Last Weeks and Final Project

Planning and Prepping

The fourth week of classes consisted of me making the props and planning out my video. I laser cut the frame for the ipad and made a wall camera for the background of the Vlogger. In the end, the camera in back of the vlogger was too small and not noticeable enough, although I made sure it was seen for a split second while the vlogger was switching to her hand cam. A devil is in the details, but perhaps this was too small. I also had made a hand cam, I lost it while doing the daily vlogging and it turned out a small placeholder worked just as well ( a ping pong ball), just to indicate she had something in her hand.

Screen

Small Camera in background

When I was planning I did lots of writing out the sequences trying to think about how to line up the vloggers and watchers lives. Some things I wanted to get across were the fact that there are multiple vloggers but most people have their favorite, the watcher watches most hours of the day and multitasks in everything they do, other people watch 24/7 as well, its not just Vicky, and that watching isn’t a bad thing to these future people. It’s just normal. Kind of like how watching TV is normal these days.

Vlogging

My best friend from high school came and stayed with me which was perfect for video taping because I could tell her a bit of what to do and remind her to vlog all day. Before we started she was kind of unsure about how she would do, but as soon as she started she had a lot of fun. I had to keep reminding her that she couldn’t be telling stories about things that happened to her recently in the past, because we are assuming that vloggers have seen it all. Basically when she would tell stories in the past I would tell her to say, “oh I’ll put the link here to that segment from last week” or something. Also, people didn’t stare a ton and no one complained about being caught on our camera.

Sometimes Kristyn ( her real name ) would say things differently and not be as 24/7 peppy as I had imagined the life vlogger would be but in the end perhaps that is more realistic. It made me think that perhaps when the life vlogger begins life vlogging they get tired of it and show their general exhaustion but over time they develop their camera personality more and more, and become more peppy and dramatic. She did even begin to develop it during the day and was considering starting daily vlogs of her own. I had a small existential crisis while I was on camera because I could feel myself trying to develop this more interesting personality and while it was harmless then it made me wonder if there would be so much pressure on vloggers to always do what was interesting and they would values over time.

Heart to heart

Finally, it was so tiring. Maybe I’m just not that outgoing of a person but walking with Kristyn when she was vlogging was amusing but at the same time I felt myself getting tired of all the pointless talking when we could be talking together.

Watcher

After video taping, I weeded through the hours of video and found the most significant moments I wanted to include in the watchers life.

1. This is again not too obvious, but I found some Youtube videos of people sleeping and put them in the beginning of the video where Vicky is waking up.
2. I had Vicky hold up her shirts when she was choosing to try to match Alexa.
3. I had them use the same toothpaste in the background, and this is also really subtle but she has the same spray deodorant in the background as well.
4. When Alexa is talking about her schedule Vicky notes down times on her phone.
5. When exiting you can see Alexa also switching to her hand cam and heading out. Their lives are kind of synced, which is because Vicky likes to be awake at the same hours as Alexa and eventually matched her schedule.
6. As Vicky is walking to work, Alexa is walking to her “work”, aka talking about her fun day ahead.
7. At work I included a clip of Alexa telling something kind of interesting, not something usually shared super publicly. (This was a true moment, I asked my friend if it was okay to include)
8. When Zac pops his head in, Alexa is having a heart to heart with her viewers, inspired by current vloggers when they talk about hard times and thank their viewers for all their support. Zac watches walking away to indicate that he does watch 24/7 as well.
9. When walking home Alexa is talking about the things she loves, the trendiest things.
10. When Vicky is getting home Alexa is eating something interesting ( and strange ) which was delivered from the kitchen because she is a known vlogger and they want to publicity.
11. I also wanted to capture that Vicky wanted to stay home the whole time, she never wanted to go out and bowl and her friend didn’t want to either. Even though she texted “it’s a vlog watch kind of a night” I was trying to draw a similarity to what people say now “It’s a netflix night”, as if it’s a rare thing but for many it’s not a rare thing. So there’s a mutual understanding that this is normal, but Vicky and her friend treat it like they totally would go out but are feeling lazy “only today”.

Obviously looking back there are things I want to change: I would have loved to include a seen with another vlogger walking in the background of Alexa, but the clip I got of that wasn’t long enough for a scene. I also would have like to shown a friend with Alexa at some time, another vlogger, but I didn’t think of asking anyone else to come until too late.

Here’s the video: