Behind the Scenes: Targeted Advertisers, Part 1

Hello, Hive!

Want to find out how movies get made? Nowadays, there are plenty of paths for films to be created and distributed, but I’ll share the story of one specific production. In 2019, I wrote and directed my own independent film, a short called Targeted Advertisers.

Targeted Advertisers is the story of three women working in a shady company that monitors people though their devices, and determines which targeted advertisements to send to them. One of the women becomes emotionally invested in the people she’s watching, and finds ways to interfere with their lives through the platform. What begins as harmless fun creates chaos for everyone.

Have a conversation with your devices! They're always listening anyway.

Have you ever mentioned wanting a certain thing to someone, and then found your social media filled with ads for that exact item? Or heard stories of Amazon Alexa listening, even without being called, to recommend more products? Or the most invasive anecdote - the one of the woman who started getting pregnancy and baby-related ads before she even knew she was pregnant, because her Google searches clued in the right companies. I wanted to explore that concept of people always watching.

The story was originally meant to be a comedy sketch called Graveyard Shift, based on the idea of FBI agents monitoring people through their cell phones during the most interesting times of night. Once I started playing with the idea, I made some changes to build it into a story, and it got a lot more dramatic. It was a fun process as a writer, raising the stakes to make the conflicts and resolutions more interesting.

Writing is re-writing.

I wrote a treatment of the idea for a class project, and some people said it sounded like an episode of Black Mirror. It was very thematically similar, so I decided to lean into it when I wrote the full script. I submitted it to the capstone production class at my university to be produced, and it came in second place. I was disappointed that it wasn’t going to get made, but the fact that so many people voted for it gave me an idea. Why not enlist some help and produce it myself?

Low budget = production discussions on the floor.

Because it was a passion project and I was still finishing film school, I couldn’t afford to pay anyone. We were students: all in it for the chance to be on set, hone our skills, and add something to our resumes. However, until the end of the semester, no one would have free time because we were all so busy working on the projects we needed to graduate. Once the semester ended, it was a race to see what could be done before everyone moved away or went back home.

When you just can't say "no" to your friend's unpaid film...

And it worked! I got some more feedback, made some edits, and asked around to see who would be interested in helping out. Once I had some people willing to join my passion project team, I knew it was time to officially go into pre-production. Next week, I’ll go into Part 2, and continue the story!

xo,
Cecilia