Karolina's Research Blog

Here's another article I looked at in terms of the we are always being watched topic. Article - Hennesey, M. 2018. Siri, Why Do I Feel Like I'm Being Watched? WSJ. https://www.wsj.com/articles/siri-why-do-i-feel-like-im-being-watched-1533935861 This article talks about someone's experience of having a virtual assistant. The author says that we can "kiss our privacy goodbye" because of such inventions, since they are always listening, like the time the parents had doll houses and toys delivered to their house after their daughter had talked to their virtual assistant, which bought the things she had told it to buy. This article made me think about how much we really don't have privacy and it gives many people, including myself sometimes, a sense of paranoia because we know that we are being listened to by virtual assistants, and there is a possibility that we are being watched through the cameras of our personal devices such as laptops and phones, and also...

I talked to others about their ideas, and because I was a little bit stuck with my own idea, I decided to group up with someone who was doing a short film about surveillance and the theme of how in this modern age, we are always being watched. So I decided to do some research on this topic as well to get a better understanding. Article - Stone, B. 2017. Is Alexa Really Eavesdropping on You? Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/technology This article discusses a topic that is often questioned ever since virtual assistants were developed. The one invented by Amazon, called Alexa, was suspected to be sending data to the government after people asked the virtual assistant whether it's working for the government and sending them information about the user. The answer gave many people suspicions as it took a longer time to answer their question. Many videos were uploaded onto YouTube about this issue and conspiracy theories about virtual assistants were also becoming more popular...

The story of this short film (if there is such a thing) is quite unrelated to the story I am going to attempt to tell, however, I really like the aesthetics and composition of shots in it. The slow motion is also something that I feel looks quite interesting, which I will try to do with some of my shots. The lighting is also something that I find nice, and for shots at night, I will use as much given light as possible and not use my own light to give it a more realistic feel. I have also noticed for most of the short, the camera is hand held, which adds to the feel that we are watching the subjects with our own eyes. I think that is a great technique to make the audience feel more involved, and more part of the film. 

This short film caught my attention because I wanted to explore the idea of homesickness and nostalgia in my own short. I feel like this one, called Homesick, has really showed how I wanted my main character to feel like. In the end, the character of Homesick realises that she has to move on and that it's better to think about the new opportunities that arise with moving away from home, rather than thinking about how much she wants to go back. I want to give my character the same kind of way of looking at things and present them as trying to have a positive outlook on life. 

I didn't only want to look at articles but also short films for inspiration and to get an idea of what I want my short film to look like.  This first one is possibly one of my biggest inspirations. The short film was made because the creator learned that his parents were moving out of his childhood home, where the parents lived for over 20 years. I can relate to my own idea as the main character of mine has just moved out of his childhood home of 18 years and is starting a new life in a different place. From this, I understood how hard it is to move away from somewhere that you spent most of your life in, and how hard it is to let go of the memories that make someone want to stay living there for a longer time. I have my own experience, but it has been a couple of years since I moved away from my childhood home, so this was a good reminder for me that it can be very difficult to say goodbye to such a big and important part of our lives. I really like how this short looks,...

Article - Burdick, A. (2016) Why I'm Nostalgic For Decades I've Never Lived In. The Odyssey. https://www.theodysseyonline.com/why-im-nostalgic-for-decades-ive-never-lived-in I felt that it was important to see someone's point of view and not just look at nostalgia from a neutral view. I wanted to see why someone might feel nostalgia that was not caused by the music they grew up on. The author of the article wants to go back to the 1920s, which has most likely been a longer time before their parents were born, therefore it is most likely that they feel nostalgia towards it because of recent trends in fashion, and the way life used to be before many technology advancements that we live with today. The author does seem to realise that those times were much worse equality wise but still feel a certain fondness towards the culture, such as music, tv, fashion, etc. This helped me in thinking about nostalgia more, and thinking about my approach to the main character of my film...

Article - Hamer, A. (2017) There Are 2 Different Types of Nostalgia. Curiousity.com https://curiosity.com/topics/there-are-two-types-of-nostalgia-which-do-you-feel-curiosity/ This article talks about 2 different types of nostalgia. I read this article as I wanted to know what kinds of nostalgia there are, as even though I knew there was more than one type from experience, I didn't know if this was scientifically proven. The 2 types of nostalgia identified are restorative and reflective. Restorative means our brain wants us to recreate the situation we feel nostalgic for, forgetting about the bad parts, while reflective means that we realise that it wasn't all nice, but we still miss how things were at that time. I felt like what I wanted my character in my film to be like is the latter, him not trying to go back to how things were, but reminiscing fondly of how his life used to be.

Because it was such a prominent thing in the theme of my film, I decided to research the topic of nostalgia. I found many things that interested me a lot. They also helped me develop ideas for my film. I thought that by researching nostalgia, I would be able to find a reason why we feel it and the case of having a sense of nostalgia towards a time that we didn't live through ourselves. Article  - Marantz Henig, R. (2013)  Nostalgia for a Time You Didn't Know. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/cusp/201309/nostalgia-time-you-didnt-know This article is about the nostalgia I think we all feel, the type of nostalgia that perhaps doesn't make quite a lot of sense, as we haven't lived through that time which we feel the nostalgia for. It seems many feel similarly about this. The author of the article discussed that we often feel nostalgic for the music that was being played throughout our very early years of life, and this could mean that we feel ...