Céline Roustan

When she’s not posting on TikTok, you’ll most likely find Becky – a(n aspiring) content creator whose whole life revolves around her cellular device – doom scrolling from app to app. Over the course of a dinner with her father and her phone, real life will finally catch up with her as writer/director Kurt Andrew Schneider examines when real and virtual lives intertwine, from an emotional perspective.

Yes, we all spend too much time on our phones, on social apps, and we’ve all seen countless films tackling this from dramas to comedies, so what’s new here? Well, Schneider’s fresh approach doesn’t focus on the tangible aspect of our usage/addiction with social media. It instead focuses on the emotional impact virtual connections have on both the person who is obsessed with their screen and the people (irl) trying to connect with them. The premise falsely leads you to believe that it lacks originality, but the film subverts expectations and is surprisingly deeper than it seems, leaving you with a lot to chew on once the end credits start rolling.

“That tunnel vision and dedication that she had to nail her little dance was to me both relatable and concerning.”

When we asked Schneider how the film came to be, he confessed that it all started when, in a hotel room with his wife, they faced the balcony of a young girl making a TikTok , for hours “she tried the same dance over and over again”. I feel like that’s something most of us have witnessed, but what really struck him from the experience was the “tunnel vision and dedication that she had to nail her little dance”. Adding that he found it “both relatable and concerning”, it formed the basis of the narrative, which was written by both Schneider and Karis Chae Schneider.

Social media is known for projecting a heavily contoured version of our lives and this can be taken to an extreme degree when it comes to aspiring influencers. Recently though, Schneider noticed a new trend, which he describes as “a small shift towards vulnerability, authenticity, and openness in what we want from our social media”. With this realisation informing the emotional side of the screenplay, where he chose to present it from a genuine perspective rather than the bullying we are used to seeing on those platforms, it opens up the question as to whether genuine, authentic interactions can happen online with strangers?

Angela Wong Carbone (L) and John Combs as Becky and her dad.

Becky is a fascinating character. At first she comes off as a cliché, but that last scene is really what makes her complex and nuanced. Schneider paints her flaws in a realistic, compelling way, staying away from the gimmicks we’ve all seen before. By throwing the tragic element into the storyline, he allows his character to reveal herself by placing her in a situation that is so upsetting, performing for social media feels almost impossible in that moment. All those elements give the story a multidimensional structure that prompts us to reflect.

The film is a really immersive watch, with the cinematography by frequently featured filmmaker Sam Davis (Are You Still There?), the sound design by Tiago Cardoso & Dinis Henriques and the editing by Schneider himself, all working to trap you in Becky’s tunnel vision. We hear her dad way before we get to see his face, as she is solely focused on her phone and the incessant beeps of her notifications. Even the way the camera captures her screen is incredibly clever, as they avoided the conventional screenlife approach and instead decided to focus on what she is specifically looking at on her screen.

Sam Davis’ camera sticks close to Angela Wong Carbone for the majority of the nine-minute run-time.

With the camera so close to her face throughout the film, and the entire emotional journey and narrative arc on her shoulders, Angela Wong Carbone, who had already blown us away in Doublespeak, is once more incredibly impressive with a layered and compelling performance that truly captures the nuances of the screenplay. 

Ahead of its online debut, Notice Me premiered at the 2022 edition of the Palm Springs ShortFest. Schneider is currently working on a feature film about the Detroit scrap industry during the 2008 housing crisis and a feature documentary following a basketball prodigy from ages 12 to 18.