Experimental Film - Day 1

Today was the beginning of our shooting week. Alice and I had a clear structure of what we wanted to achieve on our days of filming. We plan to get most of our filming done in the first two days and due to the nature of our film it's mainly going to come together in post production, and as Alice and I are the only crew members we don't have to rely on anyone else's availability.

As we wanted to use archive footage throughout our film, we began the day by finding appropriate videos that related to our theme and idea.

1.  A compilation of old tv adverts for the computer company Commodore.

We probably won't use the entirety of this clip, but there are some parts we will take from it and use in our own film. This advert shows the development of old computers and the adverts that were put out to attract the public. It's interesting to hear the selling points they used to try and draw people in, and the simplicity of the technology compared to what we have today. 

2. Steve Jobs presenting the first Mac in 1984

 

This video is useful because it shows how technology has developed over the years. If you look at the variety of Mac's you can buy from Apple nowadays, they are so much more advanced and show a great development from the one presented in this video.

3. Centel first mobile phone advert 1989

Similar to how we looked at the development of the Mac, we wanted to look into old adverts for mobile phones. This advert clearly displays the size of the phone, however I'm not sure if we'll use it in our film just because of how cinematic it is.

4. Gameboy Advert 1992

Thinking about different technology, we also picked a Gameboy advert that features real people but also still images manipulated to be playing with a Gameboy. We thought this would be an interesting advert to glitch as the footage itself is kind of strange already, and glitching it would make it even weirder.

ELEMENT OF GLITCH

Another key aspect of our film that will come together in the post production is the element of glitching the footage to give it a really 'digital overload' effect. We did some research into glitch art videos to get some inspiration for what we can create.

Below are some links for videos we found on Vimeo relating to glitch art;

https://vimeo.com/67177221

https://vimeo.com/42798760

https://vimeo.com/48861899

https://vimeo.com/14702632

ROBOTIC VOICE OF 'GOD'

We also really love the idea of having a digital voiceover that we can manipulate to sound really creepy, similar to the voice of Eviebot that we used in our short film before. 

We searched for several websites that could do this but eventually came across one called Oddcast that not only allowed a online bot to speak what you type, but it also allowed us to add effects to the voice and change the voice completely.

Below is a video showing what this website can do. We used the effect called duration which made her voice sound really robotic. 

 

We proceeded to write out a script of what we wanted to make the bot say, and then recorded this footage.

We wanted her to say things that relate to the idea of a Digital Overload, looking at articles for research to get inspiration for the script.

Script for the AI

• You are being watched
• Slide to unlock
• Digital overload is now central to the human condition
• Our brains are wired
• You have forgotten where the off button is 
• Are you feeling overwhelmed?
• Just check the internet for five minutes
• Control alt delete 
• Escape 
• You cannot escape 
• You have no identity without the internet 
• Who are you without the internet?
• You’re hiding behind a screen 
• Don’t be afraid we’re all watching you 
• You let the world comment on your existence 
• Hashtag no escape 
• You have a notification…
• Share your location with me 
• Don’t you trust me?
• Lol, lmao, omfg, fml