FRANCES K. MINIGAN
Kumiko Love (The Budget Mom) is a social media influencer and owner of The Budget Mom brand - a blog, company and community that sells tools for financial planning like workbooks, trackers, envelopes, stickers etc. and provides financial educational content and a place where people can share their stories and relate to others on their own financial journeys.
Aside from gripping on the shoot, I had the honor of editing this piece. I aimed to highlight Kumiko’s humility and determination, while embellishing the most emotionally provocative moments through musical climax, time remapping, and narrative b-roll sequences. This video had me sobbing over my keyboard through the whole edit and I am incredibly proud of the end product!
I cannot stress how much I love love love the moment around 3:00 when the mic audio fades out, music comes up, and in a gorgeous slow motion cinematic moment, James, filled with pure joy and awe runs into his new ballpit and plays, tossing the balls into the air. I seamlessly transitioned the music here from a sweet sentimental song to a more ambient, reflective song that I think made for a gorgeous transition from the excitement of the reveal in the first half to the sentimental testimonial in the second half.
I think the biggest lesson I learned on this project was to do my research when editing footage from a camera I am not used to. After editing only Canon DSLR and C200 log footage, this C500 log footage was an entirely new beast. I definitely regret not doing my research regarding color correcting for a wider dynamic range and higher bit-depth, because the final show is clearly a bit dark and undersaturated! I can say, however, I never made that mistake again