This is the ministry that I will be working with this summer. It gives you a pretty good idea of where I will be and what our mission is. I will be there in 2 days. :)
The school year is coming to a close. It is really hard to believe that I am going to be done with my freshman year in 4 days. This time next week I will be on a Native American Reservation in Yamaka, WA.
I have absolutely loved my first year at Biola. I have learned so much, met some completely amazing people, and just have had so much fun. Torrey has really pushed me intellectually. I have enjoyed reading the great books. This semester especially in Torrey has been so neat. Reading about desire in books such as Anna Karenina, Plato’s Symposium, Mark, Augustine’s Confessions, and Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling. I just have been thinking and discussing ideas that I have never contemplated. Torrey has been pushing me to know how to love in the best way I can. In my first year I have been in two Torrey groups, which is unusual for a freshman to have to switch groups, but I am so glad I got to become part of two families.
Film has been awesome as well. I really enjoy the family feel of my major. I don’t know why I was not on more film sets before because I love it. I watch movies in such a different way now. I am really looking forward to next semester with film. I am taking the big three as we call it, Editing, Cinematography, and Audio, and I am going to be on some neat film sets (I am learning how to shoot on the RED!).
Biola has been such a unique spiritual environment. My friends and I talk very often about God and trying to understand so many different parts of Christianity. I love going to chapel and seeing people worshiping God together. Biola is like one big church family. I have been learning to read my Bible in a whole new way. Praying together with my co-workers, classmates, and friends has been so amazing.
I have made some seriously awesome friends this year. I am really going to miss them over the summer and I can’t wait to see where God takes these friendships.
There have been many up and downs this year, but the ups outweigh the downs. I have been pushed harder intellectually than ever before, slept way less then normal, had to deal with tough issues, talk people through hard things, and just been stressed at times. But God is so good that he can use anything and everything we go through to grow us. I do not feel like the same person I was when I first stepped onto Biola’s campus. God has been blessing me so so much. He is amazing!
(I don’t know if this blog post even really comes close to show how much I have loved my first year here)
Torrientation Retreat
I am going to be a Seer (Leader) at Torrientation (Torrey Honors Institute Orientation) this August right before school starts. So for all of you Torrey students that are coming next year, I will be with you for a whole week to welcome you into the Torrey family. I am official title, besides being a Seer, is the “Moment Catcher”. Basically I take all the photos and videos the whole week and then put together a final film to show the events of the week.
This weekend was the Torrientation Retreat for all the leaders. We went to a church in Long Beach for two days. We learned a lot, hung out, played games, and had a really fun time. Our theme this year is to be “Rooted in Love” from Ephesians 3:14-21. It was so neat this weekend to see all these different people from different Torrey groups coming together and really learning to love each other. I have a feeling that orientation is going to be amazing. :)
Over spring break my friend Tober and I went into Downtown Chicago for a day. In eleven hours we covered most of the city taking a lot of buses, trains, and walking a ton. We took footage everywhere we went with two separate cameras. When we got back to Biola, we worked together to montage all our shots together to the song “Chicago” by Sufjan Stevens. Today we showed it to our Intro to Mass Media class for our final project. Hope you enjoy seeing my home city. =)
Biola Media Conference
This past Friday I got up bright and early with some of my film friends and headed to CBS Studios in Hollywood. We got stuck in traffic on the 5 for quite a long time (typical LA), but we eventually got there. Missy, Addi, Rose, and I were all at CBS Studios to set up for the Biola Media Conference. We set up the tables and chairs, moves equipment from the grip truck to the studio, and many other random tasks. We got to explore a bit as well. Addi and I met the babies from the new show, Baby Daddy, that is premiering June 20th. They were super cute. We saw the studio were Seinfeld was filmed and walked down New York Street were shows like Seinfield were filmed. We were sent on a project at one point to go see if there were any empty paint cans in the Art Department on the lot. The Art Department building was really awesome. There was paint everywhere, a lumber yard, set houses being painted, and giant books being created. The day was really neat and gave me a better idea of what the film industry is like in Hollywood.
The next day we all got up at 5:30am and headed back to CBS Studios for the actual conference. The room was even more transformed then when we left the day before. The speakers were awesome at the conference. Steve Taylor was there who just recently directed Blue Like Jazz , McNair Wilson (a past Disney Imaginier), and DeVon Franklin (VP Production of Colombia/Sony Pictures and author of Produced By Faith) just to name a few. I was particularly inspired by DeVon Franklin. He really explained extremely well how one in Hollywood has to depend on their faith and relationship with God at all times. Generally as a film major you are told Hollywood is a very dark place and difficult place to work so we need us Christians to be a light in the industry. This is all true, and DeVon had an awesome story for his journey in Hollywood so far and how God was the author of it. He was a great example of how one should be in the industry.
Overall this weekend has been super great. I loved the conference because the speakers and the people in the industry I met were amazing. I also really enjoyed getting to know some of my film friends better and ended each day very encouraged. God is so good!
Yesterday was the Biola Media Conference. This is a video of one of the speakers McNair Wilson. He talked about brainstorming and about how everyone is creative. I learned so much from him yesterday. He is super quirky. McNair is a former Disney Imagineer. He is currently the C.E.O of AssumeBrilianceGroup.He is an author of four books (so far). He helped create the idea for the ride Tower of Terror and so many other things. He told us the steps to brainstorm.
1.Start a Fire (spread the word about the thing you are brainstorming for)
2.Creative/Critical Thinking (separate them)
3. “Yes, and” (build off other people’s idea)
4. No Blocking. No Wimping (do tear people’s idea down right away, and do not over explain your idea)
5.More Ideas
6. Have Wild Ideas
7. Critical Thinking (go back and say what ideas you liked)
a. Grab Ideas b.Group them c.Grow them
The way he explained everything was really helpful. It is not only helpful in Film but in Torrey as well. :)
This weekend my mom flew down from Chicago to come teach at a women’s conference at Hope Korean Presbyterian Church in San Diego. She drove by Biola and picked me up to go there with her.
I became completely immersed in Korean Southern California culture this weekend. I had authentic Korean BBQ, was the only non-korean besides my mom at the church, and I just learned so much about their way of life. On top of all that, the pastor’s wife and her friend Bunny took us all around San Diego. I got to eat at a restaurant overlooking the beach in Del Mar, see UCSD campus and the cliffs and beach across the street from it, experience Sprinkles cupcakes, go to Balboa Park, and just see the beautiful scenery along the highways in San Diego. The women’s conference was really good as well. It was neat watching my mom do her job and I was really encouraged from her message.
My mom and I came back to LA today and we went to dinner at BJ’s with my future roommate and suitemates Jessamy, Hannah, and Hannah. Then my mom got to experience Singspo. And afterwards Blake, Jake, my mom, and I got some Yogurtland. Overall this weekend has definitely been an experience, a very good and exciting one at that!
This week I have been really thinking about balance. In college you are always trying to figure out how you can best manage your time to be as productive and healthy as you can be. I have found that I cannot constantly be doing homework, going to work, and attending class because when I do not give myself a break, my brain shuts down. Needless to say… balance is important.
This week I have been thinking about a different type of balance. It is within myself. The balance between the head, heart, and hand. These three things are essential to being a complete virtuous person. I have found that the last couple weeks I have been more heady than usual and it has caused me to have a skewed view of reality. I find when I am thinking mostly just intellectually I am neglecting my emotions and the Holy Spirit in a lot of my decision making. This causes me to be less loving to those around me, empathize less, and be more cynical. I absolutely hate it when I am like that. I was very convicted this week of the my headiness. I thank God that He pulled me back to Him. He enlarged my heart and made me feel a overflow of compassion for others. I could then better see people and other things as God’s beautiful creation instead of just another stressful things in my life. This counterweight to my head led me to want to use my hands more, serve more. They are all interconnected. I pray that God will grow my mind, heart, and will to serve. I want this balance inside of me to help me to love God’s beautiful creation even more. I want to serve Him.
When I was thinking about this, I thought of the band The Head and the Heart. Here is one of their songs. =)
Last night was Mock Rock 2012. This is a huge event that happens every year on Biola’s campus. It was super awesome and it was fun seeing my friends perform in these dance groups. Here is a quick mash up of the night. =)
“Amid the strange ingredients of Hollywood — a world typified by the human swarm and the artistic abstraction — there is a figure unknown to the chants of promoters and glorifiers. His hand has rarely held the scepter of public acclaim, his brow is not crowned with the envied olive leaf which so often settles upon the lordly producer and queens of beauty. This figure, a giant in his industry, is the cameraman — the sine qua non of a profession which often boasts that no one in its ranks is indispensable. No one, I say, save the cameraman.
I believe this is why:He is the custodian of the heart of filmmaking as the writers are of its soul …
His tool is a box with a glass window, lifeless until he breathes into it his creative spirit and injects into its steel veins the plasma of his imagination …
The product of his camera, and therefore of his magic, means many things to many persons — fulfillment of an idea, an ambition … realization of dreams …
He is the judge who applies the laws of dramatic effect in complete coordination and fellowship with the director who interprets those laws …
Light, composition, treatment are his instruments of power, which he wields with intelligence and sensitiveness to bring to full bloom the meaning of his art …
His versatile management of an intricate mechanism yields astonishing
results in mood, emotion, dramatic effect …A slanting shadow becomes a shattering portent of doom …
A lifeless chair instills the feeling of infinite sorrow …
A dead wall awakens a foreboding of plunging terror …
A flash of a man’s face rises to the grandeur of drama, inspiring and ennobling …
Before his wizardry, wrinkles fade from the faces of Hollywood’s ageless, imperishable beauties… chins take on lovely contours… years melt away ….
Yes, the technique of the cameraman is the technique of artistic vivisection that lays bare the inner workings of our profession. If art can be said to be the expression of beauty in form, color, sound, shape or movement, then it must
be said that same art is the art of the cameraman — expressed in the boundless reaches of his imagination.For his patience and singleness of purpose in a most arduous work, he is eminently deserving of that which is justly said of few men: “He is a true artist.”
”
— Cecil B. DeMille
