For three weeks, Bellyn and I have been shooting for a video called “Sh*t A-Levels Students Say” (which is, as you can see above, more politely renamed as “Stuff A-Levels Students Say”) as a project for our ALSTAR group. It’s quite a funny story, how the video turned out to be a video because we initially had a scriptwriting committee but in the end the presence of a script…eventually…got erased from our memories…and we found it well, easier to shoot impromptu scenes with ideas that were come up with right on the spot. And the end result is this. I was audio manager for the project, which means that I used my phone to record the actors’ voices as Bellyn filmed them. The only other time I’ve ever done anything of the sort was at YNN Camp and that didn’t really turn out quite well with me behind the camera, but I daresay this time was much better. It was pretty fun running around thinking of wacky, not-lame ideas and watch the torturous expressions on the actors’ faces as we asked them to repeat the scene again and again and again.
On the day of the video’s “premiere”, Bellyn went around all the NWG classes and played the video on the projector screen for everyone to see, and the both of us (plus a couple of our classmates) would just stand outside, peeping into the classrooms through the glass panels, observing their reactions and feel our hearts expand just a nanometer more everytime someone laughed. Of course, the whole idea wouldn’t have been able to be materialised into something that actually exists on the Internet now if it weren’t for Bellyn so let’s just all take another moment to appreciate her great videography and her great everything.
The second video isn’t as grand and majestic as the first, considering how I spent about two days compiling all the videos I have on my phone into a single montage with an app called Splice (which is A+ for people like me who a) don’t have a MacBook and b) have a very laggy PC with an even laggy-er Windows Movie Maker). The main reason I made this video, to be honest, is to send in to Dan and Phil’s radio show (which, I found out from Sakina, they didn’t show during their radio show last night aw sadface) and partially also because it was pretty funny and fun since it’s basically a montage of (1/50 of) my life. If I could sum up the video in three words, it would be: singing, dogs and random walking shots. Also, watch with your own discretion, I guess.
If you’re lucky, you might even spot yourself in the video! (Please contact me if you wish to have the video taken down because I just realised I didn’t ask anyone’s permission to post footage of themselves online oh god)
People/dogs in the video (in order of appearance): Bon Bon, Diyani, Lailati, Daddy (:~D), Ati-K, Aifa, Farhanah, Sarah, Anum, Khey Ken, Jia Yuan, Ryan Tedder (whoops), Lady, David Chee, Kak Mariatul Dianah, Mummy (:~D), Heart, Sakina Jumat, Paramore (double whoops), Tan Boon Ping, Yi Jing, Lee Zong Jun, (1/4 of) Chin Pei Ying, Laila, Rumin, Taliza Kitman (by extension: Ian Shih, Ken Fui and Karu) and A LOT OF MY FACE EW
The milestones I mentioned in the title above comprise of several things, one of those being Careful Confessions hit 100,000 views! It happened just two days ago, I think, and it’s amazing to think how many people in the entire world have read these words I’ve written, digested them, and then formed thoughts and opinions of their own based off mine. It’s crazy. All in the span of a mere five years, too. I still remember the very first day I created this blog: I was at Old Town (which doesn’t exist anymore) at the newly built Tesco in Alor Setar, taking advantage of the cafe’s free wifi by offering three bucks in exchange for a hot chocolate drink. It was then that I discovered someone who I was “researching” had a blog on this very blogging platform, WordPress, and I was instantaneously encouraged to make a blog of my own. And here I am, five years later, sitting in my hostel room, taking a short break from math revision to write this overdue blogpost. I still remember in the very few posts I first wrote, I wrote as if addressing an audience of thousands even though only four to five of my classmates then had the URL of this blog. I didn’t really write for anyone back then, more for my own amusement than anything else. Sometimes I miss those days when the pressure of a fixed audience was non-existent and I was able to write and post anything, but having an audience over the past few years has greatly boosted my confidence to voice out my opinions so it’s not entirely a bad thing. Happy 100k views, CC! Here’s to another 100k.
Following the “Stuff A Levels Students Say” video premiere, it was just a relentless routine of refreshing the youtube page and smiling to ourselves and having mini celebrations each time we saw the views go up. As of this moment, it has 6,541 views and that’s some pretty impressive feat right there.
Other milestones aren’t so numerical and physical, but more of a personal achievement kinda thing where I try to involve myself in discussions which aren’t purely gossip (because we all know how we cannot live without gossip) and also “bond” with people beyond the shallow surface of just saying hi whenever we walk past each other, which, according to John Green who coined this term as a metaphor for human connections in Paper Towns, is like sharing vessels. Now, honestly, don’t take this in the wrong direction at all, because what I’m trying to say is I’ve come to realise how reliant our own personalities are on human connections, which can both be a good and bad thing, but nonetheless very surreal and amazing. When you find someone who has a core similar to yours, and you can actually sense the depth of the conversation you are having with them instead of just staring soullessly into their eyes and feel your words not reach them. (Very hardcore stuff, if you get what I mean. Which you probably don’t. Because it’s an inside joke.)
Okay, I should probably publish this post now before my laptop goes into another blue screen mode which 1) happened while I was writing this blogpost (thank goodness for autosave) 2) has happened twice already in the span of five hours 3) kind of indicates that I might need a new laptop, maybe?
michelle teoh 