Generation: Like
In a desperate bid for acceptance in the social networking era, the ‘like’ button wins hands down. Thankfully, this new way of ranking popularity has graced our documentary.
AVID (the major editing platform in the film/tv industry) have liked our documentary Generation Me! (click here to see what they like!) Edited using the software, I think its fair to say its a tribute to their tools to help us tell our story. How’s that for web presence?!
Privacy in today’s online world for the young adults of Generation Me is something that I believe we are still getting used to. (Today I read of a fashion student who found a photo of her blog on a t-shirt print without her consent!) Facebook have just introduced ‘The Timeline’ and with a click of a button and a mili-second later, you can see when we joined facebook, when we married, divorced, and not forgetting, typed like a school kid! Quite literally looking into our pasts.
I have this image that our kids will be handed a Facebook (by that time, a literally electronic book/tablet) on their ‘x’ birthday and they can see themselves tagged in baby photos, with friends and family ‘liking’ and talking about them - all online - without them knowing!
Even though social media is still working itself out (or Facebook and Google are storing everything about us and doing it for us might be more accurate) its a great tool for independent filmmakers. Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook are the keys to the city.
Having said this, it touches on some of the themes raised in the documentary; without these outlets to express ourselves and experiment, what would we do?! We exist on pages, profiles and blogs; our stature is governed by how many likes per post, and how many followers per blog! Generation Me are always trying to find themselves, they need these outlets because actually, modern technology and the state of the economic climate means we have grown up in a time when freedom and independence is incredibly sparse. We want to spread our wings and fly the coop, but the debts we owe and the price of properties against the lack of jobs means we will be nesting here for that little bit longer. Perhaps this frustrates you? But there’s Twitter to vent instead of talking to someone…
Now to completely contradict myself, Twitter has proven to be incredibly helpful this last week! We’ve had many views of Generation Me and I hope this is taken into consideration in the competition! Even if it isn’t, I’m incredibly proud of this piece, and how many people its reached/have felt the need to share their opinions on the documentary - it’s really got people thinking.
So to end positively, this is a thank you, its great to reach so many people, we will continue to get the short documentary out there- and I’d love to hear what you think (not talking to anyone in specific, but that doesn’t matter- The world is quite literally at my finger tips for this one!) The response so far has been amazing. Thanks!
