Well, here we are. The outbreak of the coronavirus kinda messed up all the plans. Since all the physical setup and meetup would be impossible to achieve, so I made a list to see what I can do at home, and how my time won’t be wasted.
What I have at home:
A laptop with video making software, Unreal Engine, Unity, Maya, Logic, selected Adobe series.
Multiple DSLR cameras, GoPro, DJI Osmo, microphones, LED lights, tripods.
Used media studies and philosophy books.
Internet access.
What I expect or I hope I can achieve by summer:
I want to improve my technical skills, like VR/AR storytelling and coding skills.
I want to create something that can trigger huge impacts.
What could be the challenge and uncertainty:
My laptop is old and doesn’t have enough CPU and storage for making huge projects.
I am all alone by myself. My friends all live far away, and I don’t have a job to keep my social life. I found it’s been hard to even find a chance to speak in the past two weeks.
I am considering going back to China, and there is no guarantee when I am gonna leave and when I can come back.
It’s been a tough March for me because I lost my job at the beginning of this month, and then the entire city shut down due to coronavirus.
I found my creativity and productivity remain low, and it’s been hard to keep my daily routines. On the last day of my work, I stood up the whole night to make myself a video to remember this unusual experience:
I posted it on social media and went to sleep, knowing nothing about the video could have reached 250K viewers and gained thousands of new followers in just a few days.
My social life is back in a strange way by replying to thousands of comments each day.
Most people’s comments are sweet, and they all encourage me to keep on doing what I love—-storytelling.
So I went outside and did the second video about how life has changed due to the coronavirus:
For some reasons, I told myself that the first video went viral because many people are interested in how Trump can affect a nobody. If the second video I made can still go viral, then I probably found my way of storytelling and my audience.
Surprisingly, the second video is doing not that bad.
Screenshot of the growth of my social media followers
I gained more followers, and the number is still going up.
The year of 2020 has been odd and full of surprise in many ways. But what I learned in that pas two weeks are, yes, life sucks, but things can still be done.
I am gonna keep this attitude and see what I can do next for my thesis project. I am very certain that I have the ability to tell the stories that I want to tell, and I am sure the impact is real.
Like I said in my video, nothing has changed. If I want to be a journalist, be it. If I want to finish my project with a huge impact, it will.
So, here are my plans for the rest of the semester:
I am going to self-learn creation in Unreal, 3D modeling and animation.
I am going to do a lot of research.
I am going to build a virtual Closet in Unreal.
I will keep on updating videos to gain social influence, so that I can later use it to create larger impact.