Media Evolution, “Double-edged Sword” Technology and Active Spectatorship: investigating “Desktop Film” from media ecology perspective

• Autor(a) principal: Yang, Jing
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Revista Lumina
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.ufjf.br/index.php/lumina/article/view/30260
• topic: Desktop Film; Media Ecology; Evolution; Technology; Spectatorship

Desktop film or computer screen film is a film subgenre with all events and actions taking place on a screen of a computer and using the protagonist’s first-person perspective, exemplified by The Den (2013), Open Windows(2014), Unfriended (2014), Unfriended: Dark Web (2018), Profile (2018) and Searching(2018). This paper mainly focuses on the desktop films with the theoretical framework of “Media Ecology”, aiming to investigate how the desktop film evolves and interacts with new media, digital technology, while influencing communication and spectatorship. Firstly, this paper discusses the evolution of cinema, which evolves through the interaction, co-existence and convergence with other media, as well as corresponds to the anthropotropic trend. Secondly, this paper investigates the digital media and technology in desktop films. “Desktop films” create cyberspaces and reproduce people’s virtual lives, revealing the influences of media technology, which is considered as a double-edged sword. Thirdly, this paper analyzes how desktop film exerts impacts on cinematic communication, while reshaping the spectatorship and audience’s viewing mechanism. “Desktop films” are suitable to be watched on computer, thus making audiences become active and have more autonomy.