Cyberbully (2015) trailer inspiration

Cyberbully (2015) follows the life of the main character, Casey, who is subjected to cyberbullying by an anonymous user. She is trying to protect her identity while the anonymous user blackmails her with leaking images and information about her. Unlike most bullying films, which are normally shown in a social realist genre, this film is a thriller and shows the danger of the internet. 

We used the plot of the trailer for the film to inspire our own trailer's concept. We knew that we wanted to show how trolling (which is used to represent society) can affect people online and so we wanted to look at different films or trailers that incorporates the idea of bullying and the internet, with social media to see how they portray this. 

During the trailer for Cyberbully, the antagonist, the anonymous user is only shown to be on the computer, the audience do not see the face of the character at all, which unnerves the audience as well as the characters. The only interaction shown between Casey and the anonymous user, is him talking through speech modification software, this creates more fear as the voice sounds somewhat off to what is expected, which is explored by the 'uncanny valley' theory.

The 'uncanny valley' theory is mostly used for aesthetics, however it could be related to the idea of using speech modification software used in the trailer. It is the idea that things that look too near human, like advanced robots, but still have something not quite human about them, it scares humans because there is something that isn't quite right about them. 

Throughout the trailer, the voice of the anonymous user says things like "you think you are the victim? you're not the victim, Casey". These are comments that are typically used by cyber bullies or thoughts from the victims. 

I think that the horrific way that cyberbullying is portrayed in this is very interesting, and is something that inspired us in a way to go down the route an eating disorder in our trailer, along with the disturbing images seen in the website background and poster. However, because we wanted to create a social realist film, we wanted to show cyberbullying realistically, rather then in this film how it is emphasised to give a horrific effect.