MED 2209 Digital ShortsMegan Phillips, Sarah Smith & Neelam Sabir

Directors Statement for Selfie.Story: Selfie.Define, Selfie:Noun (Plural, selfies) A photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media. Origin: Early 21st century. The selfie, having started off as an internet curiosity has now become an official mainstream trend. 2013s word of the year, is this vain medium a form of art or simply a duck faced cry for Instagram attention?What is the story about?The story revolves around the lives of three Edge Hill University students. Initially exploring their University friendship, the film then ventures on to engage with their interrelated trips home. Split into three sections we witness the journey, the out comings and the people involved over a time period of a weekend. A look back into the past, to where they came from and what they left behind, however, the story also travels forward as Selfie, is a photomontage film entirely made up of the modern phenomena of selfies, taken using IPhones. Genre?Categorised as real, Selfie, could fall into numerous film genres, such as: Documentary Biography BiopicOur HerosSelfie, consists of three main protagonists, Megan Phillips, Neelam Sabir and Sarah Smith, these being each of the three Edge Hill students. Collectively they all have the same one goal, to reach home. Once each of them arrives there, this is when their stories take their own personal shape, depending on what each hero does with her weekend. InspirationOne inspiration for the project idea came our own love for selfies and our avid user ship of photo sharing social media sites. However, the main stimulus came from a generations selfie movement and the many celebrities to have made selfies famous, particularly Kim Kardashian. Kim Kardashian is the queen of selfies and a trailblazer for the selfie movement. In her most recent advert, for T Mobile, she features poking fun at her career as a reality star. One of the most anticipated super bowl adverts of 2015.Her new book, Selfish, sees Kim connect with her fans through never before seen personal images as one of the most recognisable celebrities in Hollywood. How the film will be released?

Selfie, will be released as an internet short film via the video sharing site, YouTube. Just like many music videos found on the site the feature is three minutes long. This length ensures us we are not likely to lose viewer attention. Its short extent could prove beneficial and even gain us viewers. If the video was well received it would also be uploaded onto other video dedicated sites such as Vimeo.

Selfie, wouldnt benefit from airing on a television channel, with a given date and time slot. It would however, reap rewards from being posted on their websites. For example, currently on Channel 4s on demand channel, 4oD, they have a whole section dedicated to Shorts.

In addition to a post on YouTube it will also be despatched on various social media sites, primarily Facebook. This gives users the opportunity to watch as it appears on their Newsfeed and react with either liking or sharing the post. Being no longer than three minutes long, this is an idea with a lot of plausibility, as it is more than likely not to lose viewers attention. The film will strive via this marketing as it desires the need to be watched time and time again by various people, at various times and locations, on various devices.

What will the Director bring to the project?As one of the Directors, I bring many qualities to the project. Predominantly, I am a Producer and/or a Production Manager but taking on new roles and challenges continuously gives me opportunity to widen my skill base.

On previous developments I have been both behind and in front of the camera, which, in this case, is perfect. Being comfortable around a camera I am more than able to take stills using my IPhone, to add to this I also know my way around both video and photo editing software such as Final Cut, Adobe Premiere Pro and Photoshop. This will come to use when suppressing the images and putting them together in a sequence. It is also beneficial that I am an avid user of the social media app, Instagram, in which I take, design and edit photos on my phone.

Unique vision for the script

Having split the story into three sections, this has put us in charge of our own script, giving us the power of being our own lead author. My selfies therefore all correlate around the subject of family. The idea being that my own household becomes a symbol for the people weve all left behind. Only able to visit them on weekends, this is a similar story for the other two Directors. In pictures it would also appear that although they come across as a typical British family, the fact that we are all blood related makes them very unique to just me. This concept will be enhanced through my choice of sound effects. I hope to make both diegetic and non-diegetic sounds symbolise my own family in ways that only make sense to me. I may, for example, choose to use the themes to particular television programmes that we enjoy watching together as background noise. This vision shall also be enhanced via a narrative script I intend to overlay being about my family.VisionCinematic style? All photos will be taken using square framing in order to highlight the idea of the images being hand held self-portraits, via IPhones. The idea being that pictures taken will be representative of those that wed usually take in everyday lives. The initiative is to take them with the mind-set that theyre being posted onto our social media sites. However, well also be aiming to make the images appear more aesthetically pleasing than your average selfie. When taking the selfies, we aim for them to appear flattering yet casual just as normal photos would, with the inclusion of people, all taken at arms length. The only difference being that hopefully a variety of shot types and angles will be explored. With the purchase of a selfie stick we could use this in replacement of a tripod, enabling us to shoot images that can fit larger quantities of people in from a higher angle. We do not want our selfies to have a Snapchat, feel about them as many of these images are taken and sent for comedic affect and that is not something we want to achieve.