WWDC07.jpg)
“Phone iPhones” by Free photo on UkrMedia
(https://www.flickr.com/photos/ukrmedia/47490500422/)
Sources:
Internet World Stats. 2019. World Internet Users Statistics. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm. [Accessed 2 September 2019]
Humphrey, J., 2014. Homeless and Connected: Mobile phones and mobile internet in the lives of families and young people experiencing homelessness. 1st ed. Sydney: Australian Communications Consumer Action Network.
UNHCR. 2018. How Smartphones and Social Media have Revolutionized Refugee Migration. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.unhcr.org/blogs/smartphones-revolutionized-refugee-migration/. [Accessed 2 September 2019]
Africa News. 2019. Nigerian Teens Make Sci Fi Films With Smartphones. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.africanews.com/2019/08/14/nigerian-teens-make-sci-fi-films-with-smartphones//. [Accessed 2 September 2019]
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