Have you ever watched a fictional film that explores the positives of the Internet and social media? If the answer is no, which I wouldn't be surprised it was, get ready for Lost Online. Originally intended to be a short film, Lost Online is an interactive story about a young woman, Aliya, who finds herself trapped in an unknown place. She makes a post online asking for help. The audience will identify with a character called Jeremy, who sees her post and has to make decisions on if he will help and how he can do so. Will you be able to get her out?

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Why does this need to be made?

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The Internet isn't going anywhere and neither is social media. The image below shows that in the past 16 years the percentage of internet users worldwide have risen by 39.3%, meaning almost half of the entire population have access to the web (Internet Live Stats, 2016). What's more by the third quarter of 2016 the largest social media entity, Facebook, had almost 2 billion active users (Statista, 2017).

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                                                                                    (Internet Live Stats, 2016)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I personally feel that society is bombarded with films and news that demonises social media in particular, despite the fact that it's growing at an incredibly fast rate. I find this is quite hypocritical given that these same entities will use social media to promote their work. What's more, in my primary research I found that most people think that the Internet and social media has positively impacted their life (SurveyMonkey, 2017), so why is that we constantly see films showing us how we can be negatively impacted? The overall ambition of Lost Online is to bring to light the positives that the Internet and social media can bring & show us how it can help us grow as a society. I don't want to convert people who are against using the Internet and social media, although it would it great if I could. I want people who are already regularly using them to realise the power they have with it to help others and to make a real change in people's lives.

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Lost Online intends to use a range of apps and websites. I have chosen to use Facebook, Snapchat, Whatsapp and Youtube. The reason for this is because they came up the top four choices in my primary research (SurveyMonkey, 2017). I don't to use apps which aren't known by many people, because I think Lost Online will already have a niche enough market as it is. Google will also be the homepage when Jeremy uses the Internet, because it is the world's biggest search engine, with over 2 trillion searches a year (Smith, 2017). Given that the websites and apps I will be using are used worldwide, Lost Online has the potential to become global, within its niche market.

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Influences

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The video below influenced me immensely, on what content to include in the short film. The spoken word poetry by Tyler Joseph (DeCardy 2012), who is a member of the band Twenty Øne Piløts, brought to light how it is down to each individual on how they choose to act online. They have to make choices every time they log onto a social media site, on whether they will have a positive influence or a negative one. This gave me the idea to make Lost Online interactive because it would replicate the real world, where people have to make choices in their everyday life. I decided Lost Online would give the audience a choice on whether they were going to help Aliya and how they would do so.

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Narrative

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I have created a story map, which I'd like to think is my penultimate version. There are five different endings (in pink) and a couple are somewhat similar to each other. There are a mixture of happy and sad endings depending on the choices the audience make and their experience can last anywhere from 3 minutes to 15 minutes. I will have to create a script for each eventuality but they will start from the orange arrow on the left.

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