{"id":5015,"date":"2014-09-17T08:00:45","date_gmt":"2014-09-17T15:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/?p=5015"},"modified":"2016-05-16T19:01:10","modified_gmt":"2016-05-17T02:01:10","slug":"texting-portrayed-in-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/texting-portrayed-in-film\/","title":{"rendered":"Texting Portrayed in Film"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An editor by day, filmmaker Tony Zhou has a series of videos that are both entertaining and educational, especially &#8220;A Brief Look at Texting and the Internet in Film.&#8221; In it, he&#8217;s taken excerpts of films from the last decade and provided a voiceover commentary to his compilation about which highlights how the portrayal of text messaging and the internet on screen has evolved.<\/p>\n<p>[vimeo]https:\/\/vimeo.com\/103554797[\/vimeo]<\/p>\n<p>According to Zhou, the best examples utilize motion graphics rather than literal shots of phones and screens. Sometimes the text is by itself and sometimes it&#8217;s wrapped in bubbles, emulating the user interface design of various apps we&#8217;ve come to recognize.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/bbc-sherlock-holmes.gif\" alt=\"bbc-sherlock-holmes\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-5057\" \/><\/p>\n<p>One of the most well-liked example in this video spanning decades of examples comes from the BBC&#8217;s &#8220;Sherlock Holmes&#8221; series and Netflix&#8217;s &#8220;House of Cards.&#8221; In the former example, we see things like a character blowing while the text message reactions to the motion; in the latter, we see letters being typed as the character types them.<\/p>\n<p>Since Zhou&#8217;s trimmed-down &#8220;explainer&#8221; video is intentionally not an exhaustive list of use cases, commenters have added to his list, referencing examples like &#8220;Man on Fire&#8221;, in which a character yells as the text gets larger. Other cinephiles brought praised films like &#8220;Her&#8221; and &#8220;The Departed&#8221; for their portrayal. Surprisingly to some, usages of texting and the Internet in &#8220;The Social Network&#8221; just didn&#8217;t make Zhou&#8217;s final cut.<\/p>\n<p>After the edit went up online, a debut trailer for an upcoming film made yet another unique use of the texting monograph. Take a look at this from Jason Reitman&#8217;s &#8220;Men, Women, and Children.&#8221; The film just premiered at Toronto.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Men, Women &amp; Children - Teaser Trailer (HD)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Ri2m3k2k7Qo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This isn&#8217;t just a conversation for the fans &#8211; other filmmakers and designers are also joining in on the conversation. Screenwriter John August, who we interviewed recently on the FWD:labs blog, also brought up the piece in a <a href=\"http:\/\/johnaugust.com\/2014\/texting-in-film-and-television\">recent blog post, saying<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In ten years, some of our choices will look quaint and foolish, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the fun and challenge of making new things.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.subtraction.com\/2014\/08\/18\/portrayals-of-texting-in-film\/\">Subtraction<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An editor by day, filmmaker Tony Zhou has a series of videos that are both entertaining and educational, especially &#8220;A Brief Look at Texting and the Internet in Film.&#8221; In it, he&#8217;s taken excerpts of films from the last decade and provided a voiceover commentary to his compilation about which highlights how the portrayal of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design","category-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5015"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6067,"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5015\/revisions\/6067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}