The film I wanted to discuss in my blog post was the short film “160 Characters”. I chose this film because it was the one I was the most interested in. The story presented in the film is a personal story which is part of the reason I was drawn to it. Another reason I was drawn to it is because it is a story that I think tells a somewhat relatable story (in one way or another) with our day and age being absorbed in technology.
The film follows the story behind text messages over a decade from 2003 – 2015 between Victoria and her ex-partner. With that being said, the world in this story is built primarily from text messages with some dialog here and there to provide more context to the story behind the messages.
The conflict in this short film lies within the relationship or lack thereof at some points with Victoria and her ex-partner. Their relationship starts off well with the first text revealed from Victoria saying, “I had a great time last night” however, it quickly ends with a phone call from the ex-partner saying “it’s not you it’s me”. After the phone call, it is made known that Victoria is pregnant and is not with the father of the baby. So, we now have a conflict where Victoria finds out she is pregnant shortly after the father of her baby breaks things off with her. Following this, we now have another conflict with the continuous back-and-forth of the father’s involvement with the mother and the child. Therefore this short film does not follow the Aristotelian plot structure that we learned last week because the story does not develop around a single, clear conflict.