This video was extremely valuable to me as it runs through the different ways the action of reading text messages on screen can be shown. It’s interesting to note that film and television is veering away from showing the screen of a laptop or phone, maybe because its more distracting to see a screen on a screen but also because the performance of the actor is much more critical.

I’m making a conscious decision to not show any text or message on screen and not show the actual phone screen itself either. I want to make the characters reaction to the phone the main focus of the scene. Their interaction and the way they hold and use the phone, I find to be very interesting. The video essay made me think, do we need to see the text? Do we need to know what is being said or can we rely on the natural body language of the actor.

I hadn’t thought about showing any text on screen because I wanted my scenes to be able to performance and the aesthetics of the scene and location. However maybe this is something I will think about in the editing phase. I will be conducting a few test shoots soon and maybe as an experiment I could use text just to see how it changes the scene. I doubt I will use any text but this video essay maybe me very curious about how I could show messages on screen.