Proposal

My project explores the nature and uses of television, both from a creative and consumer standpoint. The film itself starts with someone viewing television, and then from there we move into the people he's watching also watching TV and so on. Through the course of the film we reach dead ends where there are no screens to use as portals to move onto the next show, returning us to the initial viewer where the process restarts with new shows and material, both found footage and material shot for their piece.  As we start to move through more and more screens the pace increases, until eventually we create a complete loop back around to viewing the film of the original viewer displayed on vimeo or youtube.

I want to examine how in spite of our engagement with media that engagement primarily still exists as something used for pleasure. Does it matter if we are passive or active viewers when the primary aim of television is to produce people who watch irrespective of their personal level of engagement?

I'm also aiming to establish an example of how television has become a medium chiefly used to examine and reference itself, providing entertainment to its viewers but building almost entirely on it's own ideas and forms creating what Baudrillard refers to as Hyperreality. By layering shows and films together and joining them through the act of watching we establish a tree of influences and screen media as a self-consuming industry, propagating the act of watching as a cultural norm and enforcing ways and methods of constructing reality both on and off the screen.