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[ Now Playing: "Highlight" by IZ*ONE ]

Oof we're already at the end of September but I still wanted to post about this: August was a pretty busy month just from the sheer amount of BAR Con shows that happened throughout the month and subsequently at the beginning of September haha. To recap, BAR (booze - anime - rock) Con is a monthly event that I'm on the staff for—it takes place every first Friday of the month but when the opportunities arise we also put on special shows. August had a lot of opportunities which was amazing!!! but also tiring for everyone involved.... Over the years I've been helping Fome with stage setup and running sound—although not so much recently with our friend Diji being wicked awesome with the soundboard and it's been freeing me up to do other things like film/take photos and order/pass out staff meals! I also make some of the official BAR Con videos, like the ads that we run on FB and a couple of highlights videos.

One of August's special events was a 5-stop tour with the lineup of Phoenix Ash (Fome's rock band), PhEri (LA-based idol duo), Stephanie Topalian (an increeedible singer and person who sang the iconic song "Friends" from Gundam 00), and Diana Garnet/Tonkhai whose inclusion was meaningful beyond words 💞💞💞 Tonkhai was a youtaite and was in fact the very person who introduced Fome to the community..! I've always greatly admired her singing and especially loved listening to her "Sobakasu" cover back in like 2011 ;o;... She was one who pursued her big dreams by moving to Japan and getting signed by a label!! She sang an ending from Naruto and is doing a lot of TV work! It's just so incredible to have her come back to the US and go on tour with artists that include two other youtaite (Fome and Phoebe from PhEri) and to have a ton of youtaite come to the shows to cheer them on and I even got to hear Tonkhai sing "Sobakasu" live and she was perfect T//A//T

So Fome and I had the idea of making a highlights video using footage from the first leg of the tour, in order to thank our home audience for coming out and to get the other locations hyped up about what they were about to experience! The only issue was that the first show ended at 10 PM Sunday night... And the next show was on Tuesday.... If we wanted the video to circulate around social media, it would have to be uploaded on Monday. So that's how I ended up applying my quick-turn event video skills from my dayjob to ... this!

Some of the footage was taken by another staffer named May! I put together the structure of the video and made the motion graphics beforehand. :> But it still took a lot of time that night to scrub through all the footage and order the shots in a way that flowed with the music and felt like the artists were distributed throughout the edit. @@

My god it was the most insane day. We found out the day before the show that the venue could no longer provide a sound engineer... Usually we did sound ourselves but we were hoping for them to take over on this event since Fome was performing (and would be continuing to perform all week long on tour), I was going to film + offload footage + start editing, and Diji was out of town. :c Kinda stressful but we made it work somehow! During Phoenix Ash's set, I was literally riding the soundboard (on an iPad so it was mobile) while also running around shooting footage and snapping photos, holy fuck...... That is my limit though; I don't want to ever take on any more high pressure multitasking than that LOL.

The craziest schedule.....

1AM Sunday (late Saturday) - I find out that I need to help run sound and go in early for setup

3PM Sunday - setup and soundcheck

5PM Sunday - VIP pre-show starts

6PM Sunday - main show starts. ran soundboard for some sets, shot footage and took photos of all sets.

9PM Sunday - started editing during the show

10PM Sunday - show ends. i'd been working for 7 hours ^^;;;

midnight Sunday - I realize that I'm perishing and physically in a lot of discomfort so yolo booked myself an 11 AM massage for the next day (my boss had OK'ed me coming into work after lunch)

3:30AM Monday - THE VIDEO IS DONE !!!!!

9:50AM Monday - I wake up, check email, and realize I forgot my other boss asked me to go pick up a hard drive of footage that I'd be editing—and specifically I had to get it Monday morning. Oh shit LOL. The hard drive was 20 minutes north of my house and massage parlor was 20 minutes south of my house 🤦‍♀️... Did the math and realized that if I immediately hopped out of bed, I could get the hard drive and still make the 11 AM massage. STRESS!!! BUT I MADE IT TO BOTH IN TIME WHEW!!

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The other special event came 2 weeks after the tour, when Haruko Momoi (most known for voicing Faris in Steins;gate) came to town!!! She is so wonderful and so inspiring—it really truly changed my outlook on things to see that even at age 41, she was loved for being her uninhibited adorable self and wasn't lacking in energy at all. She's the cutest person!! ✨✨ HER SINGING AND STAMINA ARE JUST INCREDIBLE aaaaa her talent blew me away....!!! And she was endlessly sweet to every person she interacted with. What an honor to be able to work with such a legend.

For this event, Diji and Fome ran the sound so I just took photos and videos! Haruko-san's performance was so incredible that I felt it would be a waste for all my footage to just sit in an archive and only possibly used for a few seconds in a promo video, soooooo...... the next day I impulsively decided to edit a quick little highlights video, heh. At that time I was on the momentum of being overly busy so I was in unhealthy workaholic mode and restlessly desperate to make myself useful tbh.. I'm glad I made this though—Haruko-san deserves the world! ❤❤❤

Apparently she really liked the video, yay/// ^-^ It's posted on her facebook and twitter!