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^^

The “News Broadcast” Inspiration/Planning

Like I previously mentioned, we want to include the use of a new broadcast in our film opening because we believe that it will be extremely useful in the storytelling aspect of our opening. Moreover, the use of a news broadcast will help our viewers understand the main conflict occurring in the opening scene as well as the rest of the film. Another benefit that comes out of utilizing a news broadcast in our film opening is that of the audience being able to classify the film as a horror and doomsday (apocalyptic) film. To further explain, the serious tone of the news broadcast would essentially stress the global problem enough to communicate with viewers that this problem could lead to a full wipe of the human race, which does eventually end up happening in the rest of our film. Therefore, this would help classify our film opening as a horror and “end of the world” film.

Moving on, we used the film Bird Box (2018) as inspiration for our news broadcast because of the fact that the scene in Bird Box with the news broadcast achieved all the goals we want to achieve when we include our new broadcast in our opening film. Furthermore, one of the things that the news report in Bird Box manages to do is that it updates the audience on what countries are being affected by any form of mass suicides and what the current position of the United States is as well. Specifically, the report mentions Russia as one of the countries badly affected by the issue, and the report also explains how the United States has yet to seen any similar cases regarding mass suicide. Ultimately, this helps viewers understand the conflict happening in Bird Box. Moreover, the use of a news report in Bird Box basically stated that the world was coming to an end, and this was utilized to help identify the film as a horror/doomsday film or one of those “end of the world” movies in which any sign of civilization is gone. In addition, another way that the news report was helpful to Bird Box was because it helped establish the main character’s ignorant personality. Moreover, the news report explained how the global problem had not been seen in the United States yet; thus, the main character thought that it would never occur in the U.S. and there was no need to worry. Furthermore, the use of a news broadcast had many benefits in developing the film Bird Box.

**The link down below is the news broadcast scene in Bird Box**

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JcvQMM0Vzw

Now onto the way in which me and my partner, Sophia, will make this idea of adding a news broadcast into our opening a reality. So, we plan on making the news broadcast utilizing an application called iMovie, and we will be looking into the different ways in which we can mimic news headlines. We also plan on using ourselves as the news anchors that will be elaborating on the issue at hand during our film opening. Of course, we are aware that we must use a serious, monotone voice when saying our parts of the script (which we will include in a later post) and we also plan on finding the appropriate outfits to fit the characters of news anchors. Furthermore, we plan on including various images and videos during the news broadcast to build visual interest within the audience and keep them engaged.

**We also plan on utilizing my partner, Sophia’s, computer for for iMovie news broadcast segment because in recent AICE Media Studies projects my computer has never worked with iMovie projects**