ALM102 – Assessment Two

For me choosing a digital media context to focus on was the easiest part of the assignment. As we know, surveillance is a part of our everyday life even though we may not necessarily realise it or notice it. For me, it wasn’t necessarily noticeable until around five months ago when my boyfriend’s house got broken into. After figuring out what was taken and countless conversations with neighbours and the police, he was not able to find the person who had broken into his house. If he had had surveillance cameras present on the premises, he then would have had a greater chance of finding out who the person was. Since then, my perspective on surveillance has changed. Throughout my video, I wanted to convey the importance of surveillance footage and the security it can provide residents with, in the hope that it will educate them enough to go out and install them.

I decided through lots of planning, that I wanted to convey my message by creating a ‘sit on the edge of your seat’ storyline to draw my viewers in and thus, having them gain an emotional connection to the security that cameras provide. Through the use of a filter on my camera, I wanted to make it look like it was a real-life scene being shot by a surveillance camera. This allows my viewers to think that they are watching their cameras in their house after an incident.

Once I had filmed all my scenes, it was then time to edit my work and make it all come together. At the start of my video, I chose to transition between the three shots to create an eerie mood and set the scene. Throughout my video, I wanted to make transitioning between different angles and shots a priority to depict the functions that real-life surveillance offers. Once the video was put together, I then began to incorporate sound into the mix. This brought my video to life and helped contribute even further to the eerie context. I started with slow and dramatic sounds to draw my viewers in. From there, I started to increase volumes, overlayed sounds, cropped them and faded them in and out. I then decided through research found, that I would incorporate a title page at the beginning and end of my movie, drawing on my findings to help portray my intended message. This allows my viewers the chance to sit back and take in the information that I am providing them with.

When filming my video, I filmed all my scenes from the same angle all at once and then moved on to another. I did this to ensure that the positioning of my camera was the same in each scene so that it didn’t move out of place. However, the filter I used over my camera shows the current time when filming and therefore, jumps between time throughout the video. If I was to use this app again, I would be more conscious of the time on the camera and figure out a way to make sure it runs smoothly and that the camera angles are the same each time.

References:

Porikli, F. et al., 2013. Video Sirveillance: Past, Present, and Now Future. IEEE Signal Processing Magazine , 30(3), pp. 190-198.