Steph Gratton

A Home for Various Thoughts

On Age + Digital Divides…

For my third and final assessment of ALM102: Making Video, I made the decision to focus on the topic of Digital Divides, of which the specific topic was ‘Digital media has seen new divides form and old divides grow wider, but can also be used to diminish the divides that separate us.’ Right off the bat, I knew that there would be a lot of content that I could potentially focus on, so I decided to focus on age, both young and old, as a factor in the use of new digital technology in demonstrating the impacts of digital divides.

In the planning phase for this video, I went back to the Study Notes as a starting point and it was here that found the ABC articles pertaining to senior citizens needing to use technology. Furthermore, after doing more research into other topics, I was delighted to discover that I could link age to education, another issue that I was interested in, through the divide of accessibility. With this in mind, I wrote a few drafts of my script, wherein I realised that I could insert some of my own personal stories, such as my mum and my grandfather’s struggle with specific technologies. I felt that these anecdotes made the video more engaging to a viewer as it broke up the more scholar-heavy information. It was also in the final draft of my script that I chose whether I would film myself on camera, akin to the first video exercise, or use overlay footage, similar to the second video exercise.

When filming myself, I used the rule of thirds as I was just off-centre to the left side. I tried to make the recorded sections feel as ‘naturally’ me as possible, though I certainly was still performing and showing a different version of myself. I recorded all the footage of when I was on camera at the same time and recorded my audio for overlay footage with my ear-buds’ microphone afterwards.

In the editing process, I pieced everything together in order to ensure that it made sense. Unlike the last video exercise, I made the decision to put in an introductory slide, rather than jumping straight into the information I had gathered. I also decided to make use of background music throughout the video, specifically with the section of video of a simple animation that shows how a ‘flipped classroom’ works. I used this music as it seemed to fit well with the bright colours and simplistic style of overlay footage, in addition to already having commented on how the ‘flipped’ classroom worked. I also made sure to grab extra footage from the ‘Creative Commons’ tags on the YouTube search bar. Not only was this the legal way of using other creators’ works, but there were also some very interesting bits of footage (all the footage used in my video can be found under references below).

The first challenge this video brought was making the choice as to how much information should go into it. I’ll be honest, I probably could have also spoken about children/teenagers’ use of technology across the globe, but unfortunately I had to cut it from my script as it was getting a little long. I feel like this is a lesson I learned a while ago and FINALLY got to put into practice. Then, prior to recording and filming myself, I realised that I needed to use a different room to film in, as my family are home for the school holidays and use that area as a living space. My solution? I used blu-tack on the back of my phone case to hold it against the wall as I recorded my scenes. I was pleasantly surprised that it held there for the entirety of my recording session, despite my numerous takes due to misspoken words and loud family members. A final, but smaller challenge I also encountered while making this video was not stumbling over people’s names; while I still struggled occasionally, I found that saying the line out loud a few times to the camera before pressing record seemed to resolve this particular issue.

To summarise this video project, I wanted the video to feel less formulaic and a bit more interesting to watch. I used a variety of overlay footage, both my own and other credited creators’, and combined it with a more old-school, vlog-style recording of myself, which I find really interested and really different from my last couple of videos on my channel.

REFERENCES:

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