A Bittersweet Moment

I'm finally done with my portfolio project! It has been a long and stressful journey, but also extremely rewarding. You can access them by clicking the link to the folder that has all components or see directions below!

Portfolio Project

Shortfilm: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hUOCrPJ7iF8QM_OqbBbIdJMZpAJk5ZuK/view?usp=sharing

Postcards:

Instagram:

 @chasingghappinesss

 

Critical Reflection

    My short film, Chasing Happiness, deals with the overwhelming fear that one has to find their sole purpose in life that will bring them happiness. It conveys the message of truly living life and enjoying the small moments that bring happiness into our lives. 

    When researching the genre of coming of age, I found that they deal with the distresses that many face in life growing up. As someone who is about to embark on one of the biggest changes of their life, I can say that I am utterly terrified and excited. With this in mind, it is common that many people believe they have to find their one true purpose or skill that they should pursue in life. While this is true to a certain extent, a large group of people have a difficult tie dealing with this mindset, including me. This was a typical convention of a dilemma that many young adults or people in general go through. One of the typical conventions of a coming of age genre is illustrating the protagonist dealing with relationships surrounding them and how the communicated with others. By only including one character, the protagonist, I wanted to focus on the internal struggles she was battling within herself and society. A specific research I conducted on coming of age films was how they deal with presenting the conflict and resolving it within this short amount of time. Since I was the one creating this project from the start, I assumed some ideas and themes were easy to understand, but after hearing from other people t was maybe not so clear to them. The end is not explicitly stated that the protagonist learns this life lesson and is basically reflecting on these small moments, but some people when watching it might not understand. 

    The main target audience for Chasing Happiness includes young adults from ages 14-28 as this is a coming of age short film, but it contains various thematic concerns of life that can apply to a broader audience. There is something that anyone might have related to at one point in their lives. My project is not successful in including a wide group of representation like I intended to at the beginning. I originally wanted to include more characters and make them be from a diverse background but with the change in my story I had to scrap that idea. I was able to represent the struggles of growing up and finding yourself amidst all the thoughts society puts on you. 

    I conducted much research on the Pixar and Disney shorts because they have this brand and sense that I was looking for one where they deal with relatable issues through hidden messages. One common factor I found in the short films that were in the same genre as mine or conveyed a message, was that they contained very little dialogue. The story relied on the shots and characters and that is what I tried to do for mine. Bao was one of the first shorts that came to mind and that I further researched because there is no dialogue and it contains a message, the power of a mother's love as she deals with her son growing up and leaving her nest. I was heavily influenced by these Pixar shorts, but it was difficult translating my imagination into a real life scenario because since they used animation, they had more creative freedom to create than me. Another short film that I researched but wasn't animated was titled Different. It was a closer representation to what I wanted to create because it was more realistic to my ideas. 

       Throughout this entire process, I worked with the mindset of creating a brand that displays the minimalistic and joyous parts of life. My social media page displays the small details and focused frames that go hand in hand with the message of paying attention to these smaller moments that make life so special. I tried to use the same colors or the same color scheme on my social media as well as on my postcard. The short film postcard focuses on an important part of the story, the whiteboard, where the protagonist keeps track of all her potential purposes. I decided to capture her staring up at it because it symbolizes how much she looks up at that whiteboard and how she believes it is the answer to her happiness and purpose in life. I would consider the back of my postcard to not properly display the information and theme of the short film because I wasn't too sure on what exactly to include even after my research on it. 

    Overall, I am proud of the work that I completed and how all three components work to create a brand for my short film. One critique of mine would have been to spend more time on the social media account. Considering my target audience is also the group that is most consistently on social media, especially Instagram, it is one of the most important advertising tools for my short film. 

Filming Day 2

 Today we continued filming and just like on day one, the weather wasn’t exactly how I wanted it to be but maybe I should have just planned better. Overall it went very well, with some tiring moments but we made sure to have some brigadeiros (a brazilian sweet) as a motivation to finish everything. One of the scenes I did want to film and include was the cooking scene where Judith (the protagonist) fails miserably at cooking a meal, but it was turning into too much of a mess and hazard because we were worried on actually messing up and ending up in a dangerous situation. 

I took this picture of the sky because I wanted to include an image to show one of life’s beauties but I completely forgot to shoot it horizontally…..

Sounds

 While I wait for this incoming weekend to finish filming and refilm some of my other scenes I started looking for sounds to use in my project. During my group meeting with other students from my class, we shared tips with each other and shared our projects, and asked any questions that we might have had about our choices regarding the portfolio project. One of my classmates in my group mentioned Epidemic Sound. I looked it up to see more of what it was about and it is a website that has a variety of high-quality music and sound effects to use for videos, streams, and podcasts. You have to pay for a subscription but luckily for me, they have a free trial that lasts a month so that is more than enough time to use it to the best of my ability and look up the perfect sound for my short film. I started looking for more feel-good music, the type of background music that is usually included in short films without any lyrics. It was hard for me to describe what I am looking for because it was just an idea and vision that I have in my head. I also looked for sounds on YouTube because that is where I've found most of my sounds and music for past projects. I thought it was easier trying to convey what I was looking for but I did not quite find what I was looking for. 

Filming Day 1

 This past weekend I started filming for my short film. It went smoothly except the one thing that kept bothering me was the quality of my phone camera. I would be able to use a friend of mine’s phone but it would be at a later date and I did not want to wait that long. Here are some images from filming day. I’m going to use some of these images for the social media page because I love how they turned out and I think they capture the essence of the short film. 

Social Media

 One of the other big components of my portfolio project is the social media account to advertise my short film. I created an account on Instagram for the social media section. This is actually a great tool for my target audience because as I had mentioned before, my target audience is mainly young adults but it ranges from fifteen to thirty-year-olds. I can use the Instagram account to create a cohesive brand for my short film as I try to connect this brand between all three components: the short film, the social media account, and the postcard. It is an opportunity to engage and interact with my audience and try to reach a larger number of people than I wouldn't otherwise be able to promote it to without the use of the internet. I can entice my audience and diversify my social-media posts with well-crafted information, quotes, still images from your film, and the link to view your film. 

Using posts such as images from parts of my short film gives the audience a look into the short film without giving away too much, but grabbing their attention. I am able to incorporate images and talk about certain things on my social media account that is related to the theme of my short film but I was not able to explicitly include them in the short film. Behind the scenes, posts are another thing that I have included in my social media account because I think it gives a more personal look into the project and what it is all about, making it more humane in a way. It illustrates the process and how everything came out to be. 

Schedule

 Now that I have most things figured out I created a schedule to better organize myself and make sure I am on track. This Thursday I am meeting with my friend who is going to be acting on my short film to take pictures for the short film. My filming days are going to take place on Friday and Saturday as I have the entire day off to film as many shots as I need to. While I was waiting to schedule a day to meet up, I started working on the layout for the post cards to have it ready and envision what I want.