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"Approximately 30 million surveillance cameras in the U.S. capture people's lives on tape every day. In fact, it's legal to keep such cameras inside dressing rooms in 37 states. And the ongoing popularity of sites like YouTube and Twitter has only made it easier for society to get even more glimpses inside people's personal thoughts and moments.\nThis is the premise behind Look, one of the latest series from cable channel Showtime. Based on director Adam Rifkin's 2007 film of the same name, the show \u2014 which interweaves five story lines \u2014 was shot via security cameras and the like, instead of a traditional setup. It also integrates a number of social elements such as characters' text messages, Twitter and YouTube.\nActress Ali Cobrin plays a high school student named Molly who gets in with the crowd of \"mean, typical popular girls and the cool jock boys.\" She talked to Mashable about what it's like to film a show under voyeuristic conditions, and how the experience has affected her views of social media and a society under surveillance.\nUnder the Camera's Watchful Eye\n\nFilming under nontraditional conditions has been quite the experience for Look's cast and crew \u2014 and for Cobrin, it's actually been easier in some regards. She says there was \"no cheating\" the way there is while acting in front of a typical camera setup.\n\"You'll have a mark or a dot on the [camera] lens,\" she explains. \"And you're telling this dot, that you love them. It's crazy.\"\nMeanwhile, Cobrin says acting in Look felt similar to acting in theater \u2014\u00A0except it felt even more real because there was no actual audience involved. While it could be challenging because it wasn't possible to edit around bad reactions caught on film, she also found it a lot of fun.\n\"Me and the girl that plays my best friend \u2014 we had a couple of scenes in a school, we're in the school bathroom,\" she says. \"They put up cameras like surveillance cameras, the mics are all hidden, the crew's outside the bathroom. Every time they'd cut, we'd be like, 'Did we hear a cut?'\"\nOn Cyber Safety\n\nCobrin doesn't feel too differently about the amount of surveillance cameras that are out there, though she is somewhat troubled by the dressing room statistic at the beginning of this piece. But she said she's become more careful with her online accounts \u2014 especially because of features like geotagging on Facebook and Twitter.\n\"I see people linking in to each other and checking in to places that they're at. Their phones are telling each other where they're at,\" she said. \"So it's like you don't even have to be very motivated to be able to stalk someone. It's so simple.\"\nAs a result, Cobrin is now careful about when she makes certain updates to her accounts \u2014\u00A0if she's taking pictures of art while walking down a city street, she'll wait awhile to post the photo to Twitter. This is quite different from the way characters, like Molly and Hannah, on Look behave.\n\"They're very average, everyday high school students that are definitely victimized by social networking and the Internet, filming themselves everywhere they go, whatever they do with their friends,\" Cobrin says.\nStarting a Conversation\n\nCobrin has never had as many discussions about her other projects as she has about Look. Few people actually ask her about life on the set itself. Instead, they end up asking questions about whether it's possible for someone to tap into another person's webcam or if 16-year-old mall security guards really do zoom in on funny things they see. \nAccording to research conducted by the show's crew: Yes, they do. \n\"Something ridiculous happens, they're taking pictures of it, uploading it to YouTube,\" Cobrin says. \"Or they're showing it to their friends. It's out of control.\"\nNonetheless, the show never explicitly states whether the watchful eyes of Big Brother (security cameras and the like) and Little Brother (social media sites) are good or bad. But  21-year-old Cobrin, who's been using sites like MySpace since the fifth grade and Facebook since it first opened up to high schoolers, says it allows viewers and actors alike the opportunity to do some thinking.\n\"I've never as an actress felt like I got the same thing out of a show that the audience will, which is cool. When I watch any work that I've done, I feel too close to it to be that observant,\" she explains. \"But this immediately pulls you out, because to watch it \u2014 it's like subconsciously, you feel like you're not supposed to be watching it because it's just really voyeuristic.\"\nCobrin can't fully decide if society's attitudes toward heavy surveillance and social media will change anytime soon, but she notes that these technologies have only recently become so increasingly widespread.\n\"Look the movie doesn't involve so many things like Twitter and Facebook and YouTube,\" Cobrin says, pointing out that YouTube didn't even really exist at the time that the filmmakers were putting the project together. \n\"It's hard to comprehend that a movie that is three years old is so dated compared to a show, which is also really exciting about the show because it's so current.\"\nLook airs Sunday nights at midnight on Showtime. The first four episodes will marathon this Saturday, November 6, from 10 p.m. to 12 a.m.\nImages courtesy of Evan Wexler, Flickr, Pablo Ruiz Muzquiz, Tommy Ga Ken-Wan"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2010/11/05/showtime-look/>