02 Sep Music can change the world

Growing up in Hawaii, we learned to play the ukulele in grade school. It is actually a great instrument to learn when you’re young because of it’s size, its tone and because it’s a great way to learn about music.  It teaches you about creative thinking, it teaches you scales and music language, and it teaches you to appreciate sound and melody.

Jody Kamisato is an ukulele instructor I have gotten to know over the last few years and not only is he a great ukulele player and entertainer, he is just an amazing dude.  He is one of those guys that is just fun to be around.  He’s selfless, kind and super generous!  We worked on the Instrument of Aloha together with Honoka and Azita three years ago and we’ve been friends ever since.

About a year ago, Jody told me an idea he had to bring together his ukulele school “Ukulele Hale” and a bunch of kids from Japan to play in an ukulele festival and bring some aloha to people of Japan.  I really wasn’t sure if it would happen, but with a guy as connected as Jody, anything is possible.  A few months ago, he called me and said “Brad, I want to introduce you to Mitsue of HTJ (Hawaii Tourism Japan)… we’re planing for the Ukulele Pa‘ina in Kanazawa, Japan and we’re considering making a documentary of the whole process.  I was a little skeptical that we would be able to find funding for the project, but low and behold, HTJ was interested in underwriting our costs.  Super stoked and energized, we decided to start planning for the project.

Those short months flew by and before we knew it… we were heading off to Japan.  We traveled with ten ukulele students and leaders, Jody, myself, Mauna and three staff members of HTJ.

These types of projects are always so much fun.  There’s no real client “driving” the result of the video, there’s just an objective to tell the story of an amazing journey to inspire Japan with the ukulele.  We plan to create a few different videos from this adventurer, the first is a marketing piece (the documentary) for Hawaii Tourism Japan to use as a marketing tool to talk about the valuable relationship between Hawaii and Japan and how important it is that we continue this partnership. Second is a video about Jody for our Made Fresh series that features Jody as an artist, but even more so as someone who unlocks dreams for children of Hawaii that want to learn ukulele.  Third is some YouTube content about our filmmaking experiences around Japan.  What it was like to shoot with the BlackMagic Pocket 6k and how it compares the the 4k, Red and Sony A7iii.

It’s only been a week since we’ve returned from Japan, but I so badly want to return for some time to just walk around and enjoy being in my second favorite place in the world.