...because most of my life is there
So, today, I was cleaning up my hard drive, which as some people might know doesn't require much attention, instead, you spend more time looking through old files and realising why they were in a folder with a big fat star.
So today, I watched my first works in the field of mass media and film editing. My graduation video.
Almost one year has passed since I worked on these videos, setting aside sleep, food and life itself to balance the work on these videos and my studies.
RECAP!
I was one of my classes’ student council members, and when I made my speech on why I should be elected, I focused on new beginnings and change. I started off with some line referring to my perpetual nature of sleeping on the bus and how I had had my eyes closed to everything and how today, the day of the election, I was now awake, I didn’t sleep on the bus. I linked this into my speech and ensured the class that I was taking this responsibility and that I was not going to make false promises like, get us days off and shit, but that I would do anything for them, as long as they wanted it, and I swore to them that I would give them the BEST graduation I could.
As the year progressed, I realized that it was a harder job than I had imagined, but the rewards were all the motivation I needed, Not that the rewards were like immunity from getting into trouble or something like that, but the (and I know this sounds corny…) sight of seeing my classmates happy was the greatest driving force.
So when it came to exam schedules and stuff I was the one who ran to check with teachers while my counter-part made sure that the class didn’t riot and burn down the school (they could have…)
We all had to choose internships for one week, by some roll of the dice, when I rolled for photography and journalism, I got film editing. Inspired by the glory that is FCP, I made the declaration that I knew and my class already knew; that I was going to make the grad video.
As soon as November hit, I began researching, through my library, songs that would work, I asked the masses with some amusing responses like amplifier and other songs which had me laughing when I heard them (if you suggested them seriously, them I’m so sorry about the laughing but really?)
Then there was photos, my class were the ushers and general assistants for our seniors graduation, and the one thing I noticed was that the grad videos were full of images of the classes from the last few weeks of school, that’s not fun, cause the whole point is to capture the essence of the time that you had with them, you can’t get that in one or two weeks.
In order to get my classes’ tomfoolery and general insanity on video and film, I snuck my camera out to school and began taking photos and videos. I wasn’t surprised when people began to turn on me, telling me to stop taking photos and to generally piss off, but I knew that every shot would be worth something. By March, I had amassed a total of 10 GB of photos of my classmates, and their antics. Weird you say? Well, let’s just say that my class was up to something hilarious every single day. I mean it, EVERY SINGLE DAY!
The end result was the video below…….
So, today, I was cleaning up my hard drive, which as some people might know doesn't require much attention, instead, you spend more time looking through old files and realising why they were in a folder with a big fat star.
So today, I watched my first works in the field of mass media and film editing. My graduation video.
Almost one year has passed since I worked on these videos, setting aside sleep, food and life itself to balance the work on these videos and my studies.
RECAP!
I was one of my classes’ student council members, and when I made my speech on why I should be elected, I focused on new beginnings and change. I started off with some line referring to my perpetual nature of sleeping on the bus and how I had had my eyes closed to everything and how today, the day of the election, I was now awake, I didn’t sleep on the bus. I linked this into my speech and ensured the class that I was taking this responsibility and that I was not going to make false promises like, get us days off and shit, but that I would do anything for them, as long as they wanted it, and I swore to them that I would give them the BEST graduation I could.
As the year progressed, I realized that it was a harder job than I had imagined, but the rewards were all the motivation I needed, Not that the rewards were like immunity from getting into trouble or something like that, but the (and I know this sounds corny…) sight of seeing my classmates happy was the greatest driving force.
So when it came to exam schedules and stuff I was the one who ran to check with teachers while my counter-part made sure that the class didn’t riot and burn down the school (they could have…)
We all had to choose internships for one week, by some roll of the dice, when I rolled for photography and journalism, I got film editing. Inspired by the glory that is FCP, I made the declaration that I knew and my class already knew; that I was going to make the grad video.
As soon as November hit, I began researching, through my library, songs that would work, I asked the masses with some amusing responses like amplifier and other songs which had me laughing when I heard them (if you suggested them seriously, them I’m so sorry about the laughing but really?)
Then there was photos, my class were the ushers and general assistants for our seniors graduation, and the one thing I noticed was that the grad videos were full of images of the classes from the last few weeks of school, that’s not fun, cause the whole point is to capture the essence of the time that you had with them, you can’t get that in one or two weeks.
In order to get my classes’ tomfoolery and general insanity on video and film, I snuck my camera out to school and began taking photos and videos. I wasn’t surprised when people began to turn on me, telling me to stop taking photos and to generally piss off, but I knew that every shot would be worth something. By March, I had amassed a total of 10 GB of photos of my classmates, and their antics. Weird you say? Well, let’s just say that my class was up to something hilarious every single day. I mean it, EVERY SINGLE DAY!
The end result was the video below…….
All I can say is that the joy that I got was unbelievable, when I was making the video, I was on such a high, and it was unrealistic. My mind was finally being used for something that I wanted it to be used on. Hell, math only requires 60% concentration, this required 100%, I was constantly thinking about the video.
Alas, here is where this piece will get controversial, not hugely, but it will be. See, in the weeks before graduation, I got an email from HKUST saying that they wanted me to come in for an interview, while I was excited, it also meant that I would be unable to present it to my liberal-exept-for-certain-things-that-will-be-blown-out-of-proportion school administration. There were some images in the video that I knew they would ask me to cut out. While most of them were just for the hell of it, there were others that I knew I would have to fight for.
I was to leave at like 5:30 and I was to sleep, and yet, 1:30 I was up finishing as much as I could and forwarding it to my back-up team who would present it and make subsequent changes.
The interview went great and I was happy cause I felt that I was in the 3 good things phase (you know, bad things happen in 3’s and good things happen in 3’s)
1-Exams went well*
2- Interview went well*
3- Graduation video was going have some small things changed, meh no big deal.
Imagine my horror when I landed that the school had removed so many key sections of the video that I was so angry at the back-up team, they were the ones whom I had entrusted this to and for me, anything less than the best that I could give with the resources I had was a failure on my side.
I arrived late for graduation; people actually thought I wasn’t going to make it.
------------------------------End of recap------------------------------
Wow, that was a long recap?
Anyway, so I’ve been interning for the last 7 weeks at a film studio called Squirkle (the name is Square+Circle, I don’t get it either) and really been able to see how to use Final cut pro and how to make an edit and to time picture changes and music changes. So now, when I looked back at this I was like, wow, this is a piece of shit. Not from content, but execution. Last year, I had movie maker, this year I have FCP, the software that they edit feature-length movies on.
I really enjoyed the making of the video and............
...................
...................
I’ve lost my train of thought.....
Basically, it took me a video that I made one whole year to realise that the best moment of my entire life, forget the Cricket world cup finals, or when I got an SLR, nothing comes close to the moment when the video was playing, with everyone; friends, and their families watching and laughing exactly, like on the millisecond that I planned them too, having them laugh at the right parts and having people congratulate me for the video and tell me how I kept my promise, wow, the feeling, it is un-friken-believable.
So, I guess, the title will always be true, with just a bit of a fixer
I tend will always live in the past because most all my life is there.
Happy Graduation 12 AICE batch of 2010, hope you’ve had an awesome year.
*I didn’t do well in the mock exams and I didn’t get into that college, I guess, it’s true that life, no matter how tangled it gets, tends to work itself out.
Excuse me, we were not your "back-up team".
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