Personal - Stressful Projects for Children Day

Hi Blog,

Due to Covid19, no mass gathering event so meaning school celebrations like Teachers' Day and Children's Day, will conduct in a different manner. For the past weeks (mid of Sep) I was tasked to edit/tidy the videos given by teachers from all levels for Children's Day Celebration which will be conducted in their own classroom.

Having some deep thoughts.

For me, where I belong to Admin level, We had to come out one performance then I suggested to have a message in our performance and our reference point will be this parody.

Inspired from this Korean Dr Strange.

So I thought through deeply...

Objectives is to make the kids laugh and enjoy during the celebration. Introduce every single admin staff whom they barely remember and make sure them understand behind every magic trick - proper planning and pre-preparation are key factors; Similar to their studies, they must practice and master to succeed in life.

And the synopsis is Mr STRANGE showed up in the school to share the Art of Magic to all pupils during Children’s Day. His journey had many challenges, he was stopped and questioned by the staff for the unauthorised visit. In order to convince them of his magic authenticity, he performed some magic tricks. Are we able to learn the Art of Magic from Mr STRANGE?

Sounded... easy? But here is my challenge. I needed to convince School Leaders with this idea as compared to their initial plan (just to sing a song), I had to prepare a script in detail, mapped out who will be involving, scouting willingly actors and listed out the possible tricks to keep the story flowed...

But the main problem was, we were challenged by one week filming timeline, most actors were not available at certain timing... in average, we only had 1hr 30 mins daily for five days. Many of them don't understand how the story flowed and acting... My admin colleagues felt that I have too high expectation over this skit. Honestly, they felt pressurized and understood that I have high expectation but yet didn't want to offend me by giving me a title "PD Wong" (to remind me, I am not producer. So I should manage expectations)

They wanted to make the scenes into simple and "easily" managed, while I demanded every scene to film within one take to present the street magic feel. Somehow I don't give in on "discounted attitude" towards the skit.

My stubbornness throughout the whole experience was a F... (failure) The pressure I had as a Director, Scriptwriter, Prop manager, Actor manager, Cameraman, Editor and even become an Actor. I was so worrying that we can't complete the filming within given timeframe and others just hated me...

I had sleepless nights, thinking and worrying... I also worried and prayed that the weather will be good during our filming time. Thanks Mr Sun and Miss Sky, you had helped me a lot.

And instead of worrying, I started to open another eyes to embrace whatever support that my colleagues gave to me - shooting behind the scenes, helping to signal and explain to actors on the timing.

I even went up to apologise to the security guard for bad behaviour due to some actors did not understand why I am doing this. After explaining and apologising to him, he gave me some advice and I learned to accept that he did it out of kindness.

After hard work of filming, time for editing. Thanks Heaven that my laptop didn't give up on me for working on large video files and intense edit. I took nearly 18 hours to complete the whole video.

Here is our completed work. Honestly, I am so proud of myself for the effects which I can achieve amateurly.

Lucky I didn't give in, but to maintain the high expectations,even though there are some scenes which I hoped to make it better but I learned to embrace it and appreciate what was done with their effort.

It was Sunday morning and I decided to cycle to meet up with HD. At least, something to prevent me from distracting my sleeping timing.

Showed the video to my waifu which we had made and glad she liked it. :)

(Thanks HD for helping) Ah! HD had arrived. Finally got to catch up with him due to different timeline. Had a good chit-chat session but my body clock started to kick in, I had to go back and rest myself. Will plan again next time, HD.

Overall, the experience was positive and ended with a high note and laughter, and got a chance to dress up as a student was a great nostalgic experience - as an adult is hard hence go back and be young again was comforting.

Looking at a group of teachers laughing at out video, comforted a lot.

Now I can rest myself. :)

Jeff