Text Messages in our Opening

In our film opening we plan on using text messages as a way of portraying the emotions our main character, Lucy, has toward the news report explaining the alarming problem. Thus, the text messages would be a way in which we would reflect her ignorant attitude towards the problem of phone calls causing mass suicides, and ultimately contributing to her personality and representation as a teenage girl always on her phone.

We still are unaware, however, of how we want to display the text messages in our film opening. With that being said, we are in between the use of shot-reverse-shot to actually show the phone with the text messages or the other option is displaying the message on-screen alongside Lucy reading them in her head. Moreover, both of these options have their pros and cons. For example, actually displaying the phone with the text message allows us keep the same format of a text message that our audience is familiar with; however, in order to show Lucy’s facial expressions while she reads the texts we would need to use many shots of shot-reverse-shot, which may take up too much of our opening scene. On the other hand is the option of displaying the text message on-screen placed right next to Lucy when she reads them in her hand. This method could be beneficial in making it more visually pleasing when the audience reads the texts; however, mimicking the format of a text and actually making text appear on the screen could become difficult when editing. Also, we have to take into consideration the sound effects of texting and receiving a text alert with either method we choose.

In the video below I was able to learn that many film directors nowadays lean towards displaying text messages on screen alongside the individual reading them due to many reasons. According Tony Zhou (the maker on the video below), some of the reasons that this “new formal convention” has become so popular is because it saves money, it’s “artistically efficient”, and it combines the action of texting with the reaction of the character. Thus, with this research I think I am leaning towards the option of including the text message on-screen with the our main character, Lucy, right next to it.

Also included in the video by Tony Zhou are examples of each method of including text messages within a film.

https://vimeo.com/103554797
^^The video by Tony Zhou^^