My short movie is about a teenage girl who always texts/messages a stranger she met online. As a result, there must be a scene showing the screen of the conversation between the two to the viewers for them to understand the relationship between these two people. This research is to discover possible methods for me as an editor to put the chat screen onto the screen that viewers will see.
1. FULL CHAT WINDOWS ARE SHOWN:
The first method that I found is to insert the whole chat window onto the screen, like this image:
This is a screenshot from the YouTube video "I Invited 100 Billionaires To My Birthday" by Ryan Trahan
(Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUmjpZSs5qA)
This method allows viewers to see the entire conversation plus the texting window below; this is quite helpful as if I choose this method, I can make the character show their anxiety when they type out the message but then delete it multiple times to rewrite their sentence (I can do this because I am the director + scriptwriter also).
However, one problem is that showing the whole screen makes the video look less professional and less natural than a movie and will take up a lot of space on the screen.
2. ONLY THE CHAT BUBBLES ARE SHOWN:
The second method I found is to only show the message bubbles in the chat, like this:
This is a screenshot from the YouTube video "BE - A Short Film on Depression & Anxiety" by Savanah M
(Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V9b1ZquLq4&t=70s)
As you can see from the image, this method may become handy when I want to show multiple chats at a time instead of a 1 to 1 chat box. Using the first method may take up a lot of space. Another example of this style is from the movie "Sick" (2022):
Not only does it help show multiple chats, but it also helps us to see more character expressions and actions when receiving/sending a text message because it takes less space on screen.
3. RECORDING THE TEXTING ACTION + LIVE PHONE SCREEN
This is a method in which you will record the hand of the characters texting and the chat screen at the same time, as shown below:
This is a screenshot from the YouTube video "BE - A Short Film on Depression & Anxiety" by Savanah M
(Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V9b1ZquLq4&t=70s)
This way, it can show the character's emotion from hand movement and chatting action (as in method 1). However, it does not require splitting the screen and making the screen looks more natural. The only problem is that the quality of visuals on the phone screen is quite concerning, and you can see little grains/pixels on the screen (which is not nice).
CONCLUSION:
After carefully researching and considering the three methods, I found it would be great to combine the second and third methods by putting a scene of chat bubbles next to a scene of live phone chatting. In this way, I can utilize the advantages of both approaches. I think the first method is not suitable for our short movie because it makes the movie look less professional. However, the first method can be used if only the chat takes place on a laptop/PC, and the image next to it can be the image from the webcam of the device, making it look more natural (similar to what they did in "Searching" 2018):
This is a screenshot from the movie "Searching" (2018), directed by Aneesh Chaganty and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing.
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