This week’s episode of “Modern Family” will be entirely shown the way many of our family interactions increasingly occur — on a computer screen.  Claire (Julie Bowen) is about to get on a plane when she realizes she does not know where her oldest daughter, Haley (Sarah Hyland) is.  Past episodes have shown us the family using Skype to stay in touch but this is the first time that the entire episode will take place on a screen as the family members communicate via FaceTime as Claire checks email and websites.  The staff worked hard to re-create the look of online communication and social media.

The Wrap reports

The idea first came about after show creator and executive producer, Steven Levitan, was working on his computer and his daughters and wife popped up on his computer all at once.  “I realized that on that screen you could tell so much about my life,” Levitan said during a special screening of the episode, which TheWrapattended. “I thought wouldn’t it be cool to do a whole episode ?”

Levtian’s daughter had shown him a 17-minute award-winning student film called “Noah” that takes place on a teenager’s computer screen, a telling commentary on the ways that our ability to communicate obstruct as well as promote communication.