January 2, 2011

• A Labor of Love.

  Creativity is one of those BS traits that sounds better than it actually is. Being tall or athletic is what will help you more in life- these traits are social traits. People will talk to you more, treat you better if you’re good looking. If you’re athletic, you’re playing group games, being highly interactive and socially networking. But being creative is such an independent process. The hours spent practicing music or creating a painting or anything is such a solitary experience. The result of which is enjoyed by others in only a few minutes. And let’s face it, photography is not out there saving lives. It’s just recording a fraction of a second in someone’s life.

  Anyway, when I was younger, I always had in mind an idea for making a music video. Obviously, I don’t have the graphic design skills nor know much of anything about video editing, but I had an idea. So when my good friends Tu and Tramanh were preparing for their wedding, I knew the story of how they met well enough to finally spawn an idea for a video to play right before their wedding entrance at the reception and asked them if they’d be interested. With their okay, I sat down and storyboarded it and we shot most of it in a day.

  Let me tell you, the editing process is a painstaking ordeal. Thousands of photos pieced together to make (what I had in mind) a sort of 80′s-ish video. Video programs crashing from the volume of photos-to-video format conversion. I was editing portions literally frame by frame. So essentially, everything in the video is done with a purpose, even when synched to the music. There’s a lot of symbolism that most people don’t catch either. But in the end, when they played the video, it was a hit at the reception.

  And it’s times like these, when people absolutely love something you’ve put so much time and effort into, and when they feel something from the work, that make all those hours and days working in such a solitary environment absolutely worth it.

  • 9:07 pm
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