Exercise 1. Plot analysis a. Setting: the movie begins with the sight of a man sitting lonely with his camera near the river bank in a breezing Valentine afternoon. He quietly watched many couples walking along the side of the river, talking happily together, hand-in-hand. b. Rising action: then, he suddenly saw a girl walking alone near the river. Curious, he quickly raised his camera towards her and saw that she was trying to persuade the passer-by to take her a picture with her phone, but she was ignored and became a bit frustrated, then she resorted to “selfie”. After that, the girl moved into many beautiful places, took her own pictures by herself and faked a smile in every single shot. She didn’t know that the man was following her and secretly taking pictures of her. c. Climax: the camera suddenly let out clicking voice indicated that the current memory card was full so he might run the risk of being unable to take any more pictures of the girl. Then he sat down and took out from his wallet another card which had a line “don’t delete” written on it. That card turned out to contain a lot of pictures and videos which reminded him of her ex-girlfriend and the time they spent together. And this meant that he was in the quandary whether keeping his happy memories with his ex or deleting them and moving on. He was confused, hesitated and noticed that the girl was then standing under a spectacular tower with some words inscribed on it “out of the mountain of despair – A stone of hope” and was about to walk away. It was kind of a incentive to him and he knew he didn’t have much time left to make a choice. Finally, he made up his mind, deleted all the content of his old memory card and went on following the girl. d. Falling action: when running after the girl, he saw that she came into a store and he decided to go to a photographic shop to print some pictures out. After that, he left the shop, looked around to find the girl but couldn’t. Spontaneously, he heard the GPS navigating voice from a stranger’s phone, instantly looked at the same direction, then he saw her turning corner and walked straight to meet her. e. Ending: finally he met her at the sidewalk, showed her a stack of her own photos he had captured. She quickly look through all of those and to her surprise, there was a lovely Valentine card at the end of the stack. And for the first time ever, he could take a photo of her with genuine, happy smile lit on her face. Then they “selfie” together, held each other’s hands and walked off the street.

Exercise 2. Write about an aspect of the short film “Selfie” that makes you impressed. Nowadays, with the advent of modern technology and social media, people seem to have more ways to communicate with each other as well as reveal more about ourselves to everyone. But sometimes what we see on the Internet is not exactly what it really is. For instance, everyday you log in your facebook account, you’ll certainly see many “selfie” photos posted by your friends with captions about what they’re doing, their state of mind or just showing off their new hair style... But have you ever wondered whether this kind of pictures always expresses what the photo-takers really feel or not. In fact, it does not. For example, the girl we see in the short film “Selfie” always gave a perfect smile in her every single selfie picture she took. She traveled many beautiful places to take her photos by herself, gave the impression that she enjoyed herself. But it turned out to be that smile only existed in her photos, and as soon as the phone camera was off her face, it extinguished and she returned to be with her true feelings: unhappy and lonely. I’m sure that when she uploads those pictures on Facebook, many people of her “friend list” will hit the “like” button, give laudatory comments. Some of them may be “friend” with her only on Facebook or even never meet her in real life. Would it make the girl in the movie feel less emptied? I guess not. In fact, when she stood alone on the river bank and wanted a passerby to take for her just a photo. But what she got was nothing more than a flat refusal. Maybe that stranger didn’t know that if at that time she agreed to do the girl a favor which wouldn’t cost her a minute, she would have helped a person to feel much better. At least it was more meaningful than just pressing “like”, giving blank comments on pictures posted by someone you only know on Internet. We should remember that, internet or social media like Facebook, Twitter is just a imaginary world to consolidate the connection among people, not the one we really live in.