Welcome Back! Long time, no see.

Hi! This is my first A-Level post. I took AS two years ago when I was 14. Jumping back in feels so unsettling-- everything has changed so much. Here goes nothing.

Black Mirror "White Christmas" starring John Hamm

I will be the first to admit that I have put off this posting all week. Maybe that's due to the end-of-high-school anxiety that this final project signifies or the enormous amount of ill-advised binge watching of Netflix... either way here I am, thinking about media, as usual. I am currently listening to Ed Sheeran's new album (bless Great Britain for this man... and clotted cream) on my iPhone but playing on my Apple TV and controlling it through my Apple Watch, ahhhhh the sound of convergence is so sweet. Anyway, my rambling is mostly to underscore my extreme addiction to media and technology shared by my peers. This "overuse of media" is, quite ironically, creeping into media. One of my recent binges includes British television series "Black Mirror." The show is ostensibly a modern-day Twilight Zone (don't worry, I've binged that, too), tapping into the trends and panics of the smartphone age instead of the atomic age. In many ways, Black Mirror's similar "stand alone episode" design has seen the same success as the Twilight Zone of the 1960s. While the episodes don't have the appeal of cliffhangers they do cater to the ever inflating love of "bite-sized" media of Generation Z. The ability to choose, to skip around, is simply appealing to modern-day media users as an efficient, yet binge-worthy, series type. The core appeal of the show, however, is the satire involved in creating alternate realities of what our future with technology could hold. We've seen this trend a lot lately with some semi-under-the-radar films like "10 Cloverfield Lane" (2016) which adopts a seventies sci-fi vibe but brilliantly incorporates a thriller plot line. The twists involved in the supposed "chemically-attacked" world above the bunker is a satisfying yet terrifying example of our relationships with technology and weaponry. Many episodes of Black Mirror including "Hated in the Nation," "Men Against Fire," and "Shut up and Dance" expose the physical dangers of technology as weaponry. Again, "The Circle," a book by Dave Eggers, underline and terrify the readers with the possibility of complete convergence. The book is soon to release as a movie on April 28, 2017, in the states.

So after voraciously consuming media about the dangers of media, I want to, obviously, make media about the dangers of media using technology. I never said I could heed the warnings of technology or convergence--that is what is truly fearsome. As I thought about how to draw anyone in with a short film my mind jumped to the Black Mirror/Twilight Zone/The Circle direction and while the thought of robotic bees swarming and killing people by crawling up their noses is terrifying (sorry for spoilers) I began to think of my very worst fears. Failure? Maybe. Nothingness, deprivation? Most definitely. Growing up, I had nightmares of being stuck in some type of expansive purgatory. Completely white, never-ending, and featureless. It would drive anyone to madness if left long enough. So the obvious way to reconcile these fears is to present them as a short film (right?). Just as a brainstorm think: a teenager in his house checking his email on his laptop while watching a show on his tv, texting on his phone (sound familiar?). Wifi goes down, TV disappears, phone, watch, everything. Madness ensues. This is mostly a vague direction in need of tweaking. Despite our fears of the technology revolution presented by media, we are really afraid of losing it all together. If you're a binge-watcher like me, you may get so engrossed in a show that you need to take a media break to "re-connect" with reality (whether it be social media or other outlets) because you've dove so deep into the hyper-reality that shows and movies offer. But what happens if you can't reconnect or engage in hyper-realities at all? For technology natives, at least, it would be torture.

I hope this post provides some background on my direction, or at least my inspirations for what is to come. I would also highly recommend any of the shows/movies/books mentioned in this post (binge-worthy!).

Sources:
http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/17/11255744/10-cloverfield-lane-movie-ending-backlash
http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/10/black-mirror-season-3-review
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/10/the-complex-humanity-of-black-mirror/505811/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Black_Mirror_episodes
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/12/07/emma-watson-tom-hanks-star-trailer-technology-dystopia-film/