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watch Tales of Shells and Dust

A

Ardeus

Hi there,

I am working on a doc series about Lake Tanganyika and I have finished the 1st of 7 chapters.

At the moment I am unable to have a clear view about what I did. Is this watchable? :)

The main thing I'm trying to convey here is that no matter what species you belong, the most important stuff in life is the same.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21rvhvTvnMw

It intertwines 4 storylines:

- The story of a family of fish, told by one of them;

- People that live on the shore and their views on the same problems fish are dealing with;

- A regular nature documentary about the bay where the fish live;

- An interview with the CEO of a NGO dealing with conservation of Lake Tanganyika.​

During the next chapters, the story of the family of fish continues to be the spinal chord of the series, while the people continue to speak about parallel issues in their lives and the nature documentary continues to explore the 7 underwater habitats in that bay.

This is a one man job, where I did the filming, writing, editing, music, animation, etc.
 
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I began submitting this chapter to film festivals and I already received a couple of admissions. I am of course very happy about that :)

I really wish I could be there, but the travel expenses are too high.

My plan is to only start putting some effort into selling the series after it is complete, which will coincide with the start of the screenings at festivals.

I wish I had better cameras and knew how to use the ones I got better. The first days of shooting were really bad and that footage went right into the first chapter.
 
I think I managed to pull off a nice trailer for the 1st chapter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-mWMdwcRZQ

And here's a teaser for the 2nd chapter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBGC5fvOZFo
 
Thanks!

Filming this in Africa was the best time of my life and every day it's a challenge to put these films together out of the 700 hours of footage I gathered there. But it's great fun :)
 
The main video is private - So... I'd un-private it or give us an unlisted link for it. From the trailers you posted that are public, the project is very intriguing.

To be honest, the narrative by the fish comes off as cheesy to me, and I had trouble watching it seriously, or intently.

With that said, I think as a viewer, I'd be a lot more interested in the chapters that focus on the people and the nature of it.
 
Thanks for the feedback. As I am still writing I will try to be more attentive to that.

Here's the link to the full 1st chapter - https://vimeo.com/92862342 (password : pemba).

I had to make the video on youtube private so I don't have problems with some film festivals.

This series is the 2nd part of a trilogy and the first one was very lyrical and narrated by a older female fish as she looked back at her life. Not funny at all, but most people found the fish speech believeble.

When I started writing for this fish, I tried to follow the same line, but it didn't work. This is a young male and the lines that kept popping to my head while I was watching him had a much lighter mood. I tried to resist, because I even felt I was not showing proper respect for the animal.

In the end, I decided to let that part of the film turn into a light comedy, because the other 3 parts were serious. I know I lost believability, unfortunatly.

The final blow to my original concept happened in the casting for the fish voice. I had always intended for the fish to have an african accent, but that did not suit the text I had written and I ended up chosing an american guy. It was a tough call.

I am thinking about the cheesy thing and hoping that I just chose the cheesiest parts for the trailer :)

Doing everything in a film is great in many aspects but it also means you don't have no one to edit your ideas. Could you please take a look at the first chapter and see if it's really that cheesy. English is not my first language and I may have some difficulty in detecting that. The 2nd chapter will be ready in a day or two and it's even more a light comedy than the 1st.

This fish is not a linear character though. As the series progresses he becomes less and less likable, because he doesn't respect his wives and he is even violent to them.

He dispises everyone around him.

I filmed the little guy and his family everyday for a few weeks and then went on to film other stuff. The problem was that he hadn't provided me an ending to the story, so I had to make up one - what you hear at the beginning of the first chapter is part of a conversation he has with me at this end of the story.

The day defore I left Africa I decided to take a last look at him and I got my ending and what an ending that was. So I decided to keep both.
 
I have been submitting the 1st chapter to film festivals and it was selected by a few.

It received the "Award of Excellence in Filmmaking or Screenwriting at the 2015 Canada International Film Festival." :)

Hopefully this will help to open a few more doors.
 
I'm finishing the 3rd chapter and working on the 4th at the same time.

The 1st one's theme was polygamy.
The 2nd dealt with depending on someone to survive.
The 3rd deals with domestic violence.

Here's the teaser for the 3rd:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNdc_erDC8Q
 
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