Live
Logline:
When a girl begins to live in her first apartment with her roommate, she also begins to share too much of her life on a social media therapy app called ViCare.
Synopsis:
Shortly after discovering ViCare, a counseling service for the virtually inclined, the college sophomore Lily moved into her first apartment with friend and former fling, Emilia. When the two host a housewarming party, Lily carelessly shares on ViCare their less-than platonic past. After Emilia discovers that her private life has been made public, Lily is forced to choose between her followers online and her friend in real life.
Director’s Statement
Sometimes, when reality is stranger than fiction, fiction becomes our only way to understand it. This, for me, is the case with my short film I am producing, ‘Live.’ Centered around the lives of two roommates in their first-ever apartment and how one of them broadcasts that to the internet, ‘Live’ explores the ramifications of our rapidly technologizing world and the growing pressure to live life online.
‘Live,’ is more than just a capstone project in my Filmmaking major for me – it is a comprehensive display of all that I am interested in. The idea at the core of ‘Live’ was something I had initially investigated with a research paper for my other major, English; fascinated by my peers’ tendency to seemingly place their digital life before their real one, I wrote on the psychoanalytic implications of using Instagram. What I found was remarkable to me: as it seems, instead of supplementing users’ means of self-representation, Instagram, in fact, limits them – keeping posters on their platform in a never-ending cycle of dissatisfaction. My interest in the subject wasn’t satisfied, either – the research paper inspired what would become the beginnings of ‘Live’ in a short story of the same name.
Now, adapted into a screenplay, ‘Live’ embodies all that I have learned and witnessed in both my academic and creative careers. Nevertheless, what is at the heart of ‘Live’ is not theory, but what, to me, is the essence of living: love and friendship. While it is my belief – and one I intend to show – that these qualities have become increasingly complicated in reference to social media, what ‘Live’ attempts to show is that it is not relationships that are complex, but the people behind them.
