Our film
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f-0fFc8dVRbC0WZP8M2jN514RenFdc8a/view
Photos from the process
Reflections on the process of making the short film
Our idea is to show how Facebook images can function as infrastructural images, leading us from person to person through images and tags on images. It addresses the phenomenon of browsing through random profiles on Facebook, based on subjective interests. We chose Facebook, because Facebook allows you to look at profiles without being observed by other people, as for example on LinkedIn, where people can know when someone visits their profile.
We discussed using Instagram as well, but during our research we concluded that tagging people on Instagram is not as common as on Facebook. Instagram tagging seems to be almost exclusively used as a marketing ploy, and tagging people/friends is more used with a @ as opposed to tagging a profile. We also talked about how Instagram as a medium is more commonly used to “show-off”, and the pictures posted are intentionally made to be aesthetically pleasing and are deliberately made to look a certain way. We see Facebook as a medium to be more private and exclusive.
We decided to use the profile of a young person (under age 20) as a starting point, because we have seen a tendency of tagging each other on profile pictures in the younger generation, and therefore it would be easier to browse through younger people’s profiles. We also decided to start with a person, we weren’t Facebook friends with, so that we only could see the public photos.
We spent some time on discussing what to call the film. We started talking about the title “voyeur”, as in one who “watches” or “observes” other people through Facebook, but we decided that it might have too many sexual connotations. Another suggestion we had was “stalker”, because that is what some of us in the group (girls in our mid-20’s) call ourselves, when we browse through Facebook profiles. Though, as one of the group members pointed out, “stalker” can have extreme and unlawful connotations to the older generation, as stalking as an actual act that can be punished by law, which was not what we wanted to explore with our film.
We chose to not only show the browsing through profiles but also the face of the person who does it, to make the style of our film more scenario-like and more like a real documentary, so that spectators had the possibility of identifying with the person sitting browsing, and to highlight that being a “Facebook voyeur” or “Facebook stalker” is completely normal, not just weirdos do it.
Digital Design Portfolio 