"Boyfriend" 2012

Edited Found Footage 

Collaboration with Aleksandar Hill

 

Short description;

The real video is the commercial of an online multiplayer game, called World of Warcraft. Which revolves about a girl having a self-conversation about how she got introduced to the game, through her boyfriend, and how that affected her love relationship. In the video we witness how quickly the passion of the game overrules the passion of a love relationship.

We came across this commercial on YouTube, by a coincidence. And we wanted the clip as our found footage. The real reason it drew our attention was of our past experience playing the game. We experienced the game as a virtual colony, having more than 10 millions users, all whom are captivated by addictive and obsessive habits, stimulated by the game.

It was intended for a comical purpose, but we found it rather tragic, because of the underlying truth; the virtual morals are overpowering the real morals, which can be the result of a new anxious generation. This kind of online entertainment comfortably numbs users to filter and deny the reality, such as escaping personal problems or the weight of the world.

What we choose to do was to apply culture-jamming [def: the practice of criticizing and subverting advertising and consumerism in the mass media, by methods such as producing advertisements parodying those of global brands.] rules to deconstruct the original commercial, with the intention of reconstructing and emphasizing meaninglessness and absurdity, through rearranging the theatrical elements.
The original dialogue has also been reorganized to create a new dialogue for the spectator, which we wanted to be read as an unusual poetic composition, rather than a subtext marketing story.

Why the deformation? Fits to the absurdity of the story, and alienates itself from the commercial.
Leaving out the purpose, making it unrecognizable, new space new event.

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