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Somna There are three realms that I find myself sinking into on almost equal terms (these days, anyway). I live a normal life, like everyone else, and I have things in my life that I feel make it worth living. I also play a lot of video games; I always have. In all the games I play I assume a role that is not exactly the one that I fulfill in real life. Whether the game is multi-player, persistent, or not, I lose myself in the experience. Literally. Finally, each night I dream, and most of the time I can remember my dreams. On rare occasions I attain lucidity and can control the events, settings, and characters within my dreams. In any event, the person that I am in dreams is not exactly myself. The dynamics of each of these three realms, and my grasp on each of them, determines who I am in each of them. This is a unique situation, to have three differing identities, and such fragmentation is brought upon by digital integration, and I believe is something beneficial to all of us who immerse ourselves in the virtual experience as well as the dream world. Obviously, everyone modifies their personality to a certain point during varied real-life encounters (whole libraries of literature have been written on the subject). This, I believe, is quite a bit different from basic personality modification. I believe that video games, more than any other medium, provide the mixture of interactivity and immersion in which the user is truly given the opportunity to experiment with his or her own tendencies, decisions, opinions, actions, and his or her overall personality. The FilmThe movie aims to address the aforementioned themes of personality fragmentation in the digital age, and its effects on personal development. In my life, as well as in the lives of many people that I know, the boundaries between dream, reality, and virtual reality are pretty fuzzy, and games are becoming more immersive with each successive generation, so those lines are starting to blur even more. The film aims to make ambiguous the distinction between the three realms (and their assumed hierarchical worth) by employing a disjunctive narrative and visual structure. The film will employ three visual motifs that will at first serve to signify one of the three realms. Dream sequences will be rotoscoped, real life will be live action, and virtual reality will take place inside World of Warcraft , a popular massively multiplayer role-playing computer game. The three visual styles will serve as signifiers of these three realms, and I will attempt to play on that assumption in order to drive home the real ambiguity of the film. As the film progresses the three main “character” fragments will begin to experience elements of the other two realms, and the characters will briefly meet each other at different transitional junctures. The experiences will culminate until the three worlds spill into each other so much that where one ends and the other begins will be very unclear... |
