Light and Shadow

Constantly giving the update of "I've been busy" but I seriously mean it for this year's entire autumn season lolol. Lots of traveling—business trips to Austin and Washington DC.... Chicago was a personal trip but due to deadlines I made the mistake of not fully taking the week off (never again) which resulted in working late nights after spending the day with fome's parents..... Next week is Anime Expo Chibi down near LA where I'll be reprising what I did at AX earlier this year—supporting musical guest performers and photography! And somehow I'm going to be challenging taking photos at a wedding for the first time later this month...

This week alone has been insane too lol. What the heck.

• Monday - worked til 6 AM to finish draft of video to send to client (thankfully still slept 5 hours instead of pulling an all-nighter like last time)
• Tuesday - finalized video, it plays at the awards ceremony, lots of great feedback!! 🌟 sometime during this evening, a nasty bug bites my ankle :/
• Wednesday - flying home from DC ✈️ during the flight my ankle swells up to a balloon.... blisters develop.... it hurts so much I limp off the plane.
• Thursday - it's my recovery day from the big biz trip but parents wake me up early to go to urgent care, am prescribed medications
• Friday - meds make my ankle tolerable enough that I still went to our San Francisco stop of BAR Con's Light and Shadow Tour where I helped sell artist merch and took photos! 📸 with some fucked up luck, our tire went flat so after waiting for roadside assistance and slowly crawling along the highway on a dinky spare, didn't get home til nearly 5 AM.
• Saturday - i stopped existing literally just sleep and ded on the couch
• Sunday - ...that's today!

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Before leaving for DC, I also worked on this little promo video for the tour~
Isiliel's reaction to it was so precious I died and went to heaven. 😭😭😭😭

#moonbowgathering#californiadreamin
Thank you everyone who made it to Northwest Idolfest to kick off the Light and Shadow Tour 2022! Next stop is BAR Con Carnival Phantasm 2, on Sunday, October 30! pic.twitter.com/RnKGmnBvrk

— BAR CON (@boozeanimerock) October 25, 2022

Anyway, for this post I just wanted to compile some of the photos I took at the SF show. It was fun, all the performers were fantastic, and I'm happy that I'll be supporting them next week at AX Chibi as well!

...March

March 8th:
Huhu again long time no blog; I've been busy but with enough free time to spend enjoying playing games and being with friends. ^^

Writing this—and the next post—as I'm on a plane to my first business trip since the pandemic! ✈️

After two years of the STEM youth events being virtual, finally we can go back to working with DSLR footage and not crappy webcams via Zoom... As a video editor I'm so tired of boxes hahaha. 🙏 It'll be mighty interesting with how strict the COVID restrictions are on-site; we're doing either a PCR or rapid test every day and not allowed to see anyone outside our bubble. We've expanded our team (with me as lead editor) so I'm really hoping to be able to sleep more than I've done in the past!!

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March 16th:
Aaaaand then I got so busy on the trip that I never posted this from my iPhone notes.

I'm now on the plane heading home! 🛬

Exhausted but my heart is full. The first few nights I was so jetlagged I couldn't sleep, then afterwards I didn't sleep much from working late crazy nights and still having to wake up early to attend a shoot or take our daily COVID test...

My main job was editing a highlights video that was shown at the awards ceremony on the final day—comprised of all the interviews and footage our team filmed all week of the students' activities. It's a task that I take very seriously because it's how this super important week for these kids is immortalized and gives them an immediate perspective of how amazing their experience was. Everyone on the staff does their best to treat them like mini celebrities, since they've done so much to be celebrated, but I get the privilege of letting them see themselves framed like superstars which I think is quite special.

It's really, really touching to watch them watch the video. 🥺 Honestly makes all the exhaustion feel kinda worth it. It warmed my heart to hear their comments, clapping for each other, laughing at the funny parts, hugging each other and all the "awwww"ing.... And then at the end they applauded the video team and my boss FOR SOME REASON POINTED AT ME and gave me all the credit despite there being other team members too that did the filming and producing and assisting so the whole room turned and applauded me which was so mindblowing aaaaaaa I was insanely embarrassed!!! had no idea how to act!! but the recognition is gratifying. 😭😭 My team members also told me that I cut together an amazing story so I feel really happy about that.

There's so much energy, camaraderie, good food, and fun experiences from doing this in person that just can't be replicated to even a fraction during the virtual counterpart—and makes it possible to power through all the miserable things like stress and not sleeping.

Oh yeah, I pulled an all-nighter on the final night before the video was due lol. I'm sad about that because we expanded our team to prevent this... but we overlooked some things and there was also bad luck and a lot of troubleshooting and ugh....... I was pretty stressed the whole time and barely slept.

Anddddd then I never finished this post until now lmaolmaoalmaaooo my March continued to be busy stressful even after getting back but I think FINALLY... in April now I can take a breather! 🌸

(...until the next big business trip in May)

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Photo dump after the cut because I guess why not:

Between the Screens

With the music video and the health scare (which turned out to apparently be nothing other than lack of exercise? so been easing back into practicing K/DA dance ✌) it has been quite the year of 2020 already for me........................ The hell. LOL.

[Edit: speaking of health scares, I started writing this before the heartbreaking coronavírus outbreak.. ;;; everyone please take care and stay healthy!]

SCREEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAMMMMMSSSSSSS there'sbeensomuchpressureit'sbeencrazy

So the music video idea was born out of my bosses wanting to challenge me with the experience of directing a project for the first time—but "low pressure" since it wouldn't be a client project. It could've just been a small thing, for example a "how to make a cocktail" video was a contender—until one of my bosses was like OR CONSIDER......PH0EN1X 4SH MUS1C V1DEO................IT'S ALWAYS BEEN MY DREAM TO WORK ON A MUSIC VIDEO...................... and I thought about it for a day and was like... y'know what, same. I was frightened as heck about doing it but that was the project I chose knowing that it would bring the most fulfillment to all of us.

And then it all grew out of control LOL. Initially we imagined it'd be a pretty scrappy low-budget project, that with just 5 or 6 of us, we'd make it work and it'd be a hands-on learning experience for the whole team. Then we secured an amazing [expensive] location... And our cínematographer got his new, shiny cínema camera that's worth more than his life savings... So everything demanded more, bigger, better, prettier, higher quality, everything that this shoot now deserved. My bosses allowed us to put more budget into this, we expanded the crew to 17 people(!!), and it became the most legitimate production that I've ever been on.

A Letter to Myself Throughout the Decade 💌

[ CW: non-consequential suicidal ideology ]

To the me from ten years ago... hello!!

Writing this is 26-year-old Eva who has been working in video production for 4 years now and is still blogging, doing online karaoke, and many of the things you already loved in your time! And I have some pretty exciting news. :>

Sixteen-year-old junior in high school, huh? I imagine this must have been the time when I felt the most pressure about figuring out my future; yet having absolutely no idea, no real ambitions, no pull of direction in the slightest, not even the expectation of staying alive for too much longer...
Well good news! I not only survived—this Eva is now living strong, and she's not who you would've ever expected to become.

directional failure

To be enough

Hi! Feels like it's been forever since I last blogged. I've been overwhelmed with work which doesn't leave much to blog about... And then I sort of wanted to write something after Sulli's death but didn't think I could write a post worthy of properly honoring her. Bless her beautiful, brave soul and may her next world treat her better. ❤️ I miss her.

So work things.. I got a raise and lots of kind words from my bosses last week! And then just spent a week on an intense, exhausting, albeit inspiring business trip working on another science fair video. Super proud of those kids and I even made friends with this really sweet, smart, charismatic girl who kept calling me beautiful, I'm soft 🥺🥺 At the end, she won a $10,000 prize so during her interview I got to tell her I was proud of her (also told her mom that she has a wonderful daughter!) and she gave me a hug. 💞 This time I not only did all of the editing, I also was the boom operator on some of the interviews AND—this is a first!—I shot a bit of the footage myself!! Just for a few hours when our main camera person had tons of other things to shoot. It was.....a lot. I'm not that happy with the video but I suppose it was the best I could do in those circumstances. Over 4 days, I worked for 49 hours and didn't sleep nearly enough 😭 so as soon as I walked through the front door upon coming home, I immediately laid down on the floor LOL. So...non-functional.....

Here's me after working until 7 AM, sleeping for 4 hours, making client changes and madly editing for another 4 hours to make my final deadline, helping my coworker instead of napping, and immediately having to get ready for the fancy dinner ceremony where my video was played.

On the plane, I watched Toy Story 4 and very unexpectedly found myself strongly relating to Woody... We're both stubbornly loyal, don't like change, and have a complex about needing to feel useful. And we will sacrifice ourselves for the sake of these things. :c That last one especially is a problem, is the cause of workaholic behavior, and can be a confidence-killer for no good reason when you feel like you're not useful enough in a certain aspect—even if you're doing swell in other aspects. Idk, I've been feeling kind of down about myself for some reason and want to remind myself that I am enough, I am worthy, I don't have to be responsible for everything (honestly lately been feeling a little crushed under the pressure of feeling responsible for everything and everyone ^^;;), I don't need to be particularly good at anything, I don't have to keep proving myself to others, I am special and wanted. Dammit. 

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.

I can

It was dark and I was alone when I walked out of my work building today, but I walked out with a smile and realized I'm pretty blessed to be doing what I'm doing? Not that I never have little complaints sometimes, but I think I do quite like my job.

There's so much more to being a video editor than I had imagined, and it's kind of awesome. I'm fortunate that even though I'm mostly working on corporate videos—which some people tend to assume are meaningless and dry—they're still subjects that I can care about and feel proud about. For one thing, I have the power of outreach because I'm an editor. I can help messages come across that people may not have paid attention to before; and I can strive to help the videos gain even more traction (hopefully is what I'm doing, at least) by carefully selecting shots that are appealing and human moments that are compelling, by editing in a way that hopefully doesn't bore people, by emphasizing certain messages that I believe will attack viewers' heartstrings. ;v;

I can be a persuader. It's a privilege to work on videos that can expose kids (especially young girls; I'm still very proud of this <3) to science and technology programs and competitions, and I can show just how amazing, how bright, ambitious, hard working, recognized, diverse, loved, and passionate their slightly older counterparts—and hopefully role models-to-be—are. In a small way, I may be able to help persuade people to pursue their dreams. Maybe I can persuade their parents to better support them and believe in them.

I can be a teacher. I've spent most of this week editing science experiment videos (assisted on the shoot too), and I may not have written the script or designed the experiments, but I do get to make decisions in pacing, which shots to use, and adding some motion graphics to illustrate ~science~. I hope people find them to be fun and, equally importantly, educational. ^^ Even better if kids come to learn that there is fun to science and build on it!

I can be a storyteller. Most of today was spent relistening to interviews and crafting a story for a recruitment video that's going to go on top of a company's Careers page. And this goes back to luck again that it happens that this company does great, philanthropic things and hearing the employees discuss it even makes me almost wish I could work there haha. They glow when they talk about how helpful and welcoming the culture is there, how everyone believes in their mission, and they have such a meaningful purpose with which they can make a difference for millions of ordinary people. It's fun to be able to highlight that as I put together the pieces for a hopefully cohesive flow and create a certain character for the company that I think will be good for the brand. In general, I love that I can listen to people's thoughts, develop an understanding of what're passionate about, and try to showcase that. It is kind of a vicarious bond and experience of passion, but somehow I end up caring about these people and what's important to them, and try to paint a nice picture of their story. ^^

And as I wrote in my post about Coco... I hope that I can even be a healer for some. Touch some hearts, give them peace, give them hope.

I found this old post completely by accident while searching for something else, and I......... sort of forget sometimes that I used to have no ambition. That's a great thing, right?! That means I've become an ambitious not-coward, right?!! Wow.. right... I sound so confident and optimistic now LMAO. WEIRD.

Washington D.C.

Woah, what is this?! I went somewhere and am actually blogging about it while it's still fresh? (I'm so bad usually HAHA.)

So I got back from Washington DC last night! I was there on a business trip—my most intensive one thus far. In 6 days, I worked 68 hours..... For full context, I was there as part of the video crew and the editor for a big science fair for middle schoolers. Thousands of applicants were narrowed down to the 30 (brilliant, young af) finalists who were brought to DC for a week-long program/competition during which they got to show off their projects, go on tours of a university and museums, do team challenges, and bond. Meanwhile, judges follow them around the whole time, and at the end of the week, they had an awards ceremony/gala (some of these middle schoolers got like $20K...) and showed the highlights video we made that summed up their week!

So my task was to collect footage everyday and craft a story out of their interviews and put nice shots over them. The video even included shots from the DAY it was shown at the gala... It was insane. Unfortunately, the only window that the crew had for conducting most of the interviews with the kids was Monday 4 - 5:30 PM.......... And the full video was due at 9 AM on Tuesday, then after whatever changes, the final version was due at 4 PM and shown at 8 PM. o<-< ......... CRAY CRAY.

So on Monday, I worked from noon til 6 PM, took a 45 minute break, then worked nonstop all through the night until 9 AM.... Slept for an hour and a half. Got client feedback and headed back to work until 4 PM. Then we headed to the gala..... and still had to work because our cameraman had to capture the winners' moments, and then we had to set up an interview area, shoot interviews with a bunch of people (I operated audio and helped with lights), and clean up until 9:30 PM. SOOOOOOOOOOOOO BASICALLY I WORKED FOR A LOOOONG LONG ASS TIME and that night, I slept like a cadaver.

I barely got to see DC, but I liked it!
Also, I have a lot of feelings and tbh it's all really selfish thoughts, but I couldn't help but feel sad about certain things.

OKAY BUT PICTURES FIRST!