The short film, "The Divine Synthetic" was a sci-fi/dystopian film born from a collection of media theories, personal values, and stylistic choices. While creating this film, we wanted to spread the representation of humanity by doing so with a false world and the matter of 'what could be' when it comes to place with advanced technology.
Once our idea was birthed, we spent around two weeks adding additional plot twists and amending characters to keep a clear and concise point of view from the audience throughout the film. The plot centers around Subject #67 who is part of an experiment to recreate human emotion through AI robots in order to restore the dwindling population around the world. The tragedy of the story is that although the robot can comprehend the concept of love and emotions, he cannot feel them, so he opts for the path of self destruction at the end of the film. We knew we had to create an eerie sense of silence to indicate something was off throughout the production, and this is where my research came into handy.
If I am being completely honest, I wish our product engaged a little more with the audience throughout our social media platform. Our main audience goal differed slightly from the average dystopian genre, which is very broad, our film appealed mostly towards young adults and late teens, any gender, and specifically those with certain strong views about technology and how they are shaping our world. (Those who may dislike AI). Because of the age of our target audience, I thought it would be best to market this on Instagram. Not only do a hefty amount of Gen Z kids use Instagram, but it also allows us to post stories, posts, and reels, all including many different media forms on top of this. We could also link our other component which was our YouTube distribution technique, this is an easy way for those who see it on socials to simply just click on a button and be taken to watch the film, which is the simplest and most affective way to get Gen Z to watch something. Finally, I would consider our postcard as the last engaging component as it can be handed out amongst the street, the engaging visuals on the back designed by Daniela can capture your attention and really interest you about all the films components. I really do wish we incorporated more engaging sections through Instagram, such as more polls, Q&A's, and maybe even the beginning of a website or a game to create a more widespread sell of our brand idea.
Speaking of our brand idea, we wanted to create something that brings attention to technology advances while also highlighting small student made productions. We also incorporated younger generation humor within our lighthearted social media posts to draw in our target audience too. Overall, our brand was designed to be though provoking and it's meant to make you think and question how our current world is being played out. As mentioned before, our social media, print component, and actual film all work together to fully get our brand's message across to our audience and spread a general message of humanization . Our social media does so by creating the overall 'aesthetic' of the brand and how it is designed to convey very specific points toward technology and people. It is shown many times with the certain drawings I made and points of emphasis in certain thumbnail postings. Our film itself is rather self explanatory, it highlights the representation of humanity and how it is dire to us humans. Not only does it show a subtle message on the former topic, but visually it represents the merging between the human race and robots through prop design and acting. Finally our print really embodies our brand by showing all of our visuals that best communicate what our production is about while not actually giving it away. It not only creates a clean cut sense with the font and designing, but it also draws attention with the merging of humans and robots in both visual logos on the front and back of the postcard. I truly believe our brand can be improved by tenfold, and this could be done with more continuity and planning on the social media posts. We could have created post's with specific philosophy quotes in relation to the message our brand sends out while also capturing attention with the posts that should stand our from average dystopian postings. I do additionally wish we worked on coloring more with the actual film, specifically matching it will the postcard and social media look. I do believe this is good to keep in mind for the future, as I need to plan way more in advance than I did with this project, and more planning means greater margin for success.
We strived to represent the beauty of humanity and how it cannot be replaced with robotic creations. Although our main character was void of most emotion and lacked just the very thing we were representing, doing this showed the importance of humanity, and I believe it is conveyed when compared to the other character in the film, the engineer. The difference in emotion when they speak tells volumes to the flaws within the robot and how he cannot fully embrace human emotions. Additionally, the montage placed in the middle of the film with older clips is meant to show the beauty of human life. It shows laughter, love, friendship, beauty, and nature, which is everything lacking within the robots life. His growing jealousy of these memory clips fuels his resentment for being create due to the lack of opportunity he has to feel these emotions. By creating this point of view with the robot, we represent the importance of humanity and how it shapes the world. I believe we we're successful in developing our representation goals as it was a part of the film we really thought through at the beginning. We wanted to stray from a romance trope and really focus on the point of making it so that the robot could NOT integrate into human society. I believe we communicated this throughout our production and showed our point as well. I do believe we could have been more clear when it comes to structure and shooting of our film, but I am very proud of how it all came out.
To top it all off, I really think reflecting on my project in this way, planning out all the points I want to make and how there's so many different components that work together to build our production up really shows how much thought and effort is needed to create works like this. It's made me realize that I need to double the amount of effort I put in this time to create a work that can truly represent the idea's I have in my head. I do believe I could have benefitted from more planning and thought with certain things like social media and pre-production planning, but overall I think me and Daniela handled our production really well with the circumstances we came across throughout the process, and we made something that I am very proud of and hope people will enjoy.
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