The festival life
Junior Diem Dang gains a professional opportunity be attending the Beyond Wonderland music festival.
This semester in Los Angeles was filled with different adventures and activities. In addition to taking classes and interning at the entertainment marketing agency Tiny Hero, I gained experience by helping my friend, a freelance videographer, on his shoots.
My goal is to become a freelance videographer just like him, so he took me in as his apprentice. I got to see the work and lifestyle that goes with his career. We did a product shoot, a music video, a lifestyle shoot and a short film.
The product shoot was a professional shoot for a furniture company. We took still images of their furniture, made advertisements for social media and even did a really cool commercial for television.
The music video was a lot of fun because we shot on Venice Beach, which is so beautiful. We didn’t plan the shoot that much but just had fun with it, and it turned out amazing. The artist also comes from my hometown.
The lifestyle shoot was a shoot of a professional skateboarder wearing a brand of clothing that was being advertised in the video. It was a two-for-one, advertising both the skater and the brand of clothing. This was shot in my favorite location I visited while I was in California: Sunken City, San Pedro. There is still a lot of concrete and debris you can see from when there used to be a “city” there along the ocean.
Lastly, the short film was the project of a friend of a friend. Connections like this are so common and important for growing a network of people. It was filmed in a desert about two hours north of Hollywood. I was a production assistant and did behind-the-scenes footage and photography. The experience of working with professional actors and crew members was such a blessing. I had never experienced being on a professional set until this day, and it felt so long. We worked from sunup to sundown.
I’m happy with the time I got to spend in L.A. Unfortunately, it was brought to an end halfway through the semester due to coronavirus, but I did so much in the two months that I was there. I can’t wait to go back.