Where do you go to school and what are you studying? “I go to Fresno State. I just transferred this semester from Fresno City. I’m studying Mass Communication and Journalism, with an emphasis in multimedia. I love taking pictures, and I’m trying to get into film. I’ve done short films for school projects, but so far that’s it.”
When you’re not in school or volunteering with Filmworks, what are some of your hobbies? “I adore music. I enjoy searching for hours for new music. I love indie music, and it can sometimes be hard to find. So i cruise Bandcamp or Birp, or even random YouTube channels. Lately, I found Malaysian singer Zee Avi. I’m fond of female artists who have quirky voices. Hers is very different. Her song that I’m really into right now is ‘Concrete Wall.’ I also love reading. I love the feeling of real books in my hands. Usually I’m into fantasy or fiction, but recently I’ve been introduced to more nonfiction books. I just finished ‘True Story’ by Michael Finkel. He used to write for The New York Times Magazine. It’s a crime story.”
Recently for Filmworks, you hand-painted the sponsor logos for our February photo booth backdrop, so our audience could get their pictures taken at the Oscar shorts by JA Photography. Where did you get the inspiration for the backdrop? “I got the idea from when I was in high school at Clovis East. I was very much involved back then in Leadership. Our responsibilities included creating signs for games or rallies. So we always used the technique of getting a projector and projecting an image onto some paper on the wall, tracing it, and then hand-painting the finished images. When I brainstormed it [with board president Jefferson Beavers] the idea instantly clicked, and I knew that tracing and painting would be the perfect solution to making the backdrop. It took me like three days, close to 20 hours.”
What was your biggest surprise about working on the project? “I didn’t realize how time intensive it would be! It has been more than three years since I last did a project like that, so the hours really caught me off guard. Plus, I’m a perfectionist, and there were a couple of errors I ran into that only I could probably see. But overall, I was pleased with it. In hindsight, I probably would’ve started sooner until waiting until the last minute.”
What are you working on next for Filmworks? “I just finished my training at CMAC, and so I’m about to shoot our next featured video for the March film, ‘The Invisible Woman.’ It involves our sponsor for the month, A Book Barn. The premise of the video is, someone walks into the bookstore, they walk throughout the aisles, and they search for the Dickens section. You’ll see how it turns out.”
What have you liked about working with Filmworks so far? “I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how important Filmworks is to members of our community. I think that it’s a great way to expose these independent films to people who had no idea they existed. I hope we can reach a lot of people with our movies because I think they would really appreciate seeing them.”
Stay tuned to our Film Forum blog for the debut of Annie’s featured video on “The Invisible Woman.” Coming soon!