Project Name: TRAPPED
Project Description: The project is an assignment for the Communications Lab class where we had to write a script, create a video and then present the theme of the video through a website. The title of our short film is "Trapped" which tells the story of a girl, Ishmal, whose life is entirely dependent on technology and her voice assistants, Alexa and Siri, who are a huge aspect of her day to day life. The title of the movie was chosen as such because for majority of the movie, which is the dream of ishmal, revolves around how she is literally trapped in her technological surroundings without even realizing it. The overall theme of the film and the website is horror and thriller.
As the plot of the film thickens, Ishmal realizes the extent of her dependence on technology and how in reality, she is not the one controlling her technology but in fact it is her technology that has dominated her everyday life. Through this story we portray the impact of social media and technology on our mental, emotional, social and physical health. Especially during this pandemic where everything has gone virtual, we thought it would be a good idea to show how easy it is to get lost in this modern world of tech and easily lose control over oneself and one's health.
This topic is also important since the ending of it, when Ishmal realizes that she should spend some more time in 'nature' is very significant as she throws her phone away as well as leaves behind her voice assistants and embarks on a journey for enjoying her life outside of being bound by tehcnology in a happy mood. This shows how making a very simple move, as that of using your phone less or doing something that involves your presence in nature, would naturally make you happy and healthier. The shift from the 'tired' and 'unsatisfied' mood of ishmal, who keeps checking her notifications constantly, to going out in nature and being content with her life is reflected through a positive ending which is the encouragement of being less dependant on these machines around us.
Process: Since the theme of the film is dark, the theme of the website was also chosen to be dark to create the thriller and horror effect. Black is also a metaphor for tragedy which depicts the bleakness of our modern world. This is due to how reliant we have become on technology due to which the number of human interactions that we have per day is increasingly decreasing. The preloader of the website is written in commandline font and color which sets the tone for the website that it is somehow related to technology, as it resembles to how program code is displayed, as commented by my peers in class. Through the blinking of the text as well as the part that reads "CLICK IF YOU DARE" in the preloader, the viewer is ensured that the theme of the website is horror/thriller as well as is left curious to what is about to come next upon clicking. The preloader also acts as a sense of warning for the suspense music which starts playing as soon as the user clicks on the preloader and views the landing page of the website. The hamburger menu is used thoughtfully to not let the user's attention be concentrated on the navigation bar in any way, instead stay focused on the main content of the movie, which are the 'Title' and 'The Plot'. The hamburger menu would also allow for a menu that would be a dropdown and cover the entire screen to make sure the user is presented with all the sections of the website in an equal fashion to choose from.
Below the menu is the Alexa dropdown, which is an interactivity implemented on our website to have a consistent theme of presenting an idea of 'technological influence' that we have in our life. A very thoughtful option that is represented by Alexa, which is one of the main characters of focus in our movie, is the option for the 'light mode' that is available. A thoughtful reasoning behind this is the activation of 'light mode' which is basically representing the motive depicted at the end of the movie when spending more time outside of the 'darkness' which is the 'dark mode', consumed by technology, is what is preferred and can regain the 'light' in our life which is a silver lining or a ray of hope. This also integrates the aspect of our film where Ishmal commands Alexa to turn on/off the light and mute and unmute the tv.
The contact form at the end of our website is representing a conversation with Alexa, basically integrating a part of our movie into the website as it seems as if the user is immersed into the plot of our film in a way that they can have a sense of how it seems to interact with a virtual assistant, like that of Alexa. The control of such machines over us is depicted by how we rely on them and have to wait for their response to move forward, like how we have to enter our name and then wait for Alexa to ask us the next question. This is analogous to how we command such machines, and then the dream that Ishmal had where the machine started having control of her instead.
Regarding the filming of the movie, the angles of the film were very specifically taken with close ups that portrayed the facial expressions very precisely and the lighting placement was also done very specifically to make sure that the scene represented a mysterious (horror) theme from the beginning. Some angles, such as those when Ishmal walks towards her room with the lights open, were intentionally taken from the back in order to portray a silhouette of Ishmal so that the user can immerse themselves in the movie so that they can feel themselves in the place of Ishmal. The scenes had to be retaken multiple times in order to make sure that the subsequent connecting scenes were very consistent and at some places we had to use another phone's screen, instead of having a flashlight, to only have just the adequate amount of lighting required by placing it at some specific angles, specifically in those cases where the lights were mostly off and Ishmal's facial expression had to be focused upon.
The sound choice in the video editing aspect of the movie was also very intentional to create mystery especially the sound when the shadow appears for the first time as that sets the theme for the remaining of the movie. There were also a few very subtly placed soundtracks like the heartbeat of ishmal at instances and also the footsteps of the shadow which support the thriller theme of the movie. Sound tracks like those at the end of the movie, also have a very thoughtful reasoning since it was supposed to give off a relatively positive vibe towards the end, after an intense nightmare, in order to show the happiness that comes without dependence on tehcnology.
Reflection and Evaluation: From this project, I have learnt that if you are dedicated enough, then regardless of the hurdles or challenges that you face, the end product can turn out to be very decent as it takes the amount of effort you put in along with the motivation that you have for such a project. At first, we started off with an entirely different script and plot on which we spent days and nights working on, filming at a location off campus and writing a very detailed and elaborate script. However, some circumstances that were not in our control prohibited us from completing that movie as a product and so only some 48 hours before the project was due, we had to utilize evry minute to come up with an even better idea and start writing the script. We spent an entire night, non stop to film the movie with multiple takes of every scene, while editing it simultaneously to check the flow of the movie. It was tremendous teamwork that our team showed with each person taking one aspect of the project to cover. The learning opportunity with such an experience was not what I had expected and it has honestly taught me a great deal of improvisation. It was also not only the drift in the storyline, but in fact we had to improvise scenes from the original script on the spot as we were filming since some scenes had to be edited on the spot to make them more consistent and connected and it is when you start filming, along with the experience that you have in such work which helps you end up with a beautiful product.
Through this project, I also learned extensive editing of mp4 clips, mp3 audios and animations on Premiere Pro and it definitely helped me polish my skills further in such a platform which I will definitely make use of in the near future since I explored some skill that I really enjoyed working on and would like to further develop it.