Mobile Phone Concept - Development of Idea

I have decided to go on and produce the idea around mobile phones through the decades, how it has changed and combine it with fashion and styles to fit the era of the mobile, when it was produced. To make sure i get all of the contents right in this project, i will do research on the fashion through the decades, the model of phone: when it was produced and the language through the years, certain slang words used, to accentuate the sound of the piece.
As shown in my presentation notes, i have collected a range of different mobile phones from different eras to show its development. I have chosen a style of portraiture, inspired by I.D. magazine, which has been produced since the 80's up to current times. I have taken note on clothes, make up and hair styling and also the back drops, lighting and framing of the portrait. I ideally want to keep the images simple, yet effective with the way the model and mobile is displayed, with the sound playing the key role in the video piece.
Break down of sound:
Opening sequence, want to have a person on a phone from the 80's, having a conversation about how they love their new phone and how more people should get one.
Transition into more people in the 80's era (a mixture of boys and girls), speaking in appropriate lingo from the era.
Transition into 90's, mobiles and attire related, talking in the era lingo, bring more people in the mixture all on mobile phones. Presented in a collage formation, using key words and having the conversations merge over each other, but clear enough so you hear certain words, specific to talking about their new mobile phone and how its getting better, encouraging one another to keep up to trend with the latest technology as it progresses.
Fading into the early 20's, when now mobile phones can be customised in colour cases, suited to the person. Talking about how their phone matches their wardrobe and how they are more 'connected'.
moving through the 2000's, changing images more rapidly, conversations are getting longer, and more overlapping. Mobiles are upgrading continuously, allowing you to do more things. Showing texting and conversations talking about how they can take clearer pictures, how they can customise with phone cases, skype and facetime calls, and the latest technology trends. 'Hey have you heard about the new iphone upgrade due next week?'. 
Ending shots of a group of people, around the era of 2015, all with their mobile phones in front of their faces, visually representing how the device has become apart of the person. In a collage montage, i want to put images around a person who is without a mobile phone, the sounds of text tones and ring tones echo through, and loud speak conversations talking about how the latest technology. The person in the middle who is without a phone will say, 'I wish you guys would actually talk to me, instead of hiding behind your phone all the time'. The conversations will fade out with the images, leaving the person in the middle to fade out last, ending with a dial tone noise, abrupt cut.

I want to show a variety of both male and female, from different backgrounds. The aim of the piece is to show how through the decades the mobile phone has changed and become a major part of our society and how it affects people who dont have the privilege of having one. The outcome will be to show the effects of losing real time communication with one another, because were so preoccupied with something 'better', on our screens.
The most important part of this piece is the sound, to express this message to the audience. Text tones, ring tones, lingo and conversations relating to technology and mobile phones in general.

Family Archive Footage Idea

One of my ideas for this project, was to use family archive footage and transform it into a sort of memory game. I have 13 DVDs, and will go through them to chose select scenes and then get my sister and other family members to guess what happens next by pausing the video and each saying their thoughts and then playing it to see who was right. To portray each persons thoughts, i was going to use actors or maybe drawings and then play the footage after and see who was closest, shown in a dream like state or a flashback. I was going to do this about 4 or 5 times, just showing the best few ideas, creating a sort of humorous feel to the piece. For sound, i was going to use a voice over from my family and maybe add some upbeat backing track under the re-enactment portrayals. To extract the scenes from the original DVD, and place them into a new sequence using Final Cut. To do this, ill use the app DVD VOB, which is a stream clip programme, allowing me to take out certain bits and make them into short clips. I will go through the footage, and see what could work in this project.

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After looking through all of the footage from the 13 DVDs, i was disappointed to find it was mainly just holidays and there isn't enough interesting footage to want to continue on with for this project. I don't think it will look visually interesting to try and get a comedic reaction and i don't think it will keep me creatively invested. 

Because of this i will go on to researching into my second idea, based on the mobile phone concept. I have a few different approaches i can do with this idea, and will experiment with them after doing some research and collecting all the props i need to achieve this idea. I think this theme has many great opportunities to practice with different style shots, composition and more importantly sound. I will try different approaches to make sure that the visuals and sound compliment one another.  

Research - Mobile Phone Concept.

For this idea, i was thinking about creating different scenes with the ever growing development of the mobile phone. One idea i had was showing from the 80's through to now, but showing how very few people in the beginning had a mobile. So for example, having someone sitting on the phone and people around that person reading the newspaper and actually doing things in real life. Then, as we expand through the generations, show how more and more people have been consumed by the device, showing in pictures and possible moving image, how it has become a must have fashion accessory. The key things to have in these picture sequences would be the mobile phones, which i will collect especially for this project, and also styling of the model in the attire from the decade, representing how quickly the mobile upgrades in comparison to the fashion industry.

So for this idea, if i chose to go ahead with it, i will be looking at:

• Mobile phones; 80s to the modern day
• Fashion; 80's to the modern day
• Locations that suite what i am metaphorically trying to express through images 

The development of the mobile phone, and screen progression.

     

Mobile and fashion in the 80's    

'Clueless' Mobiles and fashion in the 90's

Celebrity fashion, jewellery and a mobile, Early 2000's. Becoming more of a fashion item.

2005, Paris Hilton, Fashion and Mobile.

2010, Victoria Beckham and Eva Longoria, Ad for LG, flip and slide mobiles.

2012, Selfies on Iphone4s, Blog for fashion.

2014, Fashion and Mobile, Selfies and the Iphone5c

2015, Phone cases, and decorating the Iphone5s, casual fashion.

What i want to portray is how slowly everyone is reliant on the new upgrades on mobiles to keep up with the fashion and decorate it so it suites their persona's. In these series of images or moving images (or both) ill show how it went from one person having a phone, to a few, to everyone. For this i will look at modelling sites such as modelmayhem.com and purpleport.com, who will fit in with what im trying to achieve, and increase the models from one to loads to show how it has affected all of us, and dress them suited to the era im trying to achieve.

Three ideas - Time & Memory.

Idea 1 - The life of my grandfather. Following his journey from child hood to growing up and all of the different places he's been and lived and also the things he has faced and finding his identity. Things include: Growing up with a mentally abusive father, mentally ill mother, being the eldest of four siblings, being a 'rocker' and having a motor bike, marrying a mod, living on a farm, living in different areas of London, travelling around the world and finally where he is today. I will be showing the progression of his story through narrated stories, pictures, trinkets and memorabilia and video of his life today and what he does.

Idea 2 - Home videos. For this idea, I would like to take some home videos which my grandparents documented of my sister and I growing up. The footage also includes other family members, but i would like to experiment with the way different people remember what happened. Mainly showing how my sister and I remember it, i would do like a voice over from us now, talking about what we think happened next, and do like a flashback/daydream effect, of what we think happened and then compare it with what actually happened. I would either experiment with animation or a real life re-enactment piece to show our exaggerated memories, then play what really happened after and see how close we were to the truth. Could also be shown with images instead of video to recreate.

Idea 3 - The development of the mobile phone. Going as far back to when they were first commercially introduced in the early 80's to the evolution of them to the present time. How the transition in size, colour and quality has changed so rapidly over the years in such a short period of time. I want to get phones from each update, right from the beginning, and place them in an environment where they fit in with the era that it was created. Or another idea could be to place them in environment where they are taking away excitement from, because people pay all their attention to their phones more then the world now. Show how we have slowly become less aware and more like a machine to the phone then the phone being just an accessory to the human.

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Out of the three ideas, i want to develop idea 2 and 3 further, as i think that idea 1 is a bit of a personal and touchy subject for my Grandad, and I'm not really sure if he would feel comfortable sharing this information with a lot of people. I want to develop the idea of the mobile phone idea, and do research into it, to decide whether i can create something visually interesting with image, sound and moving image. This will help me decide if i can create something in a metaphorical way that would interest an audience, as its something everyone can relate to. At the moment, i am very much interested in the family archive idea, as i think its something i will enjoy creating and experimenting on how i can engage an audience with my life and family, whom im very close to.