Protecting Civil Liberties in the Digital Age Documentary - Biello/McClendon/Clarke


Blase Biello
Kern Clarke
Ian McClendon

*click thumbnail to start documentary*


I worked with Kern & Ian on my Q2 Benchmark which was the 2012 CSPAN Studentcam Documentary. We decided to chose the topic of civil liberties in the digital age because we thought this topic was the most related to us because of the amount of technology we use throughout the day. We use every piece of technology stated in the video; calls/texts/email/twitter/facebook/etc so it hits home for us the hardest. 
I liked the fact that we had the freedom to virtually create any kind of documentary we wanted and fill it with any information that we felt necessary/wanted. The most challenging part of the whole video was probably putting all of the clips together in an effective way that would keep the audience entertained whilst informing them at the same time. The most interesting fact that I learned was that the gov't has the ability to monitor our calls/texts without our consent. This project could be improved if we added in more narration, I think; but for the most part - the interviews of students helped sum up all of our opinions because most of their opinions were the same, 'we want our privacy'. We didn't really run into trouble anywhere with this project, I think with a three person group, everything went really smoothly. 
I think the use of multiple interviews as well as narration went well with this project. It added a bunch of layers for the audience to completely grasp the topic at hand. Also, I think the different B-Roll footage helped make it a solid documentary. If we had to do it all over again, I don't think we would really do anything differently, maybe add a couple more people to the interviews; but I think we had enough to be effective. Overall, I'm satisfied with our execution of our plan/process as well as with the final documentary. I learned many things about the privacy of our technology; as well as how many of my fellow students feel about their technology and privacy rights. Overall, this was a really nice project to tackle digital rights and privacy and inform everyone out there on our topic, effectively. 

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