Modern Media Distractions

Jesse and I sought out to produce a short film that told the story of how modern day media and technology can distract people. We shot the film in a very short time period knowing that we could make our footage work with the editing techniques we intended to use. The story followed myself arriving at Hunter College, seemingly late for class yet constantly distracted by phone calls, texts, conversations with friends, and even vending machines. The final product was edited into black and white, and accompanied by a 1920's style piano bar score that contrasted the context of the story.

My character is distracted by modern media and technology yet we showed this in classical throwback style. When shooting, our main goal was to make my journey through the school as seamless as possible. This meant story boarding every scene which helped maintain the 180 degree rule throughout the entire film. As can be seen in the film, the shots run very smoothly and integrate well with the piano bar score.

The decision to edit the film into black and white and exclude dialogue were vital to our conceptual goals. We replaced dialogue with text slides that often included jokes that added additional comedic value. We edited the text slides right after a specific shot to act almost like a punch-line. The shot would be shown and the text would follow and make a joke about what was just seen.

During pre-production, we conceptualized everything that we wanted the film to be, thus the post-production process didn't spark any notable changes to what we were trying to do.

When we showed the film to the class, it was enjoyed by mostly everyone because it was very easy to follow and it was something that everyone can relate to, especially as Hunter students. Our main goal was to offer a narrative on modern day media distractions in a classical film style and this is exactly what we produced.

If we were to do the film over, the only notable change that we would make would to be shoot more footage to make the editing process easier. At times, we had to really work to make shots appear seamless and flow with the smoothness we wanted, and more footage would have made that easier.