Despite not being in the post-production process of Portrait and Words, I was still very much involved in the brainstorming and the pre-production planning of it all.

During our group discussion, we weren’t too sure of the exact words we were supposed to showcase for the video but we knew for sure that we would incorporate different languages into the video. Given our Asian background (and as I have previously mentioned, my interest in Asian cinema), we decided to speak in the language of our various motherland – Indonesian, Laos, Filipino and English.

The inspiration for Words and Portraits was our ourselves – our ethnicities and cultural backgrounds were the catalyst for the words that we spoke during the video:

Aku Cinta Kamu 

Khoi Huk Jao

Mahal Kita

During the day of the production, we also decided that we were to speak in other Asian languages that we were familiar with such as Thai, Korean, Japanese and Chinese for the sake of making the video more interesting and longer.

Saranghaeyo

Chan Rak Kun

Aishiteru

Wo Ai Ni

I Love You 

What is so appealing about hearing different languages? This was one of the questions that I posed for myself in terms of our aims in creating this video. There are an abundance of videos like these on internet, which was one of the reasons/inspirations behind shooting a video like this.

Screenshot taken from the Youtube channel, Cut 

I thought that it would be an interesting experience to make a video that I would say is an over-saturated type (aka viral videos) that we as an audience always see on the internet. Even though it may be viral and annoying, we still gravitate towards it and watch it anyway. Therefore, it was good to know the thought process behind a viral video like this one.

I believe that once you have made a video that follows the standard format or a video that is widely accepted by the general audience, it gives you the experience to venture out into your own video-making/storytelling/film capabilities. That is one of my firm beliefs – experience is essential, no matter what the content is. It all contributes to your own independent and future works.