Filmmaker Statement

The story is about a young girl, Xiao Mei, who is addicted to the beauty camera, gradually separated from real life, and could not even be recognized by her own mother and was finally replaced by the Beauty Cam version of her. First, although the story uses "beauty camera" as the entry point, this film is not just about the anxiety of women's appearance, but the general anxiety and confusion of contemporary people. Retouching pictures is no longer the patent of girls, and posting on social media is also the daily life of most of us. This is just a more extreme and expressive setting or perspective. But at the end, the topic we want to discuss is that without the filter, can we still face up to the real self? And back to real life, do our relatives and friends know who we really are? When the "you" in the virtual world becomes the YOU that people are familiar with, does it count a kind of social death? Of course, it is a relatively extreme setting to completely cut off the connection with reality, but only communicate with the outside world through social media. However, according to the current trend, this does not seem to be far away from us. Damei, (to distinguish, we call the beauty camera version girl Damei. It doesn't really matter what she is, she can be a ghost, the artificial intelligence generated by the beauty camera, Xiaomei’s other personality, and so on, she is just a sign of "personality alienation" and "non-ontology". In short, by telling a thriller, suspense, and mysterious story, the film is talking about a severe social topic with relevance. And all the elements are also aimed at this. The film is generally divided into two parts, with the appearance of Damei as the dividing point. First, the cinematography. The first stage, this section is Xiaomei's daily life, introducing characters and the environment. In order to reflect the sense of realism, the camera movement is smooth and coherent, but it has the feeling of peeping and stagnation. Imagine a POV shot of another floating person in the room. The feeling that someone has been observing Xiaomei gives people a feeling of depression. At the same time, this could help to build up the tense and terrifying atmosphere. The transitions are fully designed to be as natural and smooth as possible, using props, sounds, lights, etc. to create a sense of time passing, but also confusion in time and space. In the second stage, the special lens, lens baby, is used to distort time and space. It also helped to focus more on the inner confusion of Xiaomei. In terms of angle selection, it is necessary to be closer to Xiaomei's perspective in order to follow her feeling to experience shock and helpless in this situation. At the same time, the jump cuts also help to create the confused feeling of Xiaomei. Of course, the proper tempo is also very important. Second, the sound. Melodic music is only used during the ending credit part. Other than that, sound effects play an important role to create the overall atmosphere. The energy level in the first half is relatively low. And we use the possible background noise as sound effects to help create tension and subtly affect the audience. In the second half, the use of sound effects is bolder, in order to highlight the conflict between characters.