Taiwan’s online bulletin board system culture is now coming to the big screen, with the first BBS-themed movie, “Woodman Movie Edition: War of BBS World,” produced by Lin Shi-yung (Hero), well-known director of the animated “Woodman.”
The film transforms Internet culture into a movie involving netizens playing the roles of cute chicks and gossipmongers.
Although only a trailer of the film has been screened at National Chiao Tung University, the movie is already the talk of campuses throughout Taiwan. Some enthusiasts from eastern Taiwan have started begging for the film to make the rounds in their area.
When Hero began shooting “Woodman Movie Edition: War of BBS World” at the beginning of this year, chat rooms and BBS lit up with discussion, attracting nearly 2,000 fans to follow the filming process through the director’s Facebook page. The film takes place in 2015 and describes a website on Taiwan that integrates the island’s BBS. Once Internet users log on, they all become villagers. The roles of real people are played by some of the hottest actors on the Internet.
The movie integrates spectacular animation with real locations, making it an amalgamation of the virtual world of the Internet and the real lives of people. Groups of villagers discover various secrets in different versions of the film. One version features a manhunt for a kidnapping victim and the integration of this storyline with real situations.
After close observation of the BBS, where he has 13 years of experience, Hero said, “I used to be a ‘lurker,’ but got to thinking what kind of justice we ‘villagers’ should exert when more and more events like various Internet manhunts, sensational media reports, controversial majority decisions, and all sorts of Internet bullying incidents came to the forefront through the BBS.” Hero hopes that this animated movie will enable the audience to get a glimpse into Taiwan’s unique BBS culture.
While there is no lack of real people or locations in the movie, Hero hopes that the fantastic animation, the focus of the movie, can be a pioneer for Taiwan’s new 3D animated films. He added that the film cost him over NT$1 million (US$30,800), just about completely burning through his savings. But the production team consists of just 20 members. They hope to receive a strong response from their 12-screening tour through university campuses around Taiwan, and attract more financial support to help launch the movie theaters by the end of this year.
Hero was frank in saying inspiration for the story came from National Taiwan University’s PTT BBS, the most popular BBS in Taiwan, which accommodates some 150,000 netizens and nearly 20,000 chat rooms and billboards on just about every topic imaginable. Hero said the site even created the term “villagers” to refer to its users, especially those who like to be involved in lively discussions.
Considering that not necessarily everyone is able to understand the world of BBS, Hero said the production team took the virtual world of billboards and transformed it into real scenes. In the cute chick storyline, girls’ photos embodying statues are lined up at the plaza in front of the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in Taichung. The background for the gossip story is the boisterous West Gate District of Taipei.
The movie also involves some hotshot Internet figures such as Woodman and FJUMonkey by a well-known blogger from Fu Ren Catholic University.
PTT’s news division has over one million users. Its director, Kao Jia-yu, said PTT is virtually a microcosm of Taiwan’s youth society. “I hope that this movie will let audiences in Taiwan and overseas understand the unique local BBS culture. All netizens should also think about how to make this site helpful to justice, in the case of natural disasters for example, and less harmful to personal privacy in the so-called Internet ‘manhunt’ operations,” she added.
(This article originally appeared in The Liberty Times June 7.)