“We lived on farms, then we lived in cities, and now we’re going to live on the internet!” – The Social Network (2010)
Something I like thinking about is how many classic film plots might’ve fallen apart if they were told today with modern technology seemingly always on hand. The hero could call the cops at nearly any opportunity, the victim could take a photo or even a video of their attacker, the answers to the riddle are only one Google search away, and GPS tells us what roads lead to nowhere. Plus I don’t think the Bates Motel would get many good reviews on Booking.com. We tend to think of these gadgets in a negative fashion, like a block standing in our way and preventing us from telling the story the way we would like, and they force us to get clever. As an example, You’re Next (2011) had to include a cell phone blocker so that the victims could not call for help. But one of the things I’m attracted to are the stories that go the opposite route and embrace new tech to tell the stories that wouldn’t have operated the same in classic cinema.
Aneesh Chaganty’s Searching (2018) is a mystery that plays out entirely on computer screens. Is that gimmicky? Yes, maybe. But as the story progresses and we consider the tech being used, the gimmick falls away some as we realize, well, if we were in these characters’ shoes we’d be doing many of the same things in our pursuit of truth in 2018. Searching begins with a montage of the Kim family growing up, putting pictures onto their Windows XP, showing strength and boding, and then watching that strength falter as Mrs. Kim gets sick and dies from cancer, leaving Mr. Kim and young daughter Margot behind. On the surface, the montage looks a little like a Facebook commercial with an unhappy ending. However, from a storytelling standpoint this opening is actually very similar to the early montage from Pixar’s Up (2009) which saw Carl and Ellie fall in love, build a life, and then Carl losing Ellie. Like Up, the Searching montage is full of love, humor, humanity, and ultimately loss. That loss breaks our surviving Kim family members and we join the story as they try to ignore the cracks. The computer-based setup is clever but it’s not why the drama works. The drama works because of instantly likeable characters going through highs and lows that are relatable to our own.
As Searching unfolds, high school student Margot goes missing and Mr. Kim (played by a great John Cho) assists the police investigation by going into Margot’s laptop, exploring her social media, and contacting all her friends. In doing so, he begins to understand how much he didn’t understand his daughter; she was a sad, lonely kid who didn’t have any close friends at school but did have a lot of secrets. Her social media accounts are basically her speaking to the dark void of the internet with only (suspicious?) users responding to her. Mr. Kim uses Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Tumblr, Skype, map websites, and other frequently visited sites from our usual web browsing to build a profile of the daughter he barely knew and try to figure out where she might have disappeared to. And again, the entire film plays out on computer search bars, webcams, and cellphone Facetime. The ‘gimmick’ is not a crutch – it might’ve been a selling point to producers, but it’s not a crutch. Other films have gone a similar route in using computers to tell their stories. Unfriended (2015) uses the same computer storytelling concept but as a horror film.
Ultimately what I want to draw attention to is not that you should try to write your own computer/phone/Twitter based story, but rather that you can look at these films as examples of using modern tech to tell classic types of stories.
Searching is a Hitchockian mystery full of red herrings and unexpected reveals – replace computer tech with leg work and the actual plotline wouldn’t look much different if it was told 30 years ago. Unfriended is a mix of found footage horror and Japanese horror like Ringu (1998). Sneakers (1992) is a team on a mission spy thriller. Pulse (2001) is a ghost story – it involves ghosts coming out of computers and phone lines but the scares would’ve worked in any era. Eagle Eye (2008) is a chase movie – replace the antagonistic AI with a well-connected group within the government and voila. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) is a detective story. And Her (2013) is a romance. Without a strong base for story and character, no high-concept idea can stand on its own. These movies are those genres first and movies about tech second, and then they either opt to make tech a focal point of the story (Her) or they simply use tech to help in the telling of the story (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo).
The point being, don’t be afraid of cell phones, internet searches, and all the rest when trying to figure out how to isolate your characters and drop the weight of the world on them. There are answers for those problems out there. But while you’re thinking about how to fix those, spend an extra minute considering how tech might be used to actually enhance your story. Whether it’s today’s tech or some vision of what tomorrow will bring, tech plays a big part in our lives today and it’s not wrong for your fictional worlds to reflect that.
