Experiencing Interruptions?

FaMe

Jake is a self-made social media celebrity with hundreds of thousands of followers. Together with his girlfriend Frankie and friends Justin and Sunny, he is exploring everything that this new form of celebrity culture has to offer - securing management, featuring at conventions and publishing a book. But there is a digital storm brewing, as Jake struggles to grapple with his split online-offline personality and soaring popularity, exposing the darker and very real side of this new form of fame.

  • Will Carne
    Director
  • Will Carne
    Writer
  • Rebecca Winkler
    Producer
  • Mariana Baguenier
    Producer
  • Dominic Pollard
    Key Cast
  • Thomas Ababio
    Key Cast
  • Cat McCarthy
    Key Cast
  • Sapphire Stutchbury
    Key Cast
  • Diany Samba-Bandza
    Key Cast
  • Morgan Daniels
    Key Cast
  • Rob Simpson
    Music
  • Sarah Coleman
    Production Design
  • Will Carne
    Production Design
  • Project Type:
    Short, Student, Web / New Media
  • Runtime:
    22 minutes 17 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    September 24, 2017
  • Production Budget:
    1,200 GBP
  • Country of Origin:
    United Kingdom
  • Country of Filming:
    United Kingdom
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    Yes
Director Biography - Will Carne

21-year-old London based YouTuber turned filmmaker, now studying digital film production at Ravensbourne. Online I’ve made over 250 videos accumulating over 950,000 lifetime views and 4 million minutes watched. Since starting out on YouTube at the age of eleven, I’ve appeared on panels at MCM London Comic Con and Summer in the City, and featured in TenEighty and WeTheUnicorns magazines. After directing two successful plays, FaMe is my debut short film.

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Director Statement

A few years ago, a number of teenage fans posted their stories on social media alleging incidents of sexual abuse with certain high-profile YouTube creators in the UK and US. Like many other abuse scandals, the encouragement of one voice speaking up led to a wave of other allegations culminating in approximately twenty-five cases.

As the incidents had originated within social media and were the direct result of the new social media celebrity culture, there wasn’t an established method of managing the allegations. To a large extent the authorities, support charities, and parents didn’t understand the culture that had facilitated the abuse, and as a result, in most cases the trials took place by social media, with verdicts passed by the collective community via vlogs, blog posts and tweets.

I see the YouTube and social media creator community as a whole, as a micro-version of the wider filmmaking community. It too now has an infrastructure of creators, fans, management, merchandise, book deals and conventions. But it too, like any established community, has cases of individuals who abuse their position for sexual pleasure.

For me, the twenty-plus historical cases of YouTubers abusing their status were common knowledge. They were scandals that had left the community I was a part of shaken, but altogether unchanged. I wanted to make a film to shine a spotlight on the problem - showing that in 2017 nothing has changed in the circumstances that lead to this type of abuse taking place. Then our second day of shooting news broke in America that YouTuber Austin Jones had been arrested and charged on two counts of producing child pornography, in relation to two 14-year-old fans.

I set out to make a film that tackles three major issues relating to abuse online: consent, underage ‘sexting’ (the so-called practice of teenagers sending nude pictures of themselves to others), and the unhealthy power dynamic between a social media celebrity and their followers. Since completing the film, I’ve been struck with how the main themes have resonated in many other communities, with recent abuse scandals in Hollywood demonstrating that this unhealthy power dynamic exists in many different cultures and aspects of society.