Hello! My name is Hector Chang, and welcome to my page. Today I will be showcasing you some of my most important and favorite projects I’ve created throughout my years at Freestyle Academy, where I’ve taken prerequisite courses Digital Media and English and an elective in Film.
Outside of Freestyle Academy, I’m a very sporty person; I love playing all kinds of sports and I’m very engrossed in weightlifting. I work a part time job at Boba Guys as a Barista, where I’ve learned that many of my non-academic related skills are communication, open-mindedness, management, and commitment. I absolutely love working with other people in all sorts of different situations academically and non-academically.
My future plans are to attend California Polytechnic University of San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly SLO) for a 4 year undergraduate education, where I will be studying business administration. My dream is to open a Boba Shop. You mays be asking yourself then: Why did I take Freestyle? Honestly, I never had a big art inspiration or aspiration, but I knew that I wanted to try new things and get a lot of experience in a lot of different fields. At Freestyle Academy, I’ve learned a variety of skills I never would have if I didn’t attend this program. These skills include knowledge in all sorts of adobe applications(digital drawing, digital editing, photoshop), storytelling, and cinematography.
Over my two years, I think I’ve realized that my strengths lie in improvisation and the drive to work very hard on a project I’m truly very interested in. This counterbalances my lack in creativity, which I’ve always struggled with and I’m glad Freestyle Academy is helping me to explore. However, when honing it down to more specific skills and especially in Film, which is my biggest interest at Freestyle, I’ve always wondered – am I better at creating Narratives? Shorter scenes? Maybe even a music video? I want to thank you for taking the time to view my work today, and I hope you may even be able to answer a few of my questions!
You can reach me at cchang.hector@gmail.com for any other information!
Showcase
For my Showcase, I decided I wanted to focus on my Zenith.
Collaborating with others, we each had a different focus on what part of the scene we wanted to work on individually, and in the end we combined our skills to create something of a higher level than a one person project. Specifically, Tyler was director and cinematographer, Uch worked on practical effects like blood effects, Sky worked on special effects, and I worked on acting and choreographing. Task delegation was a challenge at first, due to our group having similar interests(for example: everyone wanting to direct/work the camera). To hold one another accountable for our roles, we communicated daily and made sure our weekly tasks were done, not just with Mr. Taylor but with each other as well. I think what I wanted to focus on, going back to fight choreography, actually turning my envisioned fight scenes to reality, not only through pre-production but production – I wanted to act. Years ago, I had thought acting would be an easy job and wouldn’t require much work; however, through Film production class I realized I was completely wrong. Having acted in a few short class assignments and watching casted actors in my own movie, I understand why Hollywood gets paid so much. Given more time in this Zenith project, I want to put more focus into becoming my character and not having to cringe seeing myself on a screen when it’s post production.
Of course, the 21st Century skill I improved the most on during Zenith was collaboration and communication, as in many previous projects I would end up taking on too many roles or not enough roles, making film collaboration difficult as it was unbalanced. Collaborating actually ended up working out very well for us, as each of us showed up on shooting days as well and could provide much more extra help and input when filming. Something unsuccessful could be that many of our final products will be similar, as we are all working on one scene; however, I do think it will be exciting to see different editing styles and interpretations of the same scene. A skill I may have improved upon the least would be flexibility, I had a very tight schedule due to several other commitments and our film shoots may have been slightly rushed. If I was more flexible, there is a chance our final product could have had a better choreographed fight scene, although I am satisfied with the way it has turned out. There is always room for improvement!
In the future, I will be using a variety of learning experiences, some of the most important being planning and organization. I learned that without these, your day of work will be incredibly difficult, rigid, and stressful. A few examples of what I did to plan were making a list of actors and crew members on a spreadsheet, practicing my part of the fight choreography at home, and communicating with actors and my groupmates daily. I feel like I accomplished one very big project objective: to create my ultimate Freestyle project. If I could only show one project from my entire two years at Freestyle, it would be my Zenith. The complete, final, and edited Zenith is shown below if you would like to watch it.
Reel
This reel is an accumulation of my best Freestyle Academy work, although unfortunately not all of it. As much as I would like to show the rest of it, I am pretty content with what I have shown in this short video, and I hope it adds a little element of mystery on what else I have created!
Reflection
While I am not certain I will be entering a film career or art related career in the future, I’m certain that the skills I’ve learned will still carry on with me into the future. I have learned that I’m very passionate when it comes to editing, and I always spend a lot of time working on the smallest of details and making sure I get the right timing. Maybe that will speak about my character and who I am as a person, and I’m excited to see what kind of person I will be in the future as well.
I believe that right now I have a very diverse skill set that will help me through various obstacles, and I know that I’ve grown as a student both academically, artistically, and creatively. Of course, I’ll still technically be a student in college, but now that I’m graduating high school it’s time for me to grow as an independent and self-thinking adult. I hope my life takes me to where I want to be!
