When I was 14 years old, I made my first social media account on Instagram.
Nowadays, with a Youtube, Tiktok, Vimeo, Facebook, Snapchat, and Pinterest account I never could imagine my life without social media. It's what I check every morning before getting out of bed, scroll through during lunch, and clear of all my notifications before I go to bed. This routine continues again the next morning, and the cycle never stops.
It comes with so much responsibility, and privacy does not exist. As McLuhan puts it, our world is one of "total involvement...and in which nobody can really imagine what private guilt can be anymore" (61).
My short film, A Universal, Linear, Backwards Walk is my take on my own relationship with social media and the digital world. I notice how often I walk the line between a digital existence and a real-life experience. When I'm not lost in the imagination of my head (a conversation for another time), I'm constantly struggling to stay in reality because I'm fighting off the constant pull of the digital world. The film's main character feels this pull too, expressed through the overlay of the Facebook screen with herself. The beginning of the film also emphasizes this pull as it clips between a colored stage and the Facebook screen. Eventually, the main character's friends begin appearing and ultimately succeed in pulling her from the digital world and back into the colorful world of reality.
There is so much I wish to discuss, but not here and now. What I'd like to end on is this: life is short. (Yes, we all know this.) However, I focus on the truth of the matter, which is I'd rather have physical, tangible connections than that of the digital space. I've decided to not get rid of the digital world, but instead live linearly with it while keeping my attention on those around me, who keep me going and grounded in the real world.
LOVE! When you said, "I notice how often I walk the line between a digital existence and a real-life experience", me too! I find myself trying to exist both in the real and digital world, sometimes it feels like the digital is more important. Especially because society makes it feel like your mark on this world is documented in this way.
ReplyDeleteIt took me awhile to realize that the physical world is the one that NEEDS to be experienced in its entirety and those connections formed there last a lifetime, not always the ones left on a screen.
ALSO! Love the act of people coming in and out of view! Adds to the push and pull of being liked/loved through social media.
DeleteI really like your editing technique and the idea of the video. The different layers of color to gradually show from digital life to real life. I really like this idea.
ReplyDeleteYour topic is really novel and attractive to me. It's so true that " It's what I check every morning before getting out of bed, scroll through during lunch, and clear of all my notifications before I go to bed. " I totally agree with what you mentioned in your blog. Social media become a more and more important thing in our daily life, so it is nice to take time to observe it and learn from it.
ReplyDeleteI also love your film, and how you combine the social media background and the stage performances.
one little thing i love is having the tiny window with the main footage but delayed for a couple frames, i think there's so much possibility in that. it just inspired some new ideas, like for example sort of emulating audio delay effects with a visible visual delay effect, idk kind of random. but the first time the little window pops up it isn't delayed, so i was inclined to read the delay as a sort of "playing" with time in the sense that a singular stream of time becomes multiple parallel streams, which beyond that could signify countless things
ReplyDeleteThe lighting in this is so beautiful! You did such a nice job with this short film. Really great premise. I feel like you and I did sort of similar topics where we both focused on social media and the pull it has on our everyday activities.
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