On April 1st, I left for Battambang for a one week adventure that was nothing else, but a dream. My seven teammates and I were pleasantly involved in a music video production with Human Agency. I spent the majority of my time in the music studio in the Phare Circus facility. I used Live Ableton and worked closely with Robin, a musician, that is apart of Human Agency, and other musicians from Phare to produce a song relating to the theme of “shine your light.” The reason for that is because Phare’s name in Khmer translated to English means, “Phare, the light of art,” so we wanted to use the metaphor of “shine your light” to talk about using your talents to shine. I worked on the beats; adding certain instruments to the beats by working with the musicians from Phare. More importantly, I worked on the lyrics with the musicians and different vocalists.
Besides hours in the studio every day, I spend the rest of the time I had helping out with directing the music video. My favorite scene to direct was when we had to wake up at 4:00 AM to catch the sunrise at a river stream with a gorgeous background filled with crops at this beautiful, tiny village. We had three performers on three different boats in a certain formation. I was on the phone receiving director directions from Yoshi, the director of cinematography, so I can forward those directions in Khmer to the boat drivers and the performers while trying to keep up with the boats from shore. It was messy and was very challenging, but it showed me what it takes, and the passion required to make a film.
My passion for music and filmmaking has always been very obvious, but being on this set, and doing it with the professionals really elevated that passion, one step higher. As I stated in the interview with Shellie Karabell from Forbes, I really want to combine my three passions, which are marine biology, filmmaking, and music, and I think this experience just brought me one step closer to persuing my passions.
