Multimedia is serendipitous

The world seems to dwindle, and here I am got, swerved by the wind of wonder. A thought of loss turned out to be a serendipitous twist of fate.

First Encounter

I was 17 years old when I begone to question what path I should take. The people around me seemed to have already figured out their bearings, but here I am, a silly young boy without anything really special. But then the pandemic happened.

Everyone was forced to be at home, and not gonna lie. I really enjoyed the first two weeks of the pandemic cause there was no school, yay! However, weeks turned into months, months turned into years, and here we are enclosed within these concrete walls we call home for two years now and eight months shy away from celebrating its 3rd birthday (hopefully not).

Everything was new to my eyes but in a bad way, and the world appeared to be a mindless-cyclic-endless boring experience, yet something rang literally. It was Facebook notifying me to check this random dude's post. It was a lyric video about a song I like. "Sippin' on straight chlorine, Let the vibes slide over me,"

I said; maayoha ba gud! (in a hard Bisaya accent)

I was curious about how the edit was made, so I mustered up the courage to talk to this random dude and ask where he made his edit, and good thing enough, he replied.

He wrote,

"Kiss sa."

As silly as it sounds, I said mwamwa (lmao)

A typical conversation during 2020.

Anyway, he replied that what he used was Alight Motion. It was an app with the same concept and features as After Effects but on mobile and on a liter side. I then scoured the internet and looked up tutorials on how the heck people edit on a frickin phone. I then went on an investigative rabbit hole to uncover the sorcery of the app. That was my first encounter with actual editing software.

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An Adventure by Chance

At first, I was editing just to not get bored amidst the stressful appearance of COVID-19. My edits were nothing exceptional they were simple fade-in/out stuff, but things only went serious when I found a cool edit on Instagram, which was made in Alight Motion. The community was starting to grow at that time as many people got bored, too, and along those moments, I met plenty of people who helped me become what I am now as an editor. We were all improving at the same rate, but I wanted to be unique in my own phase, so I joined editing groups that were not only using Alight Motion but also heavy programs such as After Effects, Premiere Pro, Blender, and more. That was the start of my constant chase for improvement.

I tried different styles along the way. I tried 3d.

I tried basic fan edits, which were very popular during 2020.

I tried simple 2d animations.

Then I landed on this style. I don't really know what's its exact title, but I often call it an out-of-print style edit since it obviously looks like it came out of a printer or has those printed papery look in it. Though I find this style my comfort style, I still continue trying different styles.

I wanted to try all sorts of styles, such as kinetic typography, comic-style edits, CG animation, etc.

Work in progress (Blender rendered in Cycles, Graded in Davinci Resolve)

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Opportunities became clear

As I was trying out different styles, I decided to create a YouTube channel, and at first, my intention for its creation was just really to showcase the stuff I make, but then people sorta saw something with my works. They kept applauding what I had made. I enjoyed it but what really made the YouTube experience fun is when the moment I decided to share what I had learned. Tutorials were new to me. I didn't know how to make one, and the first iterations I made were really cringy, and I only targeted Filipinos since I was not that confident with my English at that time. I noticed some apparent growth along the way on my channel; even though my content wasn't remarkable, people still waited for the next one.

I kept asking myself during that time, If I wanted this to grow further, maybe I should target a larger demographics, so I started making English tutorials, made the tutorial even more visually appealing, chose better music, and found some cool ways to engage further my audience.

I surpassed 1K subscribers, 5k, then turned into 10k, and now it's currently 16.6k! Then just by the end of last year, opportunities became clear.

• Got discovered by the creators of the app itself and was featured on their posts!

• Built a discord community around editing and helped people learn how to use alight motion and help them love editing and design!

• Helped my parents financially <3

• The craziest ones were when my works were seen by artists such as Dawin, 347aidan, Rupi Kaur, Fin & Fil, and Ashley Sarmiento.

• Lastly, I got discovered by a studio based in Canada that edits stuff for indie artists, and now I'm working remotely for them!

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Let's wrap things up

So far, things have been going really well. I enjoyed this little trip to memory lane, but what does this really connect with my description of Multimedia as serendipitous? Well, this moment that I cherish now happened only by chance, the same as Multimedia, it is complex, but the moment you discover it, the more you'll get reeled into it. There's always a thing that Multimedia could harbor; it may be animation, writing, design, and the list goes on and on. But what's better about it is when you purposely get lost and allow yourself to wander and sigh; damn, did I really just make that?!

Let's all find something valuable on instances that we did not really ask for but didn't know we wanted.

Cheers,

Adam