Informational Video

# SURVEILLANCE PART TWO

Wow! Finally uploaded my last video of this unit! 🎉 Also is my third YouTube video! It’s not an easy thing for me to get out of my comfort zone, from the nervousness when I made the first video to now I can smile at the camera easily and talk about my own ideas. Thank you ALM102! 😊

Content!

For this 7 minutes information video, I continue the topic of surveillance. In this video, I delve into whether the government’s massive use of surveillance endangers our privacy and freedom. This video is aimed at everyone, especially those who don’t know about surveillance, in fact, I didn’t know how extensive the surveillance was until I made the last video. So, i want to talk about how governments are using surveillance now, is it really protecting us? Can the terrorists be caught? Do we still have personal privacy? That’s what I want my audience to think about and come to a conclusion of their own.

Strategies!

Because of this video is an information video, it’s not just about talking about myself or speaking my mind. It takes a lot of searching, finding the right information and putting it all together. Before I prepared for the recording, I wrote a general plan of what each paragraph was going to say, where I was going to insert pictures or pictures, and so on. After making a general plan, I began to search a lot of information for this topic. It really took me a long time, probably a few days, but it was also because I did enough research that I was able to write the transcript very easily.

Yes, I used the transcript again, like I said before, I think this kind of informative video requires me to write my script in advance, because as a non-native English speaker, I don’t have the confidence that I can fully remember all of what I want to say. Another reason is compares with last two videos, 7-minute is a quite long time, I need to keep checking my scripts to remind myself.

For the lighting, after the last recording, I found that the natural light is much better than the light, so I chose to record with natural light this time. However, since I started recording at 4pm, and the recording time was much longer than I expected, you can see from my video that my light is dimming all the time. Even in the middle of my recording, the sunset started. So, I had to choose to use the light in the room to complete my recording. （I still want to explain why I started recording so late, because there’s an apartment building going up across the street, and I find that the world doesn’t get quiet again until the workers leave work at 4 pm every day.）

Everything went smoothly except the lighting, and I still used the rule of thirds to better show some pictures or videos, so that my audience could watch my videos more comfortably. By the way, the background of my recording is still the familiar white wall, because it is the only clean background in my room lol, I hope I can change the background or make some decorations for the next video.

Next I want to talk about the selection of appropriate source material, well, it’s not always easy to find the right copyrighted pictures and videos. It’s another part of spending a lot of my time, anyway, all of the sources you see in the video is copyrighted. Actually I also using some of the images that I used in the last video. I also found a nice background music from BenSound. Firstly, I don’t have to worry about the CreativeCommons license, and secondly, I wanted to use this music in the last video, so This time I just chose this music without any hesitation.

Lessons and Challenges!

The biggest challenge with this video was the lighting, As I mentioned before, so what do I need to do is get my light back to normal. Actually, I edit my video on my iPad, this is because after I updated my computer system, the editing software I used, Final Cut Pro, could not be used normally and I still don’t know why. 😫 Fortunately, using iPad to edit is also very easy and convenient. Because my videos are recorded separately, I can adjust the different effects and brightness for them. After adjusting various parameters, I tried my best to make them look like they were recorded in the same light. I realized again that I should spent more time preparing for each of my assignments so that I could make perfect videos.

So anyway, I am very satisfied with this video and enjoy every step of making this video. Thanks again for this unit ALM102! It really allows me to get out of my comfort zone and gain more making video skills. 💗