OBSERVE

When I made this, it was when people really started to take notice of what Israel is doing to Palestine. I kept seeing these videos and posts of women, men, and children in Gaza begging for people to donate to their GoFundMes so they can get out of there. It sucks that they have to show horrific imagery to get people to care and pay attention. I feel like most people should care when they hear something horrible is happening to innocent people and i'm not saying People who care saw that horrific imagery i am saying i am sure a large portion did and started caring. Anyways i was seeing Palestine posts and It got to a point where I still cared about that deeply, but it felt almost routine-ish, like you know, just a regular thing that happens in the world. Like how we are so desensitized to school shootings or mass shootings—we are just like, “Damn,” and then move on.

I think, just in general, not just referring to Palestine, we have become so desensitized to violence. It's crazy how, you know, back in the olden days, seeing real-life violent videos or gore videos was very hard to do. Now, you can just boot up Twitter, look up “gore,” and then BOOM. It’s so weird, and I wanted to touch on that desensitization. I thought one of the best ways to do it—besides the fact I had no budget but also because it would work well—was Grand Theft Auto V. The entire film is made and filmed in Grand Theft Auto V. This film is a machinima, which is a type of film or any type of visual art made in a video game. I think machinima is the best way to tell a story or whatever you want to do if you don’t have a budget. Also, it fits well to make the film in such a violent and popular game.

With that being said, I hope the film doesn’t feel like I’m saying video games cause violence or something like that because I hate when the news points out if a mass shooter played violent video games and that must be the cause. Like, no! The violence in the film is supposed to be representing real-world violence and the type of videos you could see online so much.