The film is inspired by Google’s previous advertising film “Parisian Love”, which is a romantic love story in Paris with the search and entry of Google interface as a carrier. The director Aneesh Chaganty was inspired after watching the short film, and now we see such an innovative film with a full-screen view as the narrative carrier.
The story of the film tells the story of a father who, after his daughter’s disappearance, searches for her through various social media tools such as Facebook, youtube, google, etc. The film’s entire story is based on a subjective point of view, whether it’s a computer screen or a camera screen, which gives the audience a sense of immersive reality.
The director deliberately created many familiar operating environments, such as the window desktop, folder directory, video chat, browser pop-ups and other shots, to visually close the distance between the viewer’s heart and the film, so that the entire film from the narrative point of view brought about a change in the viewing experience, enough to bring the audience an extremely novel experience and shocking feelings.
For the all-subjective shooting method, the director needs to deal with a big problem is how to convey the emotion through the cold computer screen, and then advance the story, so here we have to mention a very delicate and sensitive technique: action memory.
The director cleverly uses the rhythm and speed of typing to show the psychological state of the characters behind the screen. For young people familiar with social media, the emotions conveyed by the screen are not only limited to its images, such as the right mouse button to delete, the long stay on the confirmation button, the repeated deletion of messages and then typing state, the precise capture of these screen movements makes the film without too many lines, the audience can have a better understanding of This is a very important and clever means for the film to succeed.
The film’s breakthrough in filming techniques also reflects the transformation of the role of social networks in real life and the reflection of gradual diversification. When the network tools are no longer tools but personal information or even privacy, the original intention of sharing becomes a bargaining chip that can be used.
In the 1960s, the famous hacker Kevin Mitnick reigned supreme with his social engineering methods, making the human vulnerability under information security nowhere to hide. Fifty years later, almost everyone may complete an art of deception similar to his. The relationships and behaviors of people gradually become information nodes, and the huge net system formed by each node is enough to make people’s past lives visible at a glance, and the social thinking brought by the film is equally shocking.
The whole film seems to be about a strange case of disappearance, but inside it is a return to the conflict and reconciliation between the rise of children’s individualism and the traditional patriarchal system in the modernization process. To enter his daughter’s social account is like entering her other inner world.
From the father’s point of view, companionship is not the same as understanding, and relatives are not the same as knowing each other. Instead of pulling each other in their own worlds and trying to impose ideas and thoughts on each other, the two generations should respect each other’s values and find an effective balance in the conflict, which is the core of the film’s affection.
