Final Project Detailed Proposal.

Daniel M. Koo

Convergence & Culture

10/21/2015

            The vast majority of people in the world today spend their lives plugged in, linked up, and surfing the web. Phones, tablets, computers, videogame systems, cable boxes, and Blu-ray players all come with some form of internet access. It’s a learning tool, a distribution tool, and an entertainment tool of varying quality. Sometimes this takes precedence and becomes the main use for a device, tablet, computers, and phones. Other times the device uses internet access as a special feature with limited capability, cable boxes, gaming systems, and Blu-ray players.

            The access you have to sources of information, literature, music, or film and television is practically dizzying. It’s impossible not to know something if we wish to learn about it. Each day the internet grows into a more expansive sub-universe to the one we live in today. Although we have access to such great power in the palms of our hands, it’s hilariously underused by most. The internet is more often than not used for entertainment overall. Memes seen on social media platforms like Facebook, Tumblr, and funny videos on YouTube are perfect examples. And social media sites that are created for networking purposes can end up overrun by people in their late teens or early twenties, and used as a battle ground for cyber bullying, flame wars, etc.

            Granted this is only part of what is done online, but it is this aspect that I’m going to cover in my final project for Convergence Culture. I plan to put together a short comedy narrative piece, with a running time somewhere in the range of three to five minutes. I plan to depict a main character who is so attached to his devices and the internet, he is devastated when forced to function over one day without any internet access. I plan to base this off of experiences and observations I have made over periods of time, meaning no formal research is planned in preparation for this piece. Although a good source of inspiration I have not yet ruled out may be articles and stories of people who did not take being separated from their digital devices well and suffered withdrawals.

            I haven’t necessarily considered a message for my audience, my work typically isn’t about messages, I see them as comments overall. In this case I wanted to make a comment on what I think the average person would act like considering they got cut off from their devices and internet access for a full twenty four hours. Ask anyone how they would live without a phone, and most people would tell you they could do it, the reason they give that answer is because they know they’ll never have to be without anything. Only rarely will you ever come across that one realistic person who knows they’ll feel as though they’re missing something massive. And this is a fair truth, because no one wants to be outside of that kind of connectivity. I believe the majority of people feel a need to be in the know about anything and everything, our devices give us that ability.

            I want to make this project because I’ve always been interested in give this very big, “What if,” scenario some kind of dramatization. Yes I am hoping people will have fun with the little gags and jokes I plan to spread throughout the short. But I also hope that they get something real out of the short even in the slightest sense. I’m not sure this project will, make change, in any real sense, but I’d like to get people to think of where we are ‘now’ in this world, in our lifetime. This luxury we’ve all become accustomed to, is no longer a luxury, or so I believe. No, it’s transformed into a need for many and most certainly without a doubt for me.

            To translate this idea into a film, or any other form of media is very important to me because it is exactly how I feel every day. If I complete this project, and if I do so successfully, hopefully I can give people an idea as to how I think, and how I observe the world functioning. Filmmakers are notorious for speaking through their imagery and dialogue to a wide range of people. If you’re a b-movie studio releasing exploitation film after exploitation film, you’re telling the world you don’t need hundred million dollar contracts to make a movie. If you’re the maker of a Nightmare on Elm Street, you’re scaring an entire generation of people by sharing something that scared you as a little kid. And if you’re me, you just want to make people understand why you feel how you feel, and hopefully make someone smirk, smile, or laugh in the process.