This is the video I'm most proud of. I took this video during a Poly Lens trip (my school's photography and occasionally videography club). We took a trip down to San Diego, and my group ended up pretty much just doing our own thing for most of the day. This video is the result.
I really like the way that I edited this video. I feel like this is the strongest concept that I have come up with, but most importantly the best concept that I have been able to execute. There's a lot of moments that I really love in the video that sync up well to the music. This video just has great energy. It's really chill energy, but it's great energy. There's also a few edits that don't quite flow the best, but towards the end of the process, I really tried To not let perfect be the enemy of good.
There's not really much to talk for technical matters this video, there were a few clips that I messed up the white balance or forgot to shoot in S-Log, and as a result there's a few clips that are not the greatest quality, but for the most part this video is pretty bulletproof. One thing that does stick out for sure, is the YouTube compression in the darker scenes. Very dark parts do have macro blocking and banding unfortunately (which isn't really present at all in the original files nor the edited master).
But in the face of all of that, I still love this video the most.
Time Spent: ??? hoursI rented an FX30 for this. 🤦♂️
I think it looks good though. Maybe not worthy of a whole new camera rental necessarily, but it did teach help me to understand what exactly a newer camera could help with.
This video was shot in October 2023 during my photo club's trip to downtown LA, had been worked on on and off for a year and a half, until around June 2025, when I started to edit the Fashion Society video, another video production that I was severely late on. Throughout the 1 1/3 years that I was taking to edit, I had tried two pretty different directions for the video, as well as different approaches/edits for those directions individually. I had a completely different song in mind when I was preparing for the trip, and had envisioned several shots, as well as the general idea for the video in general before I went on the trip. WHen I came home , all told I had about 4 hours of footage, but after sorting through everything, it became clear how much of the footage would not be usable not for my current vision but just in general.
Having all of this video on my hard drive that I basically couldn't do anything with was really demoralizing and it caused me to not want to make videos anymore. It was representative of not being able to execute my vision, or even edit video well at all. Until the Poly Post Sessions video I edited, that's how I felt about doing video any more in general.
This is probably one of the most important videos I have ever worked on. I really learned the value of just pivoting to something else when your original idea doesn't work instead of trying to force it one way or another. And it showed me that just because something starts flawed, doesn't mean it has to end that way. There's still value in something, even when it doesn't quite go your way or end up the way you wanted. As the saying goes, "In order to finish first, you first have to finish."
This is the 4th Fashion Society show that I have helped on, but most importantly, the first that I did the entirety of the video work for. I have worked on other fashion shows in various capacities (sound, streaming, photos), but this is the first one where I took care of the video process completely end to end. While I did borrow 3 tripods, 2 cameras, and one monitor from my friends, and while some other people in Poly Lens helped me set up tripods and such, I essentially was the only person working on the video. I set up all the angles myself, made sure everything had power and empty SD cards, and then tried to forget about them while I operated the follow camera for the runway. This was my first time filming the entire fashion show. It was extremely tiring and stressful, but I ended up not making too many mistakes (at least none that couldn't be fixed in the edit)
When I started editing, the fruits of my earlier labor in setting everything up myself were clearly evident. Having all cameras have consistent and sensible white balance, making sure everything was exposed and in focus, and ensuring everything used a log (or at least log like) profile made importing and coloring everything really easy. I did encounter some initial difficulty lining things up in the multicam edit but thankfully, the A Camera and the sound recording from the console were continuous through the whole show and I used them as a reference for everything else. Grading this footage went by very quickly (although I would probably clip the blacks more to prevent the splotches on the YouTube upload) Sound editing was very easy thanks to the mix provided by the venue, and Resolve's good audio editing toolset.
All in all, this was the hardest video project I've had to do, and it came at one of the busiest times in my life (finals season + moving to new apartment), but I'm pretty happy with the end product. I prevented any issues from making the video unwatchable and I was able to add to the viewing experience with my edits.
This video was filmed by some of my friends working at the Poly Post, the on campus newspaper at Cal Poly Pomona as a part of a new arts and culture subject they wanted to cover. My friend who produced the show asked me for help to film the event, but I was unable to help out that day (I was in Victorville for a rocket test), so I ended up helping edit the video but more importantly, grading the project to at least look somewhat like it was filmed with the same cameras and white balance. Unfortunately, the producer of the story got busy, didn't get it pushed during through the academic year, and then graduated without posting the video.
Working on this video really reinforced the value of having control over the whole video process. A big problem with editing this video was the file sizes of one of the camera. One of the videographers used the highest quality video possible on his camera which gave a nearly 50gb single file for a 20 minute video. This made the post workflow really hard, and even made it hard to generate proxies. The other big problem was the the fact that each camera had a really different look baked into the footage. The Canon footage was really red-orange, the Nikon footage was kind of green, the Fuji footage was really green, but I think I was able to somewhat look the same in the end.
This video was created to promote an event that I helped run for Cal Poly Pomona's University Housing Services. The idea and concept for the event was created because our team cancelled the planned Welcome Week Spring 2024 programming, and we had to to come up with events utilizing existing resources available to the Event Lead Team. I had the idea for the video very shortly after coming up with the theming for the event, and the video came together pretty much exactly as I envisioned it. I also did a quick photo shoot of some cereal for the print/Instagram/website poster for the event.
Unfortunately, this video was only posted on the official housing Instagram account's story for 24 hours due to requiring an (at minimum) 3 week long process for any Instagram reels to be posted to the cpp.uhsevents account, and for the video to be created primarily by the separate social media team who ran the account. This was really disappointing because I had had the idea for the event, had the idea for the video, and executed the idea fully within about 4 days. Since the event had to be planned on extremely short notice (less than a week), it was literally impossible to go through with the normal process to get the video posted, and I think the quality of the video really deserved an exception in that case. For some reason the social media manager didn't see eye to eye with me on this, and it wasn't able to stay on the UHS account, but at least I got to exercise the video making muscles that I hadn't flexed in a while.
This video was created to promote Cal Poly Pomona's Formula SAE team to get new members to join, and is the only thing I ever actually completed for FSAE. I was supposed to make several renders of the car, as well as try to make a 3d version of a scene from Fast and Furious including the car, but the model was terribly unoptimized, and I was in over my head for integrating a 3D scene with footage ripped from YouTube with less than a year's worth of Blender experience. With about 1,500 views combined on the CPP FSAE Instagram and my own YouTube channel, This is probably my most viewed video.
None of the footage was shot by me, and I remember being really, really frustrated with the low quality of the footage for the video. I also took a lot of time to edit the audio. The original audio included UI sounds from GTA V, and not only did it really mess with the vibe of the final video, but it also really go on my nerves during editing, so I went through a lot of effort to find the original song, as well as the voice lines from GTA V to essentially recreate the viral sound from scratch. This was a huge value add because the sound is much, much, much cleaner compared to the probably freebooted 3x times over version I was given to start.
While I really loved the sound editing of the engine now, I somewhat cringe at it now, but I think it's still a pretty good concept. (If I didn't still like it, it wouldn't be on here lol)
Time Spent: 6 hoursI made this video for my Eagle Scout Court Of Honor. Most of the Eagle Scouts in my Troop had a trail to Eagle Ceremony that consisted of someone reading different milestones in that Scout's career when they reached specific ranks, but I wanted to do something different.
This is essentially the first video I had an idea for, shot, and edited from scratch. It was interesting being a one man band of director, cinematographer, sound mixer, and interviewer, especially when the subject matter was literally myself. (Producers were Mom and Dad because she got me the camera and drove me places, and Dad got me the mic, stand, and interface + all the knowledge of how to do stuff). It was definitely cringe worthy to edit but I think the final product came out pretty good, especially considering it was my first time really recording on more than just a phone camera.
I should probably go back and fix the sound levels, my parents were right, the music is too loud. Maybe I'll do another interview for myself at one point, and right those wrongs.
Time Spent: 17 hours