This past Friday I submitted a new draft of the first few minutes of my thesis film project. This cut involves some substantial updates since the draft I handed in a few weeks ago. I wanted to use this journal as a way to detail the process of adding, cutting, reconsidering, and re-approaching the storytelling from the outset of the piece.

The first (and, perhaps, most substantial) addition is the new, scripted voice over. I had initially tried to avoid using narration but as I was putting this timeline together I realized that, as a viewer, it would be too difficult to build a coherent story without some guidance. This is not meant to be an abstract "art piece," so the aesthetic choice of adding the VO was not detrimental to the work. I also think the VO helps to rein in the runtime. I'm not quite sure yet where the piece will come in but I think keeping the introduction concise will help the project overall and keep it from ambling. 

I spent a considerable amount of time shooting this week, too. I added a few more interviews for variety and I have a long shoot day planned for this Saturday to get much of what needs to be replaced in the opening minutes. For example, there is a shot of a man proposing marriage, in silhouette, on a beach. I don't think this fits the piece tonally and want to get some "fly-on-the-wall" style shots while walking my neighborhood in NYC. If the weather holds, I should be able to replace the slo-mo stock crowd shot from the piece with a substitute I shoot on the High Line. The goal is to get the voice of the piece to be consistent throughout and for that voice to be reflective of my own. There will be, for sure, some stock shots in the finished piece but, as I've noted before, I'd prefer them to be limited and short.

Another change is in the length of the introduction. With the VO doing some of the conceptual heavy lifting, I was able to do away with much of the fat that was meant to illustrate the idea. Now, the viewer won't have to work so hard to understand where we're going from the outset of the piece and can just sit back and absorb what comes. 

In order to re-approach the introduction I killed two birds with one stone by using the storyboard exercise from Lina's class to guide the script into a cut. As I detailed in my blog post for that submission, I took single frame screen shots from each video clip and organized them in a timeline with the scratch VO I recorded beneath them. Using this method, I constructed the narration with the single screencaps and then tightened the edit once the VO/picture relationship was established and I laid the full video clips in. I think it saved me quite a bit of time and actually helped strengthen the draft.

I am now working on a new piece of music to replace the track that is in the draft. In fact, while I finish typing this, the music software is loading in the background and I'm getting ready for an evening of music composition. I hope it goes smoothly as I'm used to the temp music (Massive Attack) and I don't want to replace it with something underdeveloped. 

Finally, the week was a bit of a struggle in terms of the workload. With all the work I needed to do to get the draft ready for submission and all the paper work to do -- IRB, writing and critiquing for my elective class, creating storyboards for Lina, keeping up with the reading/writing on the topic, dealing with the considerable amount of work I have in front of me as far as scheduling interviews goes, paying my taxes, renewing my passport for Salzburg -- and on and on, I'm shocked that I managed to work it into the shape it's in now. I'm looking forward to getting this semester completed so I can do the long final run without too much distraction. Below are some more screen shots from the draft and some of the storyboards I created.

One of several animations I want to keep in for the fial piece.

A coule of different shots laid on top of each other for the section of the intro where there is fast, overlapping voice narration.

The first six shots of the introduction in storyboard form with the script laid in beneath the screencaps.

The working script.

In terms of completing the filmed media intervention for the thesis project, the past two or three weeks have been spent trying to capture as much footage as possible while building the first few minutes of the film for the draft due at the end of this week. In addition to that, the problem space that I'm exploring has been featured extensively in the news because of the testimony delivered by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg with respect to the Cambridge Analytica/Russia investigation. Where indifference typified the conversation previously, now the issues are generating a lot of conversation and ink. With this in mind, I've been paying close attention to the press around this issue (which effects the angle I'm taking in the film vis-a-vis the ownership and privacy dimensions) and watching the Congressional hearing. Beyond that, I've also been using social media platforms -- specifically Reddit and Twitter -- to monitor and engage with those communities and the attitudes that are prevalent at this stage of the data control conversation. This has generated both some interesting insight and some "bold interactions" with these communities.

First, the interviews I've been conducting are bearing a lot of fruit for the film. What had originally been intended as a brief series of questions that I could use to create a "rapid fire" style Q&A has become more extensive and more thoughtful than anticipated. Where I thought I would get some very basic answers I've been treated to well-considered responses that have become more like conversations than interviews. With the first five interviews I've collected around 80 minutes of footage. This should prove to be extensive enough to feed my main questions i the piece and will likely prove very useful as the film expands beyond the scope of this project.

The content, too, has been refined. As a result of a conversation with Lina, I've been focused on the notion of "finding the common language" that exists in the data problem space and the interviews I've conducted reflect that goal. First, there are three interviews with a group of younger people who represent the "Millenial generation" 18-30 year old demographic - a group that are digital native and tend to be less attentive and connected to the value/ownership propositions of their personal data. In these interviews I've been framing the questions so as to understand the degree to which they consider data use when they choose the platforms and applications they use in their daily lives. Interestingly, I've discovered that this group routinely says they consider the path of their data infrequently. This is in sharp contrast to the other, older groups I've interviewed who say largely that they usually consider it.

Betsy

In that group (30-50 y.o. or so), I've also gotten some deep and interesting responses. This group has reservations about sharing too much of their data and are suspicious of the intentions of corporate data stewardship. Some are aware of myriad data breaches and are particularly wary of the role that Google/Facebook/Amazon, etc. play in controlling the world's personal data flow to meet their own designs. They seem resigned, however, to sharing their data because of the utility of the applications in easing and organizing their lives. Some of these interviews wer completed where I work in New York while others involved some of the CMAP cohort (Lauren, Melissa and Stan, so far). Each of these interviews was 10-15 minutes while the ones I conducted at Discovery are more on the order of 20-30 minutes.

I've also sought to establish a consistent visual aesthetic with these interviews. In the mood boards I created for Lina's class, I used some still shots from social impact documentaries that lends those films a polish and professionalism that I'm looking to compete with. As you can see from the stills, these interviews look very much in line with high level production values. These still need to be color corrected, which will polish them even further.  

Daniel

Lauren

Ultimately, the interviews so far have been very illuminating and I've expanded on some of the questions in the moment. For example, I asked some of the subjects just to simply list what they do with their devices while others, like Lauren, I asked to describe what a period of heavy usage might look like. In this sense I was designing the intervention on the fly as I decided it might be more visually interesting to splice the other "listed" answers into Lauren's explanation as a way to give it more depth. I'm confident that with the remaining interviews with the community and the addition of interviews with the academic, corporate and/or journalist subjects, the film will incorporate both the conversation that the general public has within the problem space and the insight of practitioners and thinkers in the field. I hope that I can get enough of this footage integrated into the draft so I can demonstrate the shape the film is taking effectively.

THE PROBLEM SPACE IN THE NEWS

Since the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook connection was established a few weeks ago with the story in the Guardian, I've been following closely how the issue has been reported in the press. What I've discovered is that the conversation has grown and now takes a featured position when discussing "current events' with broad groups of people. One of the things I've found interesting and relevant to my project is how Mark Zuckerberg articulates his position (and, therefore, Facebook's) with respect to data ownership. He frames his apology for the scandal as a breach of the trust that the public puts in Facebook as stewards of their data. This position is at odds with how Millenials seem to view this relationship. During his appearance before Congress, the CEO was interrogated about his vision for future regulatory possibilities, fixes to the Facebook approach to third party data collection and the extent to which he believed that the EULA they use provides users a clear picture of the path of their data once under the control of Facebook. These were, I thought, mostly softballs more useful to helping save the reputation of the business that illuminating a deep cultural discussion. I hope that the takeaway from these hearings inspires some interesting perspectives on the social media platforms.

As we discovered during our discussion of the topic in class, the space that surrounds our attitudes toward our data is expansive and demands more and more detail as we address the questions. It's a very exciting space to be working in and I hope that some of that excitement is visible in the draft.

The above is a short, 3 minute draft of the opening sequence of the film. There are some caveats to bear in mind, however. First, some of the footage that appears here is stock and will be replaced with footage I am shooting myself. In some ways, these are placeholders for like footage. Some will stay where they are, though, and will be consistent with the overall aesthetic of the piece. Also, the music will change. This is a commercially available track (Black Milk by Massive Attack, if you're wondering...) but the pace and feel of this temp track will be the inspiration for the final music in this opening sequence. In addition, the interviews will be dispersed throughout this section, breaking up and possibly replacing chunks of the video from TEDX and the animated part. Finally, I may add voice narration to the piece but I'm not necessarily convinced of it yet. Ultimately, what I'm getting at is that there will be substantive changes to this piece before the draft i due next Wednesday.

FILM WORK

The past few weeks have been leading up to spring break and I've been focused on using some time to work on a draft of the directed study project. My directed study project has been designed for me to complete rough cuts of a number of sequences of the film I'm creating and, at this point, I've got a rough cut of the first 3 minutes or so. This is what I delivered today to be graded. There are a number of elements that I have not yet integrated into the film. I've conducted several interviews, for example, but I still need to go through them and mark the sections I want to use and put them into the timeline. Some of the footage I used for the draft will be replaced by footage I shoot but I wanted to start setting up the way I would tell this story.

The last part of the rough cut I submitted is a title card that will lead into the first several interviews. I've staged it so that the opening sequence has some drama and introduces the topic area with something thought provoking. In the case of the rough cut, there is a section from a TED Talk which asks some pretty controversial questions about data and I'm using that to set the tone of the piece. As I described in earlier presentations, the film sets out to highlight the state of data ownership, value and privacy with an eye toward creating a model for underwriting the social good. After three minutes of intro, we'll wade into the interviews which will be filled out with some more clips and commentary.

In the section that will come after the title card, I've asked my interview subjects to tell me what they do with their devices and they throw a lot of answers out: my banking, send birthday greeting, use maps, set my alarm clock, etc. I then ask if they think they should own all that data. Their answers are followed by a clip of Google CEO Sundar Pichai at the World Economic Forum in Davos supporting the concept of individual personal data ownership. In many ways, the film is meant to be a visual partner of the written thesis and I think this is a good way to pair the two components.

Daniel, one of my interview subjects. I've completed his interview but need to edit it in order to integrate it into the film.

One thing I'm actively trying to avoid is narration as I think that it's a bit too easy just to tell the story through voice over. I'm trying to create impact rather than just the transfer of information. I think it's important that people walk away from the film with an impression; they should have a sense that they want to look deeper into the questions it raises. The film should offer some guidance and I'm working to ensure that it covers as many bases as possible without confusing the issues.

VIEWING

During the past few weeks I've been viewing docs online and on Netfilx/Amazon, etc. There have been several of note that will likely inform the work I do on my own piece. One additional note, I have been also viewing quite a few technical videos on Lynda and YouTube. I've been trying to make some aesthetic choices and so I've watched a number of cinematography, lighting and lens specific videos from NoFilmSchool, FStoppers and some of the other content creators in that space. I've been watching:

"Icarus" - The Best Documentary Feature Oscar winner is a Netflix production and it's pretty much designed in the classic documentary style. The film is about performance enhancing drug use in cycling and combines interviews, archive footage, clips from third parties to create the narrative. The narration is audio from interviews conducted for the film (which I would love to do) but it's incredibly time consuming to work in that style and would not be conducive to working within our constraints.

"Print The Legend" - This is also a Netflix production about the Makerbot founders and the future of 3D printing technology. This doc is interesting from a design standpoint in the sense that it is also very straight forward but the production money was spent in some obvious places: the graphics, the interviews (there are many with the same people, for example, but in a variety of different places. Their access to their subjects seems unlimited), and time, time and more time.

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PROCESS/CHALLENGES

One of the assignments we've had to complete over the break is to create a process/challenge presentation for the project so far. One of the things I've discovered in completing that assignment is that there are MANY challenges to working in a style that resembles "assembling" a puzzle. The first (and maybe most difficult to overcome) is that I am sometimes creating the narrative of the piece using footage that I have "compiled" - a combination of stock footage, clips I pull from streaming services like YouTube and Vimeo and B-roll pieces I shoot myself - rather than footage that I storyboard and shoot as a way of directing what I've written. As a result, there is a lot of consideration that goes into how the piece gets built out.  As I build the piece, however, it leaves room for me to create my way out of situations. 

Time, however, is the biggest constraint on creating this project. I understand that I need to manage expectations as the goal is not necessarily to create the final version of this piece but to set up a framework and foundation for future work. Having said that, I do feel that I can vreate a prototype that will more than meet the expectations I have for the project.

WRITING

Based on the above challenges, I've started to create the written component of the thesis project alongside trying to build out the film. As I don't have a traditional script to work from, I wanted to ensure that I was going to have a document to work off of. To that end, I've begun to incorporate the research into a living outline.

The first draft of a thesis outline for me to work off of.

READING/RESEARCH

This is the part that never seems to end. As I wrote in my process/challenge presentation, I'm constantly reading new articles, academic pieces, editorials, book excerpts, etc. Part of the challenge is that the momentum in this problem space comes not from academia but business and tech consulting, mainstream media like Wired and The New York Times and a huge variety of other outlets that are not research based but do general reporting on the goings on in this area. Of course there is academic research but, as i say, the majority of what I find are short articles that mention new business concepts, blockchain tech or are introducing the challenges of the space.

Some of the notable items I've been reading for research:

The Decentralized Internet is Here, With Some Glitches by Tom Simonite in Wired! (https://www.wired.com/story/the-decentralized-internet-is-here-with-some-glitches/?mbid=social_fb)

Your Data is Crucial to a Robotic Age, Shouldn't You be Paid for It? By Eduardo Porter in the New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/06/business/economy/user-data-pay.html).

Blockchain Could Help Us Reclaim Control of Our Personal Data by Michael Mainelli in the Harvard Business Review. (https://hbr.org/2017/10/smart-ledgers-can-help-us-reclaim-control-of-our-personal-data).

Monetizing Personal Data: A Two-Sided Market Approach by Ahmed Saleh Bataineh, et al. in Procedia Computer Science (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050916302447?via%3Dihub).

Rethinking Personal Data: A New Lens for Strengthening Trust prepared by The World Economic Forum (http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_RethinkingPersonalData_ANewLens_Report_2014.pdf).

These are just a few items. I've also been doing research on some of the businesses that have grown around the concept of monetizing personal data. Some of these companies are no longer operating while some, like Wibson (a blockchain play promising individual profit from data ownership). Ctrlio, Datacoup and Handshake are some of the companies.

This week was mainly about:

• identifying communities for interviews and partnerships
• drafting letters to request interviews
• starting to shoot short interviews with members of the community

I'd been finding it a challenge for my project to define the right organizational partner and went into my process meeting with questions about which organizations would be best suited to help with this thesis. In some cases I had identified groups that would be helpful from an activist and advocacy standpoint: the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, for instance. I'd also selected some academic organizations with the Berkman Klein Center and MIT Media Lab as top choices. Some research groups like the Platform Cooperativism group and Data & Society were also tagged. Finally, some organizations that focus on media were selected: Art Not War and Brave New Films were the front-runners there. None of these organizations, however deeply invested in this space they are, seemed a complete fit and so I approached the meeting with some reservations that any of them would prove to be right for the project. After some discussion, it was decided that my project didn't necessarily fit the prescription for a single organizational partner and that it would be fine to move forward with several of these groups and that they may all supply research assistance or interviews and be helpful in some way. This was a relief and I agreed that this was the best course of action. I was now free to start framing the piece and start to draft letters to request interviews from some of these orgs.

I began drafting letters and over the course of that time continued to collect and read research sources. In doing this, I discovered a business called "Wibson," a Silicon Valley company developing blockchain and app tech for data collection and monetization. As this was an early idea I had considered, I joined their site and looked into their mission. This organization is fairly new and were set to launch in Barcelona at the end of the coming week. They have developed a system (although it isn't clear to what stage they've reached) that seems akin to a data marketplace and a companion app prototype to go along with it. They are focused on enabling individuals to profit from data sales which I believe poses some deep problems going forward so I decided to reach out and request an interview when they return from Barcelona. Hopefully, they'll agree. I'd like to ask them some detailed questions about how they see the ecosystem developing and how much they think the market will grow, Interesting stuff even if I think it's a little unsustainable.

Finally, I've begun to do some actually interviews with some of community members. Thus far I have time set aside to interview a data rich/cash poor high school junior, some tech savvy twenty-something creative professionals and some older folks for whom data justice and economics are a foreign concept. I'm also formulating some questions for dome "speed interviews" I hope to hold at Emerson soon. I'd like to get these questions as buttoned down as possible as I don't want any of the footage to be of limited use. Completing these interviews now will leave some time for the academic/advocacy/research groups to get back to me with responses to my interview requests so I can build the schedule for those. 

Before I sign off, I've also done a few camera tests and have defined a setup to use for the process. It will be a multi-camera shoot at 24p as I believe it will with live either online or be part of the longer cinematic piece I'll complete later. This week also featured quite a lot of paperwork to complete my financial requirements for Salzburg and FAFSA documents for what I hope will be the 18/19 MFA program. Coupled with the Scripps/Discovery merger closing and my ongoing war with the EZ Pass folks, the fact that I got little sleep isn't particularly shocking. Over the break I plan to start assembling the opening few minutes of the film to show at the presentation the Wednesday after we return. Very busy times but on track to meet deadlines.

This was a particularly productive week in terms of moving my thesis project forward. I had a couple of days where I was left alone and caught up with reading and dug deeply into the video material I had collected so far. First, I watched most of the content I saved to a playlist in YouTube, which includes long-form and short-form docs, TED Talks, some video from the World Economic Forum (specifically, a long interview with the CEO of Google which will factor directly into the film) and some short animations. In addition, I watched an episode of "WormWood" on Netflix to see what Errol Morris is up to with intertwining narrative with documentary. I think it's pretty interesting but I'm not certain I can employ anything like it in my own work. It did get me to think about how to formulate my questions for the interviews so, ultimately, it was time well spent. 

Beyond just informing and expanding my argument, the video material has been a great source of inspiration for storytelling and aesthetics.  I've been trying to develop a language for the film that informs and engages but delivers the information in a way that's somewhat different from the way we generally experience documentary film. I don't think it should feel too disconnected from a traditional doc but it would be great if I could layer the info so I could get it all out there without it feeling dry. The project needs to resonate and I think that I can do that with an interesting design.  One of the videos I watched was produced by the BBC and is very traditional in its structure but features some interesting ways to use graphics. I'm going to attempt to design a graphic toolkit to introduce in the piece and I'll try to deliver that in Lina's studio class. The graphics float over the images on the screen to expand the amount of information and really adds something to the "data visualization." 

I continued to collect footage this weekend, too, and started to piece together a timeline in Premiere from which to start building the film. The goal is to have a rough cut of the first 5 or so minutes in the next few weeks so I can show it at the next presentation after Spring Break. I'd like something polished so I can get feedback on it and start to add the interview footage I collect. If I could get that far, I'd be well on the way to completing that part of the project.

While I've been pushing on, the project has not been without its difficulties. One place where I had been concerned and challenged was in identifying a community partner, but it was decided this week that the project features enough of a variety of inputs from organizations, academics, researchers, etc. that it wouldn't be necessary for me to narrow the focus to just one. This is a great leap forward because I had been waiting to send out emails to request interviews which I can now send out and start to schedule. I'm going to spend some time through this week and the weekend to write and send several of those letters (mainly to those that are local to Boston and New York) and try to get some of the interviews completed in the next few weeks.