Every day young people are told that their infatuation with phones, social media profiles, and the Internet is dangerous and unhealthy. In almost the same breath, they are also told that it’s the only way for them to carve out some success in today’s economy.
From parody Twitter accounts to serious artists with work to promote, the Internet world is constantly tussling for your attention in a cacophonous scramble for clicks, likes, and shares.
Local videographer Nik Koyama has plunged headfirst into the din of the online world, producing music videos for artists who owe their success to social media and viral marketing. It was during a surge of different collaborations, mostly music videos, that all of Koyama’s equipment—including cameras, hard drives, and a computer—was stolen. The young entrepreneur was in dire need of some help and turned to his online community to find it.
“When I got robbed, I felt that was the time to connect to anyone and everyone with a problem,” he said. “I thought, let’s start here, at a dark moment in my life, and we can all engage. I thought that the act of turning a negative into a positive was possible.”
Koyama came up with the Get This Kid Out of Here Project, which would grant him new equipment and the funds for a trip across the country to produce a documentary. With help from donors through Kickstarter.com, who funded almost half of the project, and the rest covered by a donation from William and Laura Land, Koyama procured new equipment and took to the road.
With friend and driver Jacob Silvas, Koyama made his way across the country, meeting and interviewing strangers, attending live shows, and trying to stay warm during last year’s Polar Vortex. Wherever he went, Koyama was looking for talented and motivated people to share their work and how they achieved their success.
“The idea was to create something that would stand on its own without anyone else’s help, so when anyone offered their help it was because they wanted to, it wasn’t something they needed to do,” he said. “When I ran into strangers and told them about the project and collaboration, they were put in this position of ‘do I want to jump on or jump off?’ Mostly everyone jumped on.”
From business owners to acrobatic yoga performers in the park, Koyama aimed to share a message of perseverance and creativity even in the face of hardship. In that way, Koyama explained, the project really belongs to everybody.
“I’m proud to present it and give it to my community, because my community played a big role in this,” he said. “Everyone did what they could do for me, and it created a lot of energy.”
Once back in town after the weeks-long trip, Koyama sat on the footage, cutting several versions of the documentary. With hours and hours of footage of performances and interviews, it became difficult to pick and choose what was deserving of the final cut.
Taking his audience into account—mostly younger viewers with cell phones—Koyama released The Get This Kid Out of Here Documentary to run for just under 25 minutes on YouTube. The young filmmaker also opted out of advertising or blitzing social media with too much promotion.
“I understood that no one would engage in it if it was an hour long and if I put out a bunch of trailers or anything like that; it was entirely organically marketed,” he said. “I mean, just the data—do you know how much data it takes to stream an hour of video?”
Koyama is keeping his audience in mind, not just as help in times of need, but as co-collaborators in many projects to come. This outlook is what he hopes to spread with this documentary and many future productions, reminding us that we all have the potential to make a positive outcome in the smaller community around us as well as across the globe via the Internet.
“People have got really stuck in social media; we think we can identify ourselves with words and images, when in reality it has always been about the lessons we learned and the things we create,” he said. “If you take the time to actually create or learn something, you can understand the creation process in anything. You’re not going to be able to withstand destruction if you aren’t able to create.”
Arts Editor Joe Payne gets stuck in lots of media. Contact him at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Nov 6-13, 2014.