Month: October 2022

In the Summer of 2016, I was offered to do videography for my coworker René’s wedding! We had been work study buddies at WWU’s College of Business and Economics where we aided the IT Specialist with troubleshooting for the faculty, it was a quirky little side job. It was an average day in the office when she asked me, I was embarrassed that I didn’t even notice she was engaged! She had seen some of the photos I had taken on Instagram and I had a small portfolio of wedding photos at the time. She decided to take a chance on me and offer up the gig. I was hesitant at first because it was a big thing to ask of somebody. I’d never done anything like it before. I was afraid to live up to her expectations (although she really had none)… Of course you want your wedding video to look super clean and have it tell the story in detail! I was super unsure of how to go about it … But I accepted. I thought it’d be a unique challenge and it was one of my first paid video gigs so I was super down to try it out.

She gave me the itinerary of the day and kind of just said “I trust your vision”… What vision (lol)? So in preparation, I watched many Youtube videos of sweet weddings (good and bad) and decided the kind of angle I wanted to approach the video from. The day comes; I’ve got a single Canon 6D, a 24-105mm f/4, a 24mm f/1.4, a 50mm f/1.8, an 85mm f/1.8, 3 batteries, a 64GB SD and a monopod. Gear wise I brought maybe too much for 1 person running around a venue. Although I was sweaty and tired for most of the day, the shoot goes without a hitch! I was shooting from the morning of, while everyone got ready, until nighttime when they ran through the sparkler tunnel and rode off in a convertible. I perform a run n gun fly on the wall guerilla style, shoot-everything type strategy and I filmed every little thing I could. I was 20 at the time so when I wasn’t shooting I made friends with the older ladies and got lots of free drinks. Safe to say I was definitely the best dancer at the whole event (refer to blog post 1 for elaboration). They take me to the Bolt Bus station the next day and it breaks down on the way home. Not the best travel experience but its all good.

Once I got home, having nothing but a chromebook at the time as my computing workhorse, I decided to edit the video on an iMac at the UW library with my friend’s login. It took me about 2 days of working there until I got it to a place on Final Cut Pro X that I was proud of. I send it off via Dropbox and wait for a reaction (as this is the most important part)! I was anxious to hear back, but it turned out that the video made them cry. That’s all I could ask for really. Check it out!

I think overall, I want to be able to serve broad and hyper-specific audiences to be a truly successful artist… BUT, I like the community that comes from creating for a niche audience. I think when it comes to my career, I want to make meaningful connections where my impact is more felt as individuals than just seen as part of a bigger entity. Whereas, referring to the chart that Joe Hallock showed us, a video game is a specific purpose spread to a wide audience with a large team. I, myself, would like to air on the side of specialty to a smaller audience. One thing Joe said is to emphasize what you’re strong at! There are many avenues to a broad project, resulting in likely a bigger team where I feel like my influence could get lost. I prefer a small team working on a specific solution that could help me shine and step up more often than in a big team.

A great example of a place I might want to work would be y-designs. Although I don’t think they are in operation anymore (https://y-designs.com/) I feel that they represent the type of team I want to work alongside. They are about a team of 4, and they handle lots of cool clients with solutions for web design, app engineering, brand identity and photography. Working with a small team for me means that we work on things a lot more intimately together. Rather than being handed a stack of tasks, they all seem to work cohesively on every project, and stay in close contact while they all brainstorm, collaborate and execute together. I want to work on a close knit team that really cares about delivering the best possible product with the skills within and in front of us. I can’t tell you exactly what my specialty might be, but I know that I want to be a creator for life, and just get better as we go along. Please help me with any suggestions on what part of design might be great to focus on; at the moment I’m just giving everything my best shot and seeing what I like. Thank you all for helping me explore 🙂

My approach for the video was simple; I wanted to make something chaotic… because these last couple of weeks have been a bit stressful. This video was for the fun of it, really. Needed a break from the big learning curve of coding and getting back into the groove of school work ethic that I’ve been separated from for years. Featuring class material and some of the work that I’ve produced over the last few weeks, I’m already proud of the person that I am becoming. I would like to wish my cohort the best of luck as we embark on a journey of new challenges and triumphs. I mixed video, photo, design elements, text and music for this mashup. I hope through this video you learn a bit about how my brain works, this is truly a compilation of true footage.