Living Through The Lens

When groups were first assigned and were each given a topic that they would have to work with, many felt challenged and struggled with what they would be able to show visually with what they were assigned. The topics were: Time, Abstract, Communication, and Politics. The politics group joined together to discuss what they could film. At first, they thought that they would only be able to film the topic of politics as in political parties. After getting advice and insight from the professor, she informed them that they could branch off the topic of political parties and focus on the politics of other social issues. So after that, they brainstormed again and came up with many different topics that they felt would be easiest to show a visual representation of. Each student wanted to portray an issue that they felt particularly passionate about, and they decided that the concept “Politics of Peer Pressure” could portray all of those things. After this, they decided that the setting would be a party scene where each student would encounter a different scenario of peer pressure. This would act as the student’s self video as well. One student developed a script that they would follow. They determined that they would film the party scene in another student’s dorm room. When they began to film, it was almost organic. The whole concept flowed naturally and a lot of improvisation occurred. The only problems that were faced dealt with lighting, as it was daytime while they were filming so they ended up having to use flash on their cellphones while filming. The next problem was the students determining what to film to include something about themselves. It was challenging in that some people believe that they are not interesting or there is nothing that they could show about themselves that would be “cool”. This is an incorrect observation but is very common among young people.

When filming the self-videos each student wanted to portray how peer pressure could affect them. One student was an an athlete who got coerced into trying cocaine at a party and then had an overdose as a result. Another student was just attending the party and he was pressured into smoking marijuana, and he ended up getting extremely high and freaking out at the party. The third student was a student that was studying for an exam and was pressured to attend the party, and as a result failed the exam the next day. The last student played the role of the bad influence, as she invited her friend to the party who failed the exam and forced the other student to smoke weed. This student was playing spin the bottle at the party and kissed a girl, to which people at the party took a photo and spread around. As a result, people started calling her names, and the whole experience ruined her reputation. Each of these scenarios played a role in both the self-video and the whole entire group video.

When editing the video, the group had to cut down a lot of film in order to achieve the one-minute time slot. For one student, the original video he put together was three minutes. This consisted of his scene where his character was coerced into smoking marijuana. He had filmed quite a bit of his negative reaction to the drug which he felt was very powerful and had a difficult time narrowing it down to fit the one minute. It was difficult to have to take out bits and pieces that originally the students felt were crucial to the storyline. But there were ways to get around that issue by speeding clips up and taking out certain parts that could be considered irrelevant or non-important. When combining all of the clips, the students wanted to ensure that the scenes were sequential so that the viewer wouldn’t be confused as to what was going on. Because some students were filmed having a negative consequence of peer pressure at the party, it was important that each scene following their own did not show the student after their consequence. The storyline was then able to be put together in a sequence that was easy for the viewer to follow.

Using video as a communication tool in this instance is much better than forms of communicating such as writing or photographs. This is because it physically shows a story that the viewer can relate to. Writing can also be a form of story telling but it doesn’t have the visual aspect that film does. Photography is just a still image, though it is powerful and tells a story, it doesn’t follow a sequential storyline that the viewer can see unfold. Film provides the viewer with more visuals like color, light, and sound. These things work together to form a story that allows the viewer to connect themselves with what they’re seeing, which in turn resonates with them in the long run.

The public nature of the video did play some role in the making of the video. Because one student felt as though her scene portrayed a sexual act, she had to make sure that the content displayed was not offensive to those that may be sensitive to sexual nature. The students doing “drugs” in their video also had to ensure that because it was a school setting there could be no actual drugs of any kind. As a result, they used different types of food in place of drugs. These were the main issues that the students faced when trying to figure out how to film the video since the public would be the ones viewing the video and it is pertinent that offensive content was not shown.  

When the video was shown to the class, there was nothing but positive feedback from other students. Students said that it was very easy to follow the storyline and that each individual student’s negative consequence that they faced truly captured the essence of what peer pressure can do to young people. The politics of peer pressure was a topic that the students were able to capture in film quite easily and all in all, ended up with a great final project.