Social Broadcasting – Facebook Live
A Micro-Project

Project Description
Each student was asked to broadcast via Facebook Live and search for interesting visuals while walking around the school for 15 minutes. At the end of the broadcast, all live feeds of the students would be arranged in a grid to form a ‘video wall’.

The main purpose of this project was to explore how multiple broadcasting was able to change our perspective in viewing the piece as a single work.

Pre-Broadcast
Live broadcasting can be quite a pressured thing to do due to its spontaneity. I always had this uneasy feeling as if I might mess the broadcast up and I would not be able to turn back time to change it.

Although unplanned, I had decided to find a place in school where it should be empty and away from any of my fellow classmates who were also doing the live broadcast. It would be interesting if I manage to capture different structures of the building instead of shooting people doing their respective activities.

Broadcast
I started out by going to the 2nd floor of ADM, further deep into the foundation classes where there should be very minimal people around. I wanted to capture the feeling of coldness and emptiness with the help of the raw concrete walls surrounding me. The lack of human activities also contributed to a deafening silence. In other words, my aim was to create a sense of suspense as I walked through the hallways, expecting something to pop up on my screen.

While doing so, I was unintentionally scaring myself as well. At a point of time, I was very startled when I heard the lift was operating behind me. It was Tiffany.

We were directing our phones at each other as we naturally interacted with each other. A sense of relief washed over me when I realised I was not alone anymore. Oh, I have a friend!

Next, I proceeded to stand outside the building and direct my camera towards the streets outside. Although it was dark, I wanted my audience to focus on the sound instead as cars were zooming by, accompanied by small lights to indicate where they were. Again, another friend popped by while I was doing so.

I then went back inside to finally capture some human interaction. After walking around the empty spaces alone, I realised how bizarre these humans could disrupt the silence just by using their small mouths. My Live Broadcast suddenly became so chaotic that I had no idea where or what to focus on. So I did what I do best. Go with the flow!

Post-Broadcast
So far, I only had visuals taken from my own perspective and I was impressed when I returned to class to see all Live feeds being shown collectively. It suddenly became like a single piece of work.

Although there were a lot of visuals and sounds being produced simultaneously, it was interesting how we can easily mute out the rest and just focus on a single one. However, it also felt like being in a gathering where everyone around me were talking to each other and there I was sitting quietly to eavesdrop what they were saying all at the same time.

Visual-wise, it was quite engaging when I had to view the same scene that I went through earlier but from a different person’s point-of-view. It was like a puzzle  as I pieced the two or three scenes together.

Overall
By the end of the project, I was overwhelmed by the amount of events that I had seen on the single screen. Live broadcasting if being done alone could be quite dull but once it was viewed socially, it was very fascinating.