creation – Page 10 – Chia's Blog

Letterboxd — Feature Concepts Reel

Reading Time: 9 minutes

Feature and redesign concepts for the film network

This is an old look at one of my first ever case studies. A newer (but still not very good/thoughtful) version of it lives on my site, at chia.dev

In 2019, I found myself increasingly drawn towards film, and was lucky enough to be surrounded by people who I could share this love with. One of my new favorite sites is definitely Letterboxd, a film-focused social networking service. First introduced to it from film Twitter circles by seeing joke reviews highlighted on Oscar-nominated masterpieces, the sense of community it offered finally drew me onto the platform knowing it wouldn’t solely be traditional film buffs.

Letterboxd has been an amazing tool that has moved me to be more introspective about the film I consume, but it took a while for me to fully get into it, and the more that I use it — the more I’ve been thinking about ways to improve some of its features.
The following is a survey of some of the main frustrations on the web version of Letterboxd that I’ve collected from regular engagement with film communities, and my proposed redesigns and feature introductions.

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December 31, 2019

chia was fifteen

Reading Time: 2 minutesI recently shared a project for a video class from last semester on Twitter. Navigating girlhood through the internet, I realized much of my maturation occurred online. (This not being a good thing, clearly.) Coincidentally, I first showed it off to the general public in a place where it could rest as another permanent artifact of the internet.

Play Chia was Fifteen (PC)

(chiaski.com/fifteen) Best experienced on PC, these three parts were also intended to be some sort of installation — but it’s also quite navigable in this web format.

It’s interesting to think about the current generations condemned to live and die on the internet. Making this, I thought a lot of Nina Freeman’s Cibele and vewn’s kittykat96. Both pieces explored blurs between reality and the online — but my experience didn’t really have that. There was a distinct boundary, and I chose to live the life I had online. I learned about the world there, found most of my friends on there to the point where I spent years talking to them through chat instead of ever conversing in real life. They were two distinct spheres and my memory only ever rests on the one left on the internet. My relationships were birthed and then killed through exchanged words, and I’ve written endless letters to dozens of people that will never be seen — that I can never talk to in-person.

As an effect, I could trace my being through cables and screens. It’s infinitely surreal and til this day, I’m convinced that I cannot be myself without this dimension. Not only was it formative, but it was where I continued to exist in. This is something I’ve taken a long time to cope with; the fact that the online did not only inform my experience but was where they all were lived out scares me. I feel this constant link and debt to it but have yet to settle on whether this is actually a bad thing.

Maybe this is really the product of life today. Perhaps we’ll settle on more narratives that exist only in this space. And for these eighteen years of words I have all the more to come.

chia was fifteen is extremely intimate and a revealing part of myself, but there’s no use in living if you do not say some things at the wrong times. I hope you enjoy, but most dearly do I hope you get to think.

April 5, 2019

Pinkerton, home, floods

Reading Time: 11 minutesThe next three thousand words are selections of writing I did for a class I had this Fall. I am slowly learning, and hope to return with better pieces to make the most of this. A lot of my writing dealt with religion, home, and expectation. If you read this blog, you’re probably used to that. Thank you for following my journey from my first “chapbook” (not really) to my first college works.

The title comes from the fact that I did delete a Pinkerton reference in the fiction piece, somewhere in the attempt to copy Borges (we read a lot of Le Guin and Borges–the comment was that there was too much extraordinariness in the listing of lives and beings, and I agreed, we have to dwell somewhere more common at times) but without the experience and knowledge to actually understand what a worthwhile life is like, but I’m getting there. I don’t really spend much time publishing or sending out things (I don’t do this at all), but I’ve been writing a lot lately, so here.

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February 7, 2019