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.
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