How to Know If Your Idea Works for Screenlife
You can tell pretty much any story in the screenlife format. Some may just be impractical — you might not shoot a whole 100-million tentpole on a cellphone screen, but then again — why not?
Dramas, comedies, action films, historical projects, sci-fi, thrillers, horrors, love stories — any narrative genre where the use of screencast technology to tell the story can make sense is fair game for a screenlife treatment. Can you tell a fantasy in screenlife? Perhaps not in the traditional “Lord of the Rings” way but a clever approach can certainly be devised.
What’s important is to really make full use of the potential of this groundbreaking and very contemporary approach to filmmaking.
Screenlife is a radical format because it’s about making art from an unprecedented access to our inner workings. Their device is often a very accurate reflection of a modern person. The apps that they use, the way their desktop looks. What kind of files there are. What images. What conversations they are having and how. Are they really paying attention or doing ten million things at once?
Screenlife can show the true psychological portrait of a character. Use that to your benefit when you make a film. Think about how you can adapt the basic action premise of your idea to the screens of the characters. If it’s a documentary, a good question to ask — can you get across what you will need about your subject using screens? Are there any impediments or, most likely, advantages to using screenlife? Trying to anticipate potential pitfalls and thinking of how to implement your ideas via screen-based storylelling can be a fountain of potential creativity for you.
