Facebook murder

Hi, after the psychologist interview I looked into seeing if I could find any news footage of the story of the 17 year old girl who was befriended by a sex offender on facebook.

I've found a couple of useful videos on youtube, which are below. I thought we could maybe incorporate them into the film to back up the story and so we could have one more example of this kind of technology going horribly wrong.

Footage capture

Hi guys, today I captured the footage from the psychologist interview and the vox pops. Unfortunately the vox pop footage is unusable because the sound if horrendously loud and tinny.

But the interview footage looks good, the sound is a little quiet but that is easily turned up on FCP. There is a plug socket on one edge of the frame, but I can crop the footage on FCP to make this magically disappear. Here's a screen grab to show the lighting/framing/position of interviewee.

first day of filming

So as Heather said we started filming yesterday. I took the role of interviewing the psychologist. Again as Heather said he was very helpful. He answered each question in depth including going into extra details which will be useful in editing. He also provided us with examples of studies either proving that social networking is or in fact isn't an issue. We filmed me asking the questions and also asked him to include the question in the answer to give Heather more options in editing. We also managed to get a larger room than his office so we were able to use lighting to create a better shot.

Aswell as the interview we also did our vox-pops. Although this was very frustrating to begin with we managed to get quite a few in the end after moving to a better location. Hopefully these will all be useful and can be used if needed. Again most of the people we asked our question answered the question making it clear what it was.

Interview and a few production photos

Today we filmed the interview with the pscyhology lecturer and it went really well! He seemed very comfortable in front of the camera and went in depth for every answer, elaborating as much as he could and including his knowledge of research/case studies etc.

As my role as editor, today I helped set up the kit, asked the vox-pop question to the public and took some production stills:

meeting yesterday

So...well dont to Tom for creating the soundtrack to use in the documentary. As he created it online on mario paint it works quite well as it sounds as though he has created it online and fits in well with the technology and game theme. Also thankyou to Heather for thinking up the ideal questions to ask the psychologist tomorrow.

Also like Verity said looking through the results of the survey was quite shocking, particularly for the gaming part of the survey. More than one person had said that they had spent 10 hours in a row on a game, one person even saying they had been on for three days. These results show the extremes people play online games and how addictive they can be. The facebook and social networking results showed that the majority of the people who answered the questionnaire logged on everyday and often more than once a day. These results will be extremely helpful for the documentary in showing just how much people do use social networking sites. Also as we have a variety of ages answering the survey it is not just restricted to our age.

So tomorrow is the interview with the psychologist which we are pretty prepared for after yesterdays meeting. Also after the interview we will be carrying out the vox pops around the collegiate area as it is also a very student populated area.

Today we had another group meeting and looked through the questions that Heather has put a lot of thought into (Well Done Heather!!) for our interview with the University pshychologist on Wednesday. We also had a little look throught some of the results from our survey and we have had a really great response from the survey and some very interesting (funny) results! espically the games results on how long people spend playing games, I was pretty shocked!!!! Anyway I feel Wednesday is going to be a great day and finally get some filming done! We will be doing the interview and the vox pops on Wednesday and then hopefuly we can start putting it together a bit in the edit suite. Looking forward to Wednesday everyone!

Emma and Tom meeting at stores at 11 bringing the lights and the rest of us have will meet you at 11:30 with the rest of the equpiment. See you Wednesday :)

sound track

seeing as the documentary is basted on technology iv decided to use mario paint witch was origionaly an 16bit composer for the super NES so i think this should suit the sound of the documentory better

Potential questions for Wednesday's interview

Hi guys. I've just spent a bit of time thinking of some potential questions for the interview on Wednesday with the University psychologist. They're pretty rough at the moment, just ideas really on the areas we can try to find more information about with this interview. I just put these together in preperation for the meeting tomorrow so thought I may as well stick them up on here. Enjoy!

(They're numbered but they're in no particular order really)

1. Is there a link between over use of social networking/technology and depression?
2. Have there been any reported cases of over use of social networking and technology causing depression, isolation and/or suicide?
3. Could you tell us about any specific cases?
4. Why do you think over use of social networking/technology causes depression, isolation and suicide?
5. Is this a fairly recent issue?
6. Do you believe over use of social networking/technology is causing a breakdown in face to face communication/physical contact? Why?
7. Do you believe that people can become obssessive in the use of social networking and gaming in particular or technology in general?
8. What could be the long term effects of over use/obssession with social networking/technology?
9. What impact do you think this has had/will have on society and the levels/quality of communication between people?
10. Do you think the over use of social networking/technology causes breakdowns in relationships between family and friends as there is less physical contact taking place?
11. Do you believe that the problem will only worsen as technology develops and children are growing up with constantly changing technology from young ages?
12. Do you believe use of social networking and games by young children in particular will have a negative impact on their adult life? Why?

yeah mondays good to sort out the exact questions we want to ask the psychologist and also sort out the arrangements for wednesday as we will obviously have a lot of equipment to get to collegiate. The replys from the surveys are coming in fast. Think we have about 150 already. Seeing as the results have come in so fast Verity and I were thinking maybe we could even include this as part of the research. That in not even 12 hours 100 people had already done the survery created through a group on facebook.

As Verity said we booked out the equipment yesterday and think we have got everything we will need. :)

Thanks for sorting the kit out guys! We could meet monday to discuss the vox pop and interview questions if that's ok with everyone? I'm free tuesday afternoons and wednesdays and fridays all day so it's up to you :)

Update on next week.

Today Chelsea and myself went to the production meeting to make sure we got all the equipment we need for the interview next week with the psychologist. We managed to get everything we needed from Monday to Thursday, the interview is on Wednesday and as we couldn't get a camera for this friday to do the vox pops we will do them on Wednesday as well as the interview. The vox pops shouldn't take to long to do. For the interview we have lights booked dedo, keno and a PD170 camera and all the sound equipment which i'm not to sure what it's all called as I don't really know much about sound!

So.. Next week we need a meeting to discuss what questions we are going to ask at the interview. We are filming Wed the vox pops and the actual interview.
Also the response for the survey has been pretty shocking! 133 people have done it and we only started it yesterday! Maybe we could use this in our film, how the response has been amazing for such a short time and its been all done on facebook.

Thats my update so far so we need to arrange a meeting. When is everyone free?

Interview

Well done Verity for arranging the interview with the psychologist for next wednesday at 12! This will definately give our film a stronger standing. For this interview we will need to book out a dedo lighting kit and a kino flow light along with the PD170 and sound equipment.

As we're filming the vox-pops this friday, I thought I would capture the footage to one of the edit suite Macs as soon as we're done. Hopefully capturing each section will ease the load when it comes to post-production. Also, it'll give me a chance to review the footage and if there are any problems with the material or some re-shoots will need to be arranged etc, we can find out sooner rather than later so we don't have a panic in the last couple of weeks!

Interview with psychologist!

Right everyone I have got hold of one of the universities psychology staff, Will Reader and he is willing to be interviewd for our film!!! YAY! When is good for everyone? Can you please let me know as soon as please so I can sort out a date and time with him. Thanks

Update so far....

Today as Chelsea has said below we have made a group for our survey on facebook... ironic? ha. I have also just emailed a psychologist from the university to see if we can set up an interview with someone from the psychology department. (fingers crossed)
I think this will make our film a lot stronger with actually having some one who knows what they are talking about!
I will keep you all updated on what the outcome is!

survey

hey guys. Verity and i have just sent the survey to pretty much our whole friend list on facebook so hopefully the responses will start coming in soon.

I also watched Louis Theroux- Gambling in Las Vegas the other day. The way he follows individuals stories is similar to the idea of our documentary as we will be following one individual specifically. The style is quite informal and friendly as he seems to make friends with the people and the dont become affended when he questions there lifestyle. For example he makes his opinions clear to the old woman Martha who gambles every day and has lost a total of four million dollars all together that he doesnt approve and thinks that she should be thinking about her sons inheritance. However because of the way he acts with each person he isnt offensive. It also seems quite intimate as it seems as though the camera is just following him around rather then a massive crew. This is due to shots were the camera is following him around the hotel.

Summary of today's meeting

Quick overview of what we talked about today:

- Get the survey sent out to as many people as possible, and review the data in 1 week (possibley alittle longer depending on how many participants.

- Voxpox shoot: out and about uni/city centre Friday 12pm.

- Get in contact with a physcologist and arrange a formal onscreen interview

- Possible ideas for cut aways (which I'm working on now and will upload the list shortly)

- Possible ideas for backgrounds/senarios in which the statistics will appear on (Again I'll put these on the cut away list)

- Tom's atonement idea

I think that was all we discussed, if I remember anything I missed I'll update it!

Another Facebook murder....

Hey guys, just thought i'd share this with you all.
Again in the news is another murder involving Facebook, however this time involves a 33 year old man befriending a 17 year old girl.

Basicly this man, pretended to be a 17 year old boy and persuded the girl to meet him, it is also noted in another report that the girl Ashleigh Hall was a young girl with a somewhat low self esteem and was imediately took in by this person who she believed to be also 17 as he paid her compliments and groomed her in order to gain her trust.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wear/8555221.stm

I think that if we were to include this sort of thing we may well be coming away from our intial idea for the documentry, however I thought I'd just share it with the group!

Our survey

I have put our survey together by using an online website thats free!

Here is the link to it. Hope its ok if it needs to be changed please let me know! Thanks everyone.




Click here to take our Online Survey

Survey

Today we met up to go over the structure and come up with our questionnaire/vox pop questions.

The questions for the survey are:
1. Age
2. Gender
3. Do you have a social networking account?
4. If so, for which social networking sites?
5. Do you feel out of touch when you haven't recently logged into your account?
6. How often do you log on? And for how long on average?
7. What is the longest amount of time you have spent on a social networking site?
8. Do you use mobile internet to access these sites?
9. Why/or for what purpose do you use these sites?
10. Do you play games on these sites? (such as farmville etc)
11. Do you play video or online games?
12. If so, how long do you play these games on average?
13. What is the longest amount of time you have spent playing an online or video game?

We also decided that we will only ask one question in the vox pop interviews, which will be:
1. Do you think social networking and the overuse of technology is causing a breakdown in face to face communication, do you feel this is a problem and why?

Lastly, we made plans to research who the head lecturer/course leaders for psychology and sociology are to try and arrange an interview with them so that the film features some element of expert opinion.

Facebook Murder

There's a story in the news at the moment about a woman who was killed by her ex-boyfriend after he saw her Facebook profile picture was of her and her new boyfriend

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8552740.stm

There's not really alot we could pull from this as by reading it, as this man was blatently a nutter, but it's just an example of how because of social networking anyone can see everything about you, and sometimes not like it, and act on it.

"It would appear she tried to bring about the end of her relationship with this defendant gently and did not tell him about her new boyfriend. He found out when he saw pictures of them together on Facebook."

So it was basicly because he'd had this access to her personal profile, he was able to find out and act out because of it.

Capturing the Friedmans

I watched Capturing the Friedmans last night and thought I'd write up my thoughts.

I really liked the film, especially the very personal feel to it with the inclusion of family home footage and photographs. The film had a typical structure, with the inclusion of interviews, expert opinion, case evidence etc, which we will hopefully all include in our documentary.

One notable interview technique was to alternate the side of the frame in which the interviewee was sitting, which was something Debbie talked about in the afternoon workshop. Although it's a fairly simple framing choice, it's really effective; particularly in this context as the film is presenting two different sides to the story.

Overall I thought the film was provocative and really well structured. It held my interest throughout and I think it is a useful film to draw upon when researching/making our documentary.

Research

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2248/is_138_35/ai_66171001/
This website discusses the links between internet use and depression in adolescents. It contains a number of studies that show these links. For example one study is as follows. Randomly selected families were given computers for their homes. After 1 to 2 years the increased internet use had been linked to a decrease in family communication and reduced size of a social circle. The participants also suffered from increased loneliness and depression.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8493149.stm
This is another website including studys and the links to depression from internet use. This states that a number of internet users had developed a compulsive internet habit replacing real life interaction with online and social networking. Depression is closely linked to excessive internet use. However they are not sure which comes first. Whether they are already depressed and the internet makes it worse or the internet cause the depression? The facts in this article will be useful for us as it shows the links between internet use and depression. Although as they say they are not sure what comes first they clearly state that the internet does not help the depression.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_addiction_disorder

World of Warcraft

I studied the W.O.W obsession alittle at A-Level and looked into the addiction and the lengths people went and I have a few documents on it so I'll have a look through my old A-level stuff and dig it all out!

Also (why am I admitting this) but my boyfriend is a W.O.W geek and has played on it for about 2 years I think, so if we needed an opinion on gameplay I think he'd be more than happy to be asked a few questions, as he's more than happy to sit and play the silly game for 8 hours straight (I'm quite bitter about this game!)


Thats all for now!

Legal stuff!

Just thought I'd also post up some of the stuff Debbie talked about on Monday and what we need to remember to do!


Consents and Permissions

-Firstly there are the people who are going to appear in the film. The Golden Rule: get consents agreed at the time of filming.

- Consents can be given as Release Forms and/or on camera. You need to get consent from anyone who either gives you an interview or who otherwise speaks on camera. It's worth having a paragraph on your release form stating the general objective of the film to show informed consent. You don’t need a release form for people on the street as long as your camera was not concealed. You will need release forms for people who are identifiable in sensitive places even if they are not speaking eg) hospital waiting rooms, gay clubs, law court corridors.

- If you do not get the Copyright cleared the copyright owner can claim that you and anyone screening the film are breaking the law by stealing their rights.

- Music, text, websites, shots of advertising billboards, film clips, news footage, news paper-clippings and even your mates photographs can't be used in films without permission. That doesn't mean you'll always have to pay for rights but it does mean checking who owns them, and getting a formal permission from them.

The release form is available on Blackboard!

They're just a few of the points made, the whole document can be found on Blackboard but we just need to remember to make sure we get everyones consent on form or on camera for anyone we film.

Also just an idea at the begining with the stop motion stuff, realisticly we need to make sure any of the items we use we don't see any of the logos, brands, company names etc :)

facebook dependence

I came across this PDF on "Facebook Dependancy Disorder"

http://www.dsm4tr.com/pdf_folder/313.pdf

It talks about how this is going to be a recognised disorder and will appear in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders - Wiki run down of what the manual is!

It basicly talks about the symptoms of the disorder and how it may affect someone, it's quite interesting to read:

"associated with depression, low self-esteem, inadequate social skills, substance dependence, and bi-polar. These are consistent with research supporting the comorbidity of FDD and other mental health diagnosis. There may be an increase in suicide rates and ideations due to bullying, lack of sleep, overstimulation of the mind, and stressors of relationships. There may be an increase in loss of employment, foreclosures, and their children destroying property due to lack of supervision. There is a higher risk of car accidents related
to texting/ checking Facebook and driving."

Structure update and World of Warcraft research

Ok, following monday's meeting we decided we really needed to get a structure down for how this documentary is going to flow so I volunteered to go away and come up with something. The first draft of the structure goes as follows:

1. Empty desk filling up with technology (stop motion style) with voice over detailing statistics on use of technology.

2. Introduce health issues of overuse and outline the aim of the documentary.

3. Introduce experiment, which will introduce the social concern of overuse. Participant will give their opinion on whether they think it is a problem.

4. Vox-pops of public opinion. People talking about why they think over use of technology and social networking in particular is causing a breakdown in communication.

5. Experts opinion- I thought it would be really good if we could get the opinion of a doctor/medical expert on the health issue involved with technology overuse and a counsellor to discuss possible mental health issues/how it affects day to day life.

6. Return to experiment- progress.

7. Introduce survery and give results. This could be used as a link to issues with gaming addiction/over use.

8. Tell story of the girl who died after several consecutive days playing World of War Craft. Possibly use Youtube funeral footage.

9. Vox-pops of people talking about how often/how much time they spend gaming. Ask if they overuse other technology aswell.

10. Return to experiment- conclude experiment with overview of how the participant found it, how they felt etc. Question whether they will use it less now.

11. Conclusion- round up with our opinions by linking back to the documentary aims at the beginning of the film. Include unseen vox-pops and expert opinions to back up our thoughts and conclusions.

This is just a draft at the moment as I put it together trying to develop a flow between each section. From doing this I realise we will need to shoot lots of cutaways, such as a computer screen as someone scrolls through facebook as the narrator talks about social networking etc.

Lastly, I did some research on the World of War Craft story, and I found an article at:
http://www.joystiq.com/2005/11/04/wow-online-funeral-commemorates-death-of-young-gamer/

I also found a video on youtube of an example of a World of War Craft funeral. There was one held for the girl who died actually playing the game and although this video is not of that specific funeral I thought it might be quite cool to include some of this footage as we tell her story.



I also found an article about a man who killed his wife because she had an "affair" on a game similar to World of War Craft, which we could use just as background information even if we didn't incorporate the story into the documentary. The article is at:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2659940/Wife-stabbed-over-online-game-affair.html

Enjoy!

I was thinking about the type righter at the start of this track sounding great as a transition from just typing to music and would like to woke something similar to this into our documentary but instead using a keyboard