It is amazing to see how much technology has advanced within the past 10 years. No matter where you are in the world, people can keep in touch with their loved ones through video chat.
Emmy nominated comedy show “Modern Family” decided to use this to its advantage and do something that has never been done on TV.
The producers and directors decided to ditch the traditional and expensive studio gear and filmed an entire episode using FaceTime and iChat cameras.
It made for a very hilarious episode and one of the the best episodes of the series titled “Connection Lost.”
The entire episode is seen through the point of view of Claire Dunphy’s (Julie Bowen). Throughout the episode you see what she sees on her computer screen.
Claire is on a business trip and waiting at the airport to return back home. As she is face-timing with her family, you see her sending messages to her daughter Haley (Sarah Hyland) who by simply reading the messages, you see that they have just gotten in a fight.
When Claire checks Haley’s Facebook page, it is discovered that Haley had just changed her relationship status to “Just Married.”
This sparks Claire to panic especially after they suspect that Haley might be pregnant because she had just purchased a book through Amazon, on pregnancy.
Claire begins to call the rest of her family through video chat to get information on where Haley might be and goes back and forth through different conversations.
At many points through the episode, the entire family was on a conference call together at the same time.
The producers of the show made a wise choice to air an episode in this format. Many families today use video message to keep in touch it. With more and more people glued to their laptops, phones and tablets; even watching their favorite TV shows on them, creating an episode to format and fit the lap-top screen was brilliant.
If you are going to watch this episode, definitely watch it on full-screen on your laptop. You will get message notifications on the top-right corner of your screen from Alex and Phil Dunphy. You’ll feel as if you are video chatting with the Pritchetts and Dunphys.
This was a great way to make viewers feel like a part of this crazy family and drawn into their drama.
Apple Inc. is also benefiting from this episode. The entire family is connecting through FaceTime, iMessages, iPads and iPhones.
You can see Claire using many of Apple’s services that are on MacBooks.
At one point, Claire hacked into Haley’s iCloud account in hopes of finding out where she is. This was a 30 minute free commercial for Apple products. How much more clever can Apple get?
This episode will definitely spark new ideas for other TV shows.
Who knows? Maybe an entire brand new TV series will premiere filmed and shot through phones, tablets and laptops.
This should scare many TV and film crews because someday soon they may be out of a job.
