Bianca Bee: What would you be, if you didn't even try?

The message came in at 10:30 pm on Wednesday night.  I had just posted a video to Facebook promising a special surprise on Friday.  And now, my video editor hit a road block that would make completion of the video impossible for Friday’s Jenny & Friends. 

I sat for a moment.  “I could let this go,” I thought.  But, I thought, as Lyle Lovett says in his song, “Here I Am,” what would you be if you didn’t even try? 

So I reached out to my guys, video editors familiar to readers of this blog, Mike Janowski and Bob Ness.  Not surprisingly, their video dance cards were full.  I went to sleep, wondering.  

The next morning I told Robin what had happened.  Searchingly.  The tone of my voice, not my words, asking the question, “Do I need to get this done for Friday?”  Of course the first thing he said was, “Everyone will understand.” 

YES.  I thought.  Of course they will understand.  May was a MONTH. 

But still…I felt like I asked a lot of the Jenny & Friends band to get this done.  And I had.  Though they would never hold the extraneous circumstances against me, I would feel better if I exhausted my options.  Because, you know, what would you be, if you didn’t even try?  

So I turned to Upwork.com.  I discovered it in the early days of Haiku Milieu, but never wound up hiring anyone largely because people like Sue Demel and Cathie Van Wert Menard were so generous with their skills and insight.  I already had a profile, and it was easy to post the job for a “Quick Turnaround Video.” 

I got many, many replies right away.  Bianca’s message is among the shortest, sweetest, most professional.  She is the only woman who applies.  She lives in Belgium.  Her portfolio is well done.  “Yes,” she said, “I can do this for you in 24 hours.”  Again, I thought, what would you be if you didn’t even try?  So I hired her.  20 minutes, start to finish, posting the job, and hiring.  Done. 

What I could not have imagined, flinging myself into the arms of the Universe as I did, was that I would find a genuine artist, a deep and true kindred spirit, and a professional who performed far beyond the letter of the law to ensure that the spirit of the song “Miss You” could become even more than I originally envisioned. 

My friends, meet Bianca Bee of Bianca Bee Films.  Bianca, welcome to the family.  Please enjoy her blog post, as well as her work on the "Miss You" video here, https://youtu.be/4CqhMTmvGT4. 

“Video editing is a solitary activity and it takes nothing less than 100% of my attention. There might be people talking in the other room or the upstairs neighbour might try a new dance routine but when I sit down to edit, the little corner of my room from where I work, becomes a world of endless possibilities. 

I take on each project with a lot of enthusiasm, beginning the journey with an ideal in mind that I need to achieve. When a video arrives at the editing station, it has already traveled a very long way, and there’s just one more stop before being complete. There is a lot of responsibility attached to editing, to do justice to all the effort, care and ideas that are already imprinted in the footage. A lifetime of videos, movies, images stored somewhere in the depths of my memory serve as a blueprint for a new video, like sparks of inspiration. 

I like to compare the editing process to a marathon. The legs know what they have to do to run but you still have to think about where you are going. And a winning marathon was the “Miss You” music video I made with Jenny. 

One of the biggest challenges with a music video is making sure the audio is in sync with the video and this was no regular music video, there was no room for mistake here, especially since there are all the band members on screen at the same time, and they all need to be in sync. In Jenny’s, Robin’s and Jodi’s original videos, I could hear the song being played in the background, so it made the task a little easier, however, the one I was most nervous about was Paul’s. Percussion is not the focal point, but had I inserted the video a second later, percussion would be the only thing the viewer would hear in the song. 

For the rest of the video, the raw footage Jenny sent me, seemed to naturally find its place in the jigsaw helping the message in the song flow nicely with the visuals. It is so obvious to see that this video’s journey originates from a place of kindness and optimism. All I did was give it a push forward to meet those who needed to see it. 

To be able to collaborate so smoothly, even with an ocean and a 6-hour difference between us, is proof that a successful collaboration knows no boundaries. She has managed to give me the perfect amount of direction in her storyboard and freedom of creativity to add my ideas into the mix, so that her ideal could meet mine. In the process, I discovered a fantastic musician, a source of artistic inspiration and a very kind human being. The music and the message of the song filled my little corner with a warmth, that made editing feel a lot less solitary and more like I am now part of something wonderful. 

May the Universe only bring you flawless collaborations like the making of this video was!” – Bianca Bee

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