06 Jul Invest in people rather than projects

A few years ago, I connected with Jody Kamisato of Ukulele Hale to produce a documentary film called The Instrument of Aloha. We followed his amazing ukulele prodigy students Honoka and Azita as they traveled around Japan playing benefit concerts for victims of the 2016 Kumamoto earthquakes and survivors of devastating tsunami that hit Tohoku in 2011. (See below for the full film)

I’ve stayed in touch with Jody and the girls over the years and we finally had an opportunity to collaborate on another project. Jody will be taking twelve of his current students to Kanazawa, Japan in partnership with HTJ (Hawaii Toursim Japan). Their 2019 goal has a similar general premise as our previous trip, which is to share aloha with Japan through the ukulele instrument. A few months back as their schedule and plans were being hashed out, Jody contacted me to discuss his idea of producing a micro documentary of their time in Kanazawa at the 2019 Ukulele Paina. He put me in touch with his contact at HTJ and we all met for lunch in May and all instantly agreed that this would be a terrific project to build together.

Once we agreed upon the terms of the project, we were off and racing to begin building a production schedule and capturing some of the important moments leading up to our departure. Tonight was my second time shooting with Team Hale… but more than just shooting with them, it was a fun time to connect with the young adults who will be our ambassadors of aloha in August. It’s going to be ridiculously hot and muggy, but I can’t wait to get back to Japan and begin the primary production on this project.

Often when starting up with as a freelancer in the creative industry, our tendency is to look for as many projects as we can handle, in an effort to pay our bills and make ends meet. Early on in my career, I focussed solely on the amount of projects coming in rather than investing time to build relationships with the amazing people providing me the opportunity and trusting me with their ideas. Once that reversed, everything changed. Clients would come back for more videos… yes they liked the work, but they also enjoyed the process of creating work with us.

My initial investment of time and energy in producing The Instrument of Aloha has come back ten-fold. As my relationships with Jody, Honoka & Azita developed, it led to other collaborative opportunities with Agu Ramen, Hawaiian Airlines and now Hawaii Tourism Japan. At the end of the day, clients, vendors, and collaborators are all humans, and creating meaningful relationships with them is way more amazing than just hopping around from project to project… And sometimes, you just end up creating a long term relationship that’s even more fruitful than the project.