Best Boy

Blublubbb a pretty unimportant post; I'm kind of rambling. Today, one of my bosses called me "the editing queen," which was cute, and then I went on to finish editing a video that I was pretty proud of! I thought about showing it to people or even maybe putting it on my professional profile... But giving it a watch-through, I realize that it's not necessarily impressive work? There's not really a point to showing it off? I feel that many people don't entirely understand what it is that I do as an editor, which I understand is not their fault at all. ;A; Contrary to what you'd expect, I don't have many technical strengths—but what I'm told that I do well is piecing together stories, telling people's messages cohesively and with pathos. Also being fairly quick(?) at sorting through footage, having a decent sense for selecting the best shots, and inserting them where fitting! These are not flashy skills, and they are skills that are usually not acknowledged... which is befitting since I've written tons of anxious posts here about not being sure that I was skilled at all? As it turns out, I guess I have the sort of skill that lies beneath the surface and is difficult to recognize. /o/ I tend to forget this a lot haha. But I do feel that it's hard to prove myself to anyone that doesn't know what I do on a close level, or to anyone that doesn't understand how video works..... It's a slope I'm still figuring out how to climb.

One thing I realized that I tend to forget to be proud of myself for is the fact that I'm a girl in this industry that's dominated by men and for challenging people's often sexist expectations. "Are you sure you want to go into this career path that's for guys? And requires physical work?" is something I was asked. I'm constantly hearing people say things like, the camera guy, the audio guy, the lighting guy—to which I've responded before, "Actually, I'm the audio guy." Surprise!!!

Some months ago, I was on a video shoot unrelated to work, for a parody sort of video with a bunch of my former uni classmates. I was on the lighting team, someone pointed out that I was the best boy (a position which means assistant to the head of lighting), and we laughed. They ended up crediting me on the video as something else that made equal sense, but in hindsight I wish I had told them seriously, "Yes, please actually credit me as best boy electric." The irony is delicious LOL!! It makes you think about the industry, which I hope learns better. Anyway today I will pat myself on the back for somewhat challenging sexism I think.