How's this idea for a faux documentary thriller.

H

harmonica44

By that a movie like Paranormal Activity or The Blair Witch Project. Like those thrillers a camera will be used in the sense that it is found footage or of that concept.

An undercover cop wears a micro camera in his jacket that sees everything he is facing, and the whole movie is surveillance footage from that camera. However the question is, will the audience find it hard to watch, if you have seen what those cameras look like, plus they are always pointed at other people's chests, so the audience will have to look more up in the point of view. Good idea for a crime thriller? Not sure if I would write it or do it, just contemplating it right now.
 
If you're going to use a concept like that, why not say there's some new micro-camera technology, and the camera is in the cop's glasses? That way, you can shoot people's faces, and maybe get some interesting shots of things coming towards his face - fists, etc. Also, if the glasses are knocked off or askew, you could get some interesting variations on shots. You could also claim the new camera is hi-def, so the picture can be much better quality than an actual mini-camera.

gelder
 
That technology already exists. T.A.S.E.R. makes the law enforcement point of view cameras that are used in the TV show "Police POV" Check out http://www.taser.com/products/on-officer-video/taser-axon. The main complaint that hear about them is that they need better image stabilization. They are also $3,000.00 each. There's no reason that you couldn't use a Go Pro HD, Contour HD, or Vio HD camera system mounted on a helmet or headband and claim that the footage was captured from the TASER/Axon system. You could show your MC looking at him/herself in the mirror with a fake Axon unit.
 
Okay thanks. But those cops aren't undercover right, hense they would not be wearing fake glasses with cams. So if not, then that show is a little different.
 
I really like the idea about the camera being on a cop. But the micro camera doesn't sound appealing. Maybe if you change it from being undercover documentary?

i.e. a documentary crew which follows a cop's fictional case? (Obviously not undercover)
 
yeah that could work. i just thought it wouldn't be as interesting as undercover, or a situation where the camera man would wanna flee before he got killed.
 
harmonica44 said:
yeah that could work. i just thought it wouldn't be as interesting as undercover, or a situation where the camera man would wanna flee before he got killed.
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Well look at Restrepo, the Director/co-director were living in a pretty dangerous situation, and that was a real documentary. Sadly the DP, Tim Hetherington was killed in Lybia.
 
District 9! That's a great example of a mocumentary! It shows that if you have an idea you can stretch it pretty far. What about street racing?
 
harmonica44 said:
Okay thanks. But those cops aren't undercover right, hense they would not be wearing fake glasses with cams. So if not, then that show is a little different.
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No, those are uniformed officers. The camera could be hidden in a pair of realistic looking eye glasses. That way they would be un-noticed by the people he interacts with. You could demonstrate the use of them without verbalizing it by having your main character look at his reflection in a mirror or other shiny surface and adjust the glasses. The picture would move with the movement of the glasses. This should happen at the beginning of the film.
 
Sure that's a good idea. However having uniform officers, instead of undercover, could limit the plot a little. The officer won't be able to get close to the villains since he is in uniform. If the whole story is told from the point of view of his glasses, then we will no little about the villains if he cannot get close to them, thus making the villains kind of wooden characters, since they are not given their screen time, where they can talk about themselves.
 
I meant that the show "Police POV" is uniformed officers that use the T.A.S.E.R. P.O.V. camera system. I suggested the ordinary looking glasses for your under cover idea. That way, nobody knows but him.
 
Okay thanks. So when you say ordinary glasses, are there another type of camera glasses? I have a plot idea that I think will be really good for it. However, in it, the villain finds out that the man is an undercover cop trying to bust him. So he figures that the sunglasses might be a hidden camera. So his plan is to have something happen in which the undercover cop will be forced to remove his glasses and leave the room. Perhaps something could "accidently" get in the cops eyes or something. Or more or less something that will cause the cop to put down the glasses, and leave them in the room, while he leaves for a short bit. The villains idea, is to then erase the recorded data off the glasses, without the cop knowing.

So how do you erase the data off? Do you take the chip out, and put a magnet to it or something? Does the data save to a remote location, and there is no erasing it, by getting a hold of the glasses themselves. Does the cop having something on him, under his shirt or something that the data saves to?
 
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The most common type of eyewear camera uses a micro SD card to record the data. The card stores inside one of the arms of the sunglasses. These are made by VIO and have 4GB of built in memory and use an additional micro SD card (up to 8GB). You could have him recording to the internal memory and have the bad guys take out the SD card. That way, the bad guys would think that they had removed the video, but it would still be IN the glasses.
 
Thanks that helps. Wouldn't these SD cards be too big to hold in the glasses though without the arms looking too wide? Plus 4-8 GB isn't much space. How much data can you hold, unless he's recording at such a low quality. But low quality sometimes means blurry faces, and blurry faces means blurry evidence.

But I wanna write it so the bad guy removes all the evidence, no back ups, but without harming the glasses or the recorder, in order to fool the cop into thinking nothing has gone wrong. How would he do that?
 
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You can get glasses that store the video internally only. You can also get ones that only store it on a micro SD card. As for how to remove the evidence, erase it. You can either hook the glasses to a computer with a USB cable or remove the SD card and delete the files using a card reader.
 
Okay sure, I will have to the villain do just that. Thanks. I looked at some pics of these glasses, and the arms seem way to thin to hold an SD card, unless the police and government use SD cards that small!
 
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