VIDEO: How are texting and the Internet depicted on film?

Compared to activities like talking on the phone or writing a letter, texting and instant messaging relatively new phenomena in human society. These forms of communication are also still pretty new for the movies.

The latest video from editor Tony Zhou (the guy behind the most excellent “What is Bayhem?” video), “A Brief Look at Texting and the Internet in Film” explores how everyday interactions like text messaging and computer use are handled in movies and TV -- namely with the new convention of depicting text and instant messages on-screen.

This method has been used extensively in television (on shows like BBC’s “Sherlock” and the Netflix series “House of Cards”) and more recently on film (in movies like “Non-Stop” and “The Fault in Our Stars”) and can be quite effective. The first trailer for Canadian director Jason Reitman’s new film “Men, Women, and Children” puts on-screen texting and instant messaging at centre stage, clearly indicating that the convention will play an important role in the movie.

However, as Zhou’s video illustrates, this formal convention displaying texts is still not the norm. In addition to showing many examples of the traditional shot-reverse-shot text message reaction, Zhou points out the many ways in which directors and editors try to avoid addressing modern technology altogether, like having characters read texts aloud or contriving ridiculous reasons for phones not to work.

Equally interesting and somewhat troublesome is the unrealistic way most movie characters are shown using computers or the Internet in movies. Who can forget the opening scene of the 1995 Sandra Bullock techno-thriller “The Net,” in which Bullock’s character orders pizza online (before such a thing was even possible) and hacks a computer in a hilariously nonsensical way?

Other Hollywood films, from “Swordfish” to “The Fifth Estate,” have tried and mostly failed to depict people using computers in interesting or different ways. But as the video makes clear, computer use is now so commonplace that most moviegoers can see right through such laughable representations. As a counterpoint to Hollywood’s generally lazy or downright incorrect depiction of computer use, Zhou’s video highlights the fantastic Toronto-made short film “Noah” as a prime example of human-computer interaction done right on-screen:

As text and instant messaging becomes more and more ingrained in our everyday lives -- and, in turn, a more integral part of the stories we tell and movies we watch -- it's clear that Hollywood is going to need to establish an effective way to depict such activity.