Documenting Life Through Film

Lately, I’ve been dabbling in a new medium: filmmaking.

The video format isn’t new for me, but it’s always been a lower priority and done out of necessity. This past year however, I spent more effort editing my travel vlogs, and in turn, re-discovered this form of storytelling.

Sure, you can always string together your vacation clips in chronological order and overlay a song or two, but making Youtube-quality videos as entertaining as the ones from content creators is a real skill. Filming raw footage, the storage, transferring, paying for software, sourcing music, writing the storyline, recording voiceovers, actually editing, syncing music to scenes, pacing, transitions, color grading… it’s a true art form that takes time to do and even more time to master. And I want to get better at it.

Adding handdrawn location graphics

Color grading and captioning footage

Adding decorative graphics to spice up boring phone clips

Why videos?

Although photography is my primary form of documenting life and the world, I like filming tidbits of my experiences, because the sounds, the laughter, and narrations capture the moment and how it felt to be somewhere at a certain point in time with certain people. Rewatching videos helps me relive and enjoy past memories, but it’s a lot of work flipping back through raw clips to find the good moments. If I don’t put in the work to archive my video clips properly to create something entertaining to rewatch, they’ll get stuck on a harddrive forever.

For high school assignments, I did a lot of video projects, which taught me the basics of video editing. Even though it required 10x more work, I always volunteered to direct and edit everything. I wanted full control, and truly enjoyed being the auteur behind every creative endeavor.

This was also around the time vlogging became a thing on YouTube, as I religiously watched vlogs from my favorite content creators to take mind my off the stress of SAT prep. These lifestyle YouTubers (Bubzbeauty, Bethany Mota, Ryan Higa, etc) inspired me record everything and anything at home with our family point-and-shoot camera. My sister and I would then put clips together and upload them to our personal YouTube channels to watch at family gatherings, a tradition we’ve have maintained over the last decade and a half. Proud to say we did this long before the video format became trendy on social media.

Here are some fun videos I’ve made in the last couple of years.

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I. Documenting travels

Traveling is innately an easy subject around which to tell a story. Here are some travel vlogs of higher post-production value that I’m actually proud of. The key to creating these is 1. having enough footage to work with, and 2. writing a treatment before editing starts to figure out how to tell the story. Will the story be oriented around travel days, certain themes, or will it ebb and flow through montages and live narrations? Do the clips themselves suffice, or do I need to narrate in a voiceover? From there, I start sequencing and cutting footage.

My latest travel vlog, Mexico City, somehow get caught up in the YouTube algorithm and ended up getting views and comments from people all over the world. It’s nerve-wracking knowing people who live in the cities I visit are watching and judging my experiences, but ultimately I hope my curiosity and genuine admiration of local culture comes through.

This video was very simple, but the pace perfectly embodies the serene nature of the trip.

I also love experimenting with the Instagram Reels format and documenting my short trips in a lightweight way.

II. Vlogging life’s experiences

Outside of travel, I love documenting the exciting parts of life. I want to remember these moments that would otherwise just pass by, by memorializing them in short films. I take the time to edit the clips together in a way that tells the story of moments like running a half marathon or buying our first house.

At the end of each year, I gather up all my phone videos from over the course of the year and assemble them. It never seems like it has much purpose in the moment, but over time, as I watch them back, I see the value. It’s cool to romanticize the mundane and document fleeting moments that seem like they’ll stay the same forever, but don’t. It’s worth taking the extra effort to make those memories so I can look back and say “Wow, that year was fun. My life has been good.”

Take something mundane and turn it into a fun video. The ultimate creative outlet during quarantine days.

“Documenting little details of your everyday life becomes a celebration of who you are.”

— Carolyn V. Hamilton

Goals

These last few months, I’ve learned to color grade and actually source copyright-free music. I truly enjoy plugging myself into headphones and sitting for hours getting into the weeds of Premiere Pro, tweaking my video projects to perfection.

I do want to work on making my videos more cinematic and engaging, which involves getting better at graphics, color grading, and sound effects. I want to improve at filmmaking in general, putting in the extra effort to write a story, art direct a scene, compose a frame, and light a set. To use visuals to storytell instead of the plain old look into-the-camera-and-talk vlog format. And to make more films that lead with narrative rather than a play-by-play of events as they happen. I don’t know how much time I’ll have to dedicate but it’s a worthy goal I’m excited to work towards.

Time to start writing a treatment for my next travel film: Peru!

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