• How do your products represent social groups or issues?
My products represent social groups or issues through various ways. I believe that the short film can bring awareness to the dangers of social media. In the past, I’ve always put a subtle theme of how powerful social media can be. In today's day in age social media has become a part of the way we communicate with one another. It has become one of the main ways we communicate. Social media has the ability to connect people, keep people in touch, and share news. Although there are a lot of positive aspects, there are some negative aspects that social media can bring. Social media allows people to become anonymous. Anonymity gives users the ability to disguise themselves to lure their victims in. Since the victims can’t truly know who’s on the other side of the screen, they can’t defend themselves. It hides the true identity of a predator. Another issue that the film can bring into life is the gender stereotype of only men being the predator. Yes, the majority cases, the man is the one that preys on the victim of their choice. However, there are cases that women are the predators that prey on victims. These types of cases do not receive the same amount of recognition as the others. This film shows the audience to always be careful. Even though the film is the main form of representation, the other products like the postcard, website, and platforms, help in solidifying what the film represents.
• How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?
The elements that we tried to merge together are social media and miami. Two things that really don’t have much in common. However, we made it work. We used how popular social media is and pointed out the flaws that it has. The social media that was highlighted in the film was Instagram, but our message of branding can be applied to all social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook, Tiktok, Snapchat, and even Linkedin. In every major city, social media is heavily used. Here in South Florida you constantly see individuals tagging locations such as our beaches, restaurants, city, park, and just about everywhere else with a view in South Florida and that is about every single place you go down here. So when creating the story we wanted the sense of branding to show flashy ‘Instagram worthy’ locations, and how those locations can lead to in-person stocking or kidnapping situations which have happened several times in our community and around the world. Throughout the film, we connected social media with Miami by filming at some of the most popular places in South Florida. We filmed at the second largest statue in North America the Gulfstream Pegasus, which has been tagged a total of 58,608 times on Instagram. Then we filmed in Wynwood, Florida which has been tagged more than 3.4 million times on Instagram. Likewise, we filmed at Las Olas which has been tagged over 366 thousand times. These locations were utilized to build a brand and show the audience a connection between how easy it is for someone to track one’s location via Social Media.
• How do your products engage with the audience?
The products engage the audience in special ways. I decided that it was important to make sure that the audience has the ability to connect with the film and the other products as well. With whatever the message of a film may be, it’s important that it engages with the audience. Even though the main purpose of a film is to entertain its audience, it needs to do this while being engaging. Ways to engage the audience can be through different ways. One being to allow the audience to interpret scenes and use their imagination. Another being allowing the audience to identify with an event of a story and project its meaning. The last being to allow the audience to pinpoint certain things within the story that explains events that happened. We chose to use the second way of engaging the audience. Since the story itself is about the dangers of social media and never knowing who a person is, we thought it best to let the audience relate to it. We wanted to challenge them to view their own social media habits. Who they were interacting with. If they really knew the kind of person they are. The amount of information that they are letting be known. The film is engaging through asking the audience if they are using social media safely. After watching the film, the audience should self reflect. The other products like the postcard, website, and platforms are used to promote the film. Since it helps in promoting the film, it’s helping spread the awareness of how to use social media safely. Of course, the film is to be interpreted in any way the audience sees fit, so they will engage with it how they feel.
• How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?
Our Short film challenges the positives and negatives of social media. We wrote our short film to bring to light some of the many dangers present with social media. As seen in our product we show how easily social media can be stalked and how much information can be leaked and gained. Our product shows how easy it would be for someone to stalk someone anonymously and ‘introduce’ themselves’. This can and does happen often when individuals make friendships seem natural and innocent. When in reality they are being forced into friendship due to the large amount of information individuals release via social media. Our product challenges our audience to break the social conventions of constantly updating and sharing information with large masses of people on social media. Iit can lead to a clear and present danger in the future much like our main character Leo ran into during the short film. Although our short film had a dramatic ending of death, it is really not. Every year nearly 134 children are kidnapped due to social media contact. Some of these children were never found and still remained lost, so this dramatic ending for our main character could be compared as peaceful to the real pain social media has caused others. Likewise over forty-one percent of individuals have had a bad experience dealing with social media. Our film does not blatantly tell the audience to stop using social media, but it challenges them to reevaluate the necessity of constant location updates and posting as it could lead to kidnapping, harassment, or even death.
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