“Our embrace of high-tech gadgetry could turn life into a series of rushed encounters and clipped exchanges, producing ideas of diminishing depth.” – Langdon Winner

What effect does “instant communication” have on you? What effect does “instant communication” have on your relationships with other people?

Corners of our lives once sheltered from direct technological intervention are now bombarded by the demands of incoming and outgoing messages … However, people text-message alone. It is mainly an isolating experience in society … Of its role in the future only one thing is certain: it will be larger than ever before. – S.D. Robinson

Film Creation Idea:
Write a script for a text messaging dialogue between two friends (they are not face-to-face) for one of the following scenarios:

• two friends discuss running against each other in the student council election
• two friends argue about an environmental issue
• a person tells a friend who has taken a part-time job that he/she is upset that they are spending less time together.

Film your script while paying particular attention to your actors non-verbal behaviour, watch out for various types of body language. Add the “dialogue” – the text messages – as titles to each scene in iMovie. It is not necessary to have any audio captured with the video at all.

• What is the person doing with his or her hands? Is the individual tapping a finger on a table? Are the arms crossed?
• What is the position of the individual’s body? Is the person leaning forward? Leaning back? Is the body turned away from another person?
• What is the position of the individual’s legs? Are they crossed? Is the person tapping his/her foot?
• Where are the eyes looking?
• Does the person smile? frown? yawn? cough?

Consider these and other questions in your planning:

• Who are my 2 friends? Describe their emotional and psychological states, too.
• Where are they? Remember that the video you shoot will be shot at school.
• What is the issue? What point are you trying to make?
• How will you show that their conversation is rushed, incomplete, frustrating?
• How can you show that their responses to each other lack depth?
• How can you show or demonstrate how alone they really are?
• How can you demonstrate how texting is an isolating experience?
• How can you show them being “bombarded by the demands of incoming and outgoing messages”

Consider capturing/grabbing your iPhone/iPod message screen and then get those pics into an iMovie.