Screenlife

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Screenlife is a contemporary cinematic language in which a film’s action unfolds entirely within the frame of a mobile, computer or any other device screen. Screenlife could also be referred as a new software technology created by Bazelevs Company that is now in beta testing. This software allows its users to make interactive recordings of their screen that can be edited and shared afterwards. The Screenlife technology could be used in a multitude of different areas that could potentially include gaming, education, advertising and other.

History

One of the first projects in the Screenlife format is The Scene (2004-2006), the TV-series about a fictitious scene group called CPX. Each episode of the series is filmed as a combination of a webcam video, e-mail, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) or instant messaging conversations. Most of the action of The Scene takes place on the computer screen.

For several years after The Scene the Screenlife format was not quite popular. However, in the early 2010s it was able to catch directors' attention again. In particular, the Russian-Kazakh director and producer Timur Bekmambetov decided to actively develop the Screenlife format and establish it as a cinematic language.

Concept

The main concept of Screenlife as a cinematic language underlies in the idea that nowadays many people spend the majority of their conscious life looking at the screens of their devices. As a result, an action within a frame of a smartphone or laptop has become very usual and familiar for today's audience. According to Bekmambetov, due to this fact, Screenlife is now able to open new opportunities for storytelling, since a lot of our day-to-day activities and stories in general happen on the screens of our devices.

Screenlife movies

thumb|Theatrical release poster One of the first movies in the Screenlife format is Noah, a Canadian short drama film, released in 2013. Written and directed by Walter Woodman and Patrick Cederberg as a class project the film tells the story of Noah's (Sam Kantor) breakup with his girlfriend Amy (Caitlin McConkie-Pirie) entirely through Noah's use of computer applications such as Facebook, Skype, YouTube, Chatroulette and iTunes.

The first successful feature film in the new Screenlife genre is the supernatural horror movie Unfriended produced by Bazelevs Company and Blumhouse Productions. Directed by Leo Gabriadze it was premiered at the Fantasia Festival on July 20, 2014 and received a theatrical release on April 17, 2015. The film tells a story of six high-school friends chatting on Skype. Once they receive a message from their former friend Laura, who was bullied at school and committed suicide. At first they believe, it is Internet-trolling, but soon start to realize that something supernatural is going on.
After the theatrical release in 2015 Unfriended became a very successful project from the commercial standpoint. With the initial budget of $1 million, the movie was picked up by Universal Studios and eventually grossed over $64 million in the box office.

In April 2015, it was announced that Universal Pictures had greenlit a sequel, tentatively titled Unfriended 2 with Nelson Greaves, writing the script and Jason Blum and Timur Bekmambetov producing it, with setting a release date of spring-2016.. In March 2018, Blumhouse officially revealed the film as Unfriended: Dark Web at SXSW 2018, under the distribution of Universal's OTL Releasing and Blumhouse's BH Tilt.

Unfriended: Dark Web is a stand-alone sequel of the first movie that follows a group of friends who find a laptop that has access to the dark web, only to realize they are being watched by the original owners. The film had its world premiere at the South by Southwest festival on March 9, 2018, and was released in the United States on July 20, 2018, by Universal Pictures' OTL Releasing and Blumhouse Productions' BH Tilt. The film received mixed reviews from critics, and has grossed over $9 million, against a production budget of $1 million

Press conference at Berlinale 2018. Shazad Latif, Timur Bekmambetov, Valene Kane.

The next successful Screenlife film is the horror-thriller movie Profile directed by Timur Bekmambetov in 2018. The film is based on the book by French journalist Anna Erelle and narrates a story of a British reporter called Amy Whittaker (Valene Kane), who decides to contact an ISIS recruiter online for investigation purposes. Very soon the undercover journalist starts the communication with the Syrian fighter Bibel and after a while begins to develop real romantic feelings for him. 
As other Screenlife films, the story of "Profile" is completely told through different device screens. The main character appears in FaceTime and Skype conversations while her decision-making process is represented onscreen. For instance, it unfolds in the words she types or conversely the ones that she chooses to delete.
 Profile was premiered at the 68th Berlin International Film Festival on the 17th of February and won the Panorama Audience Award at the Berlinale.

Another successful film in the Screenlife format is an American psychological thriller Searching directed by former Google staffer Aneesh Chaganty. The film covers the story of a father (John Cho) who is trying to find his missing 16-year-old daughter (Michelle La). In order to find his child, he reaches out to a FBI detective and uses every digital tool at his disposal. 
The film was premiered worldwide at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 2018 where it received two awards: NEXT Audience Award and Sundance Institute / Amazon Studios Narrative Producer Award to producer Sev Ohanian. Shortly after, Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions acquired distribution rights to the film.

Interestingly, the Russian production company Bazelevs produced seven completed features on an initial $8 million investment in projects made with Screenlife. Moreover, it green-lighted another 14 to be completed in the years 2018-2019.
Besides, in 2018 Bazelevs launched a pitch contest of Screenlife projects (Screenlife Contest). The winners would get a special mentoring session and a greenlight on a feature film or series by Bazelevs.

Other implications

Apart from cinema, Screenlife could also be applied to a variety of different areas. One of the examples of such applications is the 1968.Digital video project created by the Russian director Mikhail Zygar. 1968.Digital is the first Russian show produced exclusively for mobile devices and it is devoted to the year 1968 and its consequences for the world history. Each of 40 episodes tells a story of remarkable people through screens of mobile devices. Gabriel García Márquez writes his stories with the Notes app, Andy Warhol uses Instagram to share his art, Mick Jagger uploads his upcoming hits to SoundCloud, etc. The whole project takes place entirely on a screen and is meant to be watched on a smartphone. According to the Zygar, in this project Screenlife serves as a very strong communication tool with younger generations who spend a significant part of their lives on-screen.

Interesting facts

• The audition process for "Profile" was not quite traditional. In order to resist "real-life" communication and actors' or actresses' personal charisma, all the castings were held on Skype. Presumably it would help the director and film crew to better assess their acting skills and understand how the audience would see them on screen.
• Timur Bekmambetov states that he сame up with the idea of Screenlife by accident. During one of Skype conversations, Timur's interlocutor Olga Harina “shared” her computer screen and after the discussion forgot to turn this function off. Thereafter, according to the director, he could observe her life from the inside of a computer and was able to see everything from a completely different perspective. After that the idea of screen-based storytelling was re-born and Bekmambetov started to work actively on various Screenlife projects.
• Screenlife as a film language can very often have different unique practical features. For instance, unlike in traditional films, in Screenlife movies soundtrack could be presented to the audience as music from iTunes or Spotify which can make it sound more natural. Or a background of a laptop could also be used as a tool to convey additional information about characters and contribute to the general storytelling.

References

This article "Screenlife" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Screenlife. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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