TBC P1: Object Narrative Process

Object Brainstorm: P H O N E

companion / friend / enemy / temptation / distraction / inspiration / support / technological device / prison / portal / weapon / shield / shackles / extension of body 


Sketches & Storyboards

Life drawing of my phone in hand, and a typographic meditation

'Timeline' collection of my old phones from 2011-2018






PHONE fictionalized/contextualized: 

  • History: dial phones → coil phones → wireless phones → flip Nokias → first iPhone → today
  • Social/economic/ethical context: McLuhan's Medium as Message, Greenfield’s Radical Technologies, Clelland’s “Apple Dark Matter”, Social Media Addiction research
Position & Message: phones have become grafted extensions of our bodies, dictators of our minds and replacements for our thought processes. This tilted power dynamic relationship is unhealthy, but it is up to us to regain control of our devices as tools for productivity and good things.



Styleframes (in order of occurrence)

'Wake Up'

'Get Ready'

'Go to Work' 1

'Go to Work' 2 

'Escalator'

'Lunch Break'

'Busker'

'After-Work Binge' (Timelapse scene)

'Getting Lost' (downward spiral scene)

'New Dawn' (after rewind, ending scene)



Motion Tests

See rest in Google Album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/hB9k4HvXXqJhsQGg8






Conceptual-Cinematographic Ideation

Mood: ambivalence, mix of happy, stressful and calm moments, love-hate relationship with phone
Cinematographic inspiration: Tove Lo’s Habits (Stay High) MV / For King & Country's God Only Knows
  • Lens: Fujifilm for walking phone shots, fisheye/Theta V 360 for downward spiral?
  • Structure & Continuity: view of phone in center, framed by shifting surroundings
    • Scene/lighting changes, natural registration of handheld camera (user’s perspective)
    • Contrast of calm, quiet moments/screen off with hectic distracting moments (on screen + surrounding background) 
  • Masking phone vs surreal background? // dolly zoom, whirl/'tunnel vision'
  • Time lapse/blurring hi-speed background with a normal-speed phone texting/social media scrolling → camera pans down on phone, time blurs // looks back up, world returns to regular speed → depict how one can lose track of time while on hyper-real world of social media 
  • Rewind of 'crescendo'/'daily cycle' parts, showing a potential way out (by putting down phone)
  • Jumpcuts / screen inserts of e-waste junkyards, ‘dark value’ systemic oppression
  • John & Rebekah’s meta idea: ‘Medium as Message’ - ‘Off-White’ style BW overlays in place of actual apps → my addition: overlays that turn out to be an entity, controlling the user?


Video + Audio Narrative

  • Start: Day-in-the-life trope satire: user’s single hand blindly snoozes alarm //fades back to black// slew of emails, social media updates, twitter news → user’s hands scrambles to grab phone, awake 
  • ‘Day’: mostly constant phone-in-hand structure, changing scenes, (play city sounds, audio articles podcast-style?) → speeds up and becomes cycle, screen turns black (meta)
    • Getting ready — Phone prioritizes day, curates news
    • Train — pretty scenery in window // cut to phone in reflection
    • Walking — Phone provides navigation // leads human in to a pole
    • Workplace — Phone calls, temptations/distractions
    • Lunch/cafe — Phone provides payment, rating // snaps pic of drink that doesn’t taste good
    • ‘After work’: mask + speed/timelapse: user goes on social media binge [world/time flies by, fades to BW] (sad cello begins) until a disturbance, user looks back up [world returns to normal, albeit the day has gone by]
    • Restaurant/social — Phone: media > connecting with people in front of you
  • Crescendo: mask + special effects: user’s world becomes surreal/whirl, glitch effect? (breathing intensifies) 
  • Devastation/rock bottom: phone gets run over, tossed, destroyed (blackout, crash/smash + siren sounds?) 
  • Rewind/alternate ending: rewind tape effect, show past clips with the phone being put down.. ending with the dawn of a new day (deep breath)


Project 1 Rationale 

According to Adam Greenfield, “the smartphone is the signature artifact of our age” (2017). Each user (consumer and product of consumerism) at some point confronts the conflicting nature of their relationship with their phone: does the phone support or distract, equip or handicap, empower or weaken, expand or limit? Through formal/cinematographic elements, I wanted to explore the phone’s function as both the medium (frame) and the message (controlling entity) that paradoxically supports, directs, expands and limits our waking experience of the world (McLuhan, 1964).

Loosely following the 'day-in-the-life' structure, an unseen user's phone takes center stage in everyday activities while life blurs by in the background. The phone at first is presented in an everyday mundane light, but is later stripped of its surface normalcy to reveal the real influence it wields on the user's mind and life. It takes the form of a self-aware being who communicates to the user (and audience) in gradually disquieting ways.

As just about every scene occurs in the real world, each scene underwent numerous takes and precise trimming to pinpoint the best combination of natural surroundings, light and diagetic sound. Non-diagetic sound is used mainly as a signifier of time/change, from the altering gain of everyday moments to inserted sound effects suggesting fast-forwarding/cycling and turning back time. Music is used experimentally to convey a feeling of loneliness in this empty cycle. Inverse masking on Premiere is used to overlay a blurred, frozen phone on a time-lapse compilation of long-exposure street photography at dusk. Some distortion effects of staggered transparencies and Premiere video effects were employed to create a sense of disorientation and fragmentation, nearing the user's sudden demise.

The ending title, "Who's next?" is a cryptic continuation of the 'dialogue' between phone and companion; it is up to the viewer's interpretation as to who is asking the question and what that implies.



References

Buck-Morss, Susan. "Dream world of mass culture: Walter Benjamin's theory of modernity and the
        dialectics of seeing." Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision. California: The University of     
        California Press, 1993, pp. 309-338.

Greenfield, Adam. Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life. London, UK: Verso, 2017.

McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York, New York: McGraw-
       Hill Education, 1964. Excerpt from web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/mcluhan.mediummessage.pdf.



Workflow Sheet

  • Title of Project: Who's Next? (Object Narrative: P H O N E) 
  • Length/Duration: 60 seconds
  • Presentation specs: Vimeo 1080HD
  • Frame Size: 1920 x 1080
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9 
  • Frame Rate: 24fps 
  • Other Specs: Fujifilm PRO Neg. Hi Film Simulation (slightly enhanced colour + contrast), colour temperature adjustments 
  • Approach: Handheld camera at natural eye level, fixed perspective of phone in hand/center of view, simultaneous screen (virtual) and background (real) events
  • Summary/Description: An experimental portrayal of a young person's relationship with their phone. 
  • Production Design: Working phone, meta screen overlays, post-production distortion effects
  • Audio: natural soundscapes + select sound effects + addition of overlaying instrumental (Free Sound Project, Youtube Audio Library) 
  • Software/Hardware Required: Fujifilm X-T100, tripod, Adobe Premiere Pro 
  • Research/Anticipated challenges: unsteady hand + risk of injury to self/others during moving street shots, text on 'meta' screens too small and/or out of focus easily with movement, screen brightness affecting white balance under varying light, street lamps casting actor's shadow in to screen while filming/walking, weather conditions 

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