Poor Connection
When a poor wi-fi signal strains a couple’s new long distance romance, the anxious boyfriend fights what feels like the inevitable end of their relationship.
Role:
Writer / Director / Editor / Visual Effects / Sound Design
How It Started
The COVID-19 pandemic had an odd way of stretching distances between people. Through fear of spreading the virus, trivial distances to loved ones seemed like worlds away. That was the case between my girlfriend and I. We did our best to remain connected through these times, using services like FaceTime and Netflix Party. While the tools we had were certainly better than nothing, I couldn’t help but feel disheartened when she would freeze and buffer on the screen, stilting our conversation. Those moments helped inspire the story of Poor Connection, a film I got to produce as a project for my production class. While the subject is more explicitly about long distance romance versus loving in a pandemic, I found lots of overlap that I could empathize with. There is something so heartbreaking about connecting to a loved one through a frayed cord.
A Socially Distanced Production
Since we needed to film this project socially distanced, that limited the number people I could have on set and the locations I would have access to. I wrote the story with these constraints in mind, setting a majority of the film in my apartment and using my roommates as cast and crew. I believe our parameters helped enhance the story. Since the couple does not spend a lot of on screen time together, that exacerbates the feeling of disconnection.
Storyboards for Poor Connection.
