I always work hard to make sure my videos are of the highest quality, but I've never worked as hard on one single video as I have on this one right here. The video is called Growing Pains and stars my friend and fellow creative, Dondre Green. If some of you are wondering why that name sounds familiar, it may be because earlier this year I did the cover for his musical compilation that bears the same name. In fact, the whole video is based off that project as Dondre and I collaborated to bring you a visual that gives you more of a glimpse into his life as an artist and person. A glimpse into the ups and downs of pursuing one's dreams and success from their passion.
I'm not quite sure when exactly the idea was planted, but we started filming in early May and finished around late August. The shooting happened here and there when we would meet up to go to the city to hang out and film. After that came the lengthy editing process. Between there being a lot of footage, adjusting to the start of college, and trying to make the entire video as tight as possible - it took a while to finish.
But now here we are. It's finally time to share with you guys what Dondre and I have been working so hard on over these last five months to show you. This is a different side of video for me, I'm usually either doing interviews or musical visuals with no dialogue. This, however, combines the musical visual aspect along with some talking scenes so it was a challenge to figure that out and work it into the video as nice and smoothly as possible. It was also challenging to make the story flow cohesively for nearly thirteen minutes. I know it may not be perfect, but hopefully you guys can see the vision we had and appreciate it.
Shouts to the amigos who assisted on the acting tip with various cameos throughout the video: Kevin De Los Santos, Alberto Avacado, Kyle Ellis, and Brandon Wilson.
As much as I talk about all the work that went into this project, it was also a lot of fun to shoot. Dondre is a good friend, easy to work with, has a great mindset, and someone whose talents I believe in very much. Please watch the whole thing all the way through, we're only asking for thirteen minutes of your time for something that took us an endless amount of hours to create. Press play and enjoy!