Please tell us about the projects you worked on before making ‘Whispers of the Sea’. How did you start, and how did you learn to make films?
It all started with a childhood dream, initially it seemed like something unattainable, but after many years, I decided I needed to start somehow. After watching a lot of films, mainly fantastic films and using just a cell phone, I produced an experimental short film on my own called "Quatarina, The Duck" and then I gathered my girlfriend, my sister and my brother-in-law and together we produced our first short film, a film called "Message from a Visitor", a film based on legends of the small country town where we live. With this film, we were selected for our first Film Festival, which motivated us to continue. Then, I decided to buy a used pocket camcorder from my best friend, unfortunately the lack of budget did not allow us to invest in better equipment, but we needed to continue and so, we produced our second short film called "Empathy", a short film that I wrote during a complicated period of my life, using only what we had in our house and locations in our city, a film that tells the difficult journey of a woman trying to save her younger sister in a post-apocalyptic world. "Empathy" was selected for international Film Festivals and in my country, Brazil, where we received our first award. Receiving this award after going through difficult times was very special and a dream come true, further strengthening my desire to continue doing the best I could. In this way, I continued to study, train and learn, to fulfill my childhood dream of producing a film with a pirate theme, and thus, I began to write and create our current film "Whispers of the Sea".
Tell us about ‘Whispers of the Sea’. How do you describe it?
“Whispers of the Sea” is the realization of one of my childhood dreams, a short fiction film, in the fantasy, adventure and horror genres, with themes about the myth of the seas and pirates. In this film we follow a pirate crew who are in possession of a mysterious compass and which guides them to a treasure, a curse. It's a story that allows us to travel to a fantasy world and experience a new adventure, but beyond that and in a deeper way, it makes us question a little about human greed and the duality of people, thus developing questions such as “who is right?”, “who is wrong?”, “who is good?” or “who is bad?”. Creating this world, the characters, the soundtrack, writing this story, the beliefs and myths was a wonderful experience and a work done with a lot of love and care.
Please tell us about your favorite filmmakers.
There are many incredible filmmakers that I admire, but the ones that inspire me the most are Hayao Miyazaki, Makoto Shinkai and Steven Spielberg. His works and characters move me and transport me to other worlds and realities, giving me courage and making me think about all the incredible worlds that can be thought of and created.
If you were given a good budget, what would be your ideal project?
I have many stories and projects that I would like to produce and transform into a film, but I have the dream of making “Whispers of the Sea” a feature film and with a good budget, I believe I could give more life and depth to the universe already created in the short film, also improving technical quality and production quality in general. A good budget would facilitate and enable more opportunities and paths for this to become a reality.
Describe how you would ensure that production is on schedule. What steps would you take?
Developing a thorough, organized and creative planning, aligned with the script and storyboard, detailing and covering all stages of production, from pre-production to post-production, is essential for me to ensure that my productions are carried out within a stipulated schedule, thus facilitating the execution of the project. I like to prioritize time management, to establish what is a priority and also to designate time for new ideas, new scenes, improvisations and problem solving, in addition to always maintaining good communication with the entire team, holding meetings and receiving continuous feedback, so time can be optimized in the best possible way.
What was the hardest part of making ‘Whispers of the Sea’.
The process of creating and producing "Whispers of the Sea" was a lot of fun and it was certainly a great privilege to make this film, but every production has many challenges and the biggest challenges for this project were technical and financial limitations. During the process of writing the script, I needed to imagine and plan every smallest detail based on what we had access to execute and start filming this film, as many elements would be inserted in post-production with visual effects. I had to think that my portable camcorder, my small piece of Chroma Key fabric and my notebook wouldn't be able to achieve certain results, so a lot of optimizations was necessary so that I could get the best I could using these resources. Furthermore, the tight schedule, the need to perform numerous functions, the participants limited schedule and the weather and lighting, as most of the filming was done externally, were an additional challenge for the production of this film. Fortunately, everything was possible in the end using creativity and patience.
If possible, tell us about your next work. What plans do you have for your future work?
I am currently working with great care and love on my next two short films, which will feature very important current themes, one of them being an animation and the other which will be set in a fantastic world.
Comments