INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

The film of the summer,”Unknown Connections,” directed by Eamon Kelly and starring Gina Sorgentoni. The film about a teenage girl named Lucy and her blog kept secret from her peers. The film shows her  growth and change from childhood to adulthood in the digital age. The film has taken a new direction in the coming-of-age genre and has taken the cinematic world by storm. We were lucky enough to have an interview with Eamon Kelly and ask him about his upcoming film.

So we are here today to discuss your upcoming coming-of-age film “Unknown Connections” A story of a young teenage girl named Lucy running a secret blog. If you could Mr. Kelly tell me about your film?

Well, like you just described, it’s about a teenager named Lucy. She’s a pretty normal girl just like the others in school, except she secretly has a blog in which she writes about her daily experiences. Her blog is very popular at her school, but he twist is that no one knows the identity of the blogger. When the students find out it is Lucy, she has to deal with a lot of changes.

What type of changes?

Well, changes as how she views herself. She has been used to living in the bubble of a blog for so long, she could get by without interacting with others in her life she would observe them and then write about them in her blog. But now that she is “outed” so to speak, she is forced into a social situation she isn’t very used to. You see her growth in the film, you see her starting out as a shy and quiet teenager, who like most teens is uncomfortable with who she is, to becoming a young adult who is starting to accept who she is. It is something that even full grown adults struggle with, so I wanted teenagers to have someone to sort of look up to while they are going through it themselves.

Are there any particular themes you added into the film?

Yes. If you pay close attention to the movie, you’ll notice a mix of identity and connections, hence the title. I knew from the start that I wanted this movie to fall under the “coming-of-age” genre, and I then decided that I wanted to include the element of social media. These days, people are connecting with each other through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or even Snapchat. That helped me create the concept of a teenager connecting with the world through one small blog account. As for identity, I knew that Lucy would have a very popular blog, especially around her school, but I wanted her identity to be kept secret for a plot twist. I asked myself, “Why does she want no one to know who this blogger is?” And that is what would draw the audience in.

Given this is a coming of age film, you obviously feel that those themes are something many teenagers deal with regularly?

Without a question, teenagers today have so much pressure put onto them by social media. Of course it keeps everyone connected and in contact with one another, but teens today not only have this pressure to grow up and deal with school and peers inside of school, but they also have to deal with that their peers say outside of school. And they are they first generation to deal with that, in the film you can see the gap between Lucy and her parents. Simply because they never grew up with this never ending social pressure, they could go home and relax, no pressure. But Lucy’s generation has this constant pressure, her generation had to grow up quicker. They don’t have the luxury of “just being kids” because it is out there online where it can be scrutinized by anyone and everyone.

Now still on the coming-of-age topic, many if not all viewers of your film will notice that it doesn’t focus on love interests or relationships. Can you explain why you chose not to go this route?

Well, I’ve seen many coming-of-age movies, drama, even comedies that all have some sort of romantic element. I wanted to take Unknown Connections in a new direction of the genre and not focus on romantic interests. I wanted the struggle of her character to be highlighted. I feel that it is so easy for mainstream media to take away from the character for the sake of them having a love interest. A character could go through magnificent things, but all you guys would care about is “Which guy will she pick?” I didn’t want that for Lucy. I wanted to show young teenagers that you can be living a happy life without necessarily having a love interest. That they can overcome things, and do amazing things without having a romantic partner.

Interesting. So, you described Lucy as a somewhat shy and quiet teenager, but a different person when she’s blogging. What was your thought process for creating Lucy?

Well, from the start, I wanted Lucy to be a big role model, but kind of also a teacher. I want teenagers to watch this film, teens like Lucy specifically, and learn to be more open with the world. Everyone understands that we become different people online. I think it’s important for people to interact with the world outside of social media. It is so easy for people to interact online, but so difficult to do the same things in person. I wanted that highlighted in the film, so that in a way, the movie is sort of a lesson.

Was there any important symbolism behind the cinematography in your film?

Taking from what I’ve said about Lucy, the themes of identity and connections, the social media element, I wanted to make sure I have shots of Lucy, Russ and the rest of the cast socializing with each other. I wanted to show how they interact with each other, and how Lucy interacts differently when she’s blogging alone in her room.

But isn’t her interaction while blogging just between her and her laptop?

It is easy to see it that way yes, but you have to think about the audience she is reaching out too. She writes the blog for herself, but in doing so is impacting all the other people who read it. She is bringing them joy though what she does, the students speak of the blogger like they are a friend. And Lucy knowing that begins to also write for her peers, there is this unspoken connection that they all have with each other.

All of the links that we provided are about gender identity. Many are about how people have been affected by this change. This is pretty much exactly what we wanted to represent in our website, article and podcast. We tried to give a variety of different links here because we wanted to show that there are currently a lot of different things going on that have to do with gender identity. While many of the links are just articles about gender identity in general, there are also a couple that are about specific things.

One of the more important links that we chose to do was one about Miley Cyrus identifying as Genderqueer. We wanted to use that because one of the stories on the AcceptU website talked about Miley Cyrus coming out and how it impacted the character. We thought it would be interesting to give a little more information about that, and because we thought it was useful to show how Miley Cyrus was using the internet and social media to share her story. That also follows into another link we decided to share, we found a story about a transgender female to male. He had been taking his hormones for a year and decided to share every step of the way in a video.

That video ties very well into the story about Gabriel, the transgender female to male child.  It’s important to that character’s story, because at some point the character would most likely start taking testosterone just like the person who made that video.  It is interesting and important to see a real-life example of the kind of story that we created on AcceptU, especially a successful one.  It brings the idea more to life, and brings the topic out of the reader’s imagination.

We wanted to get a variety of different kinds of sources, so we found a website that has all these different songs that relate to gender identity.  These songs were all posted online which was a huge part of what we focused on in our project: the internet. We wanted to show the different types of ways people are creating art that has to do with gender identity. Even though, unlike some of the other sources, it didn’t directly have to do with our project, it does tie into it all. We think it is definitely important that people who are going through things like this have support in whatever media it is in, that was really the main point of the website and the podcast.

On Control Group, another one of the links we gave, they talk about Gender and Technology. It was basically about when you have to fill in that box that asks what sex you are. The author then goes into tell us that she would rather just be labeled as who she is. Instead of filling in a box that talks about what gender she is, she wants to fill in a box that says something about their education. She wants the question to be eliminated in total to give people a sense of relief. This kind of brings up the idea that none of this is black and white or girl and boy. There are people who identify as other, which is what we wanted to show in this mix of stories we created.

1. Reply All #40 “The Flower Child”

2. “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed” - Jon Ronson Excerpt at New York Times

3. “How the Internet Has Changed Bullying” - Maria Konnikova

4. “The Terror of the Archive” - Nanveet Alang

5. “Time is a Privacy Setting” - John Herrman