 ThinkTek Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. Bienvenidos to Hispanic Hawaii. I'm Richard Concepcion hosting with Anna Jimenez-Mattmeller. Today's program is about video production. Many of you see many different videos on YouTube and on many different websites. Some of these videos might have a negative or a positive influence on the viewers. Today's guest is Leo Hira. He's a video and web series creator, educator, and he's made over 480 YouTube videos. Help us, Leo, understand video production. Well, first of all, thank you so much, Richard and Anna, for inviting me to this program. And I have to say to you and show the first slide the screenshot, please. Anna and I go back a long way. Anna was kind enough to provide me with her acting skills in one of our series. And Richard and I go back in terms of our production with a group that's actually coming here this coming weekend. That's Vosa Vos. And we go back to that. Okay, you can switch out of that, please. And I'm happy to talk about this because, I mean, this is basically what I've been doing for about 10 years now. And it's been a very exciting time, exciting because first you have to learn video production and then you have to learn the fact that if you want to do videos by your own, you got to start at the very beginning, which starts at the conceptual step all the way through the final master. And let me tell you, that's a lot of work. That is true, Leo. I can tell you from my point of view. But I wanted to know a little bit more about you, so tell me. Why yourself and what motivated you to start a new video production? Okay. Good one, right? Well, it's one of those things. You go into retirement and you try to figure out what to do with yourself. And believe it or not, things come up and video production was one of those things that came up and it soon became an obsession. And I've been doing it for about 10 years now. I've been doing every one of my videos basically is mine from start to finish. I've had help from very capable people in every regard. And I've been extremely fortunate to work with some very talented actors and actresses. Thank you, Leo. I hope to be able to continue that type of work. So basically what occurred was that I was president of a mediation group here. And I wanted to do something that would start bringing that to the screen. So I approached another public access organization to help me in doing that. And so they came, a camera was set up. The video was shot. And then I said, okay, now what happens? And I was handed the tape and said, here it is. It's all yours. Make it happen. Make it happen. Okay. That's how I got started. Okay. And from that, I started to grow into it and really enjoyed the work. And that's where it took off. Most of your videos are so diversified. We talk about information, education at some time, different issues within the community. Tell me more about those videos. Well, I mean, it shouldn't be hard to understand. This island is very diverse to start off with. And so why wouldn't my productions be diversified, right? And frankly, if you want to learn how to do video from my perspective, you do have to take a look at various aspects of what's going on in the community, as well as what's going on in entertainment, what's going on in nature, because you want to be able to understand and get a perspective on all that. Different types of shooting, different types of preparation. If you're working with actors, you've got to write a script. If you're going out into nature, you've got to take you into account. You've got to go outside, and the audio becomes a problem. The lighting becomes a problem. In the studio, it's a totally different type of environment. So for me, it was a way to make sure that I understood what it is to produce videos. That's awesome, Leo. And thank you again for the plug. I didn't expect you to put my picture up, because he's had a lot of great actresses that have worked on your videos. So Leo, one of your areas is leadership. And an example is the Admiral Hyman Rickover video, which you co-produced and wrote with Herman Stern, who's an awesome actor, hands down. Can you tell us the inspiration behind this subject? Well, Admiral Rickover and I share a common foundation. We were both in the Navy. However, obviously, his career was a little more distinguished than mine. And it just turns out that I had this fascination with Rickover, because I had heard so many stories when I was going to school about him and his leadership style. So that kind of piqued my interest, and then once I got going, I couldn't stop. And Herman and I go back a long way as well in our mutual collaborations. For me, perfect guy. We just went over to the submarine museum. We put together some shots about him walking through the museum. It's an excellent place. You haven't visited. It's a place to go. And then we wrote a script to overlay that and do a voiceover for the script. And as it turns out, it hit a lot of good chords. I mean, the viewership keeps growing on that. I've got actually three versions. One is a very short version. One is without music and one is with music. The one with music seems to be the most popular. But it's about a man who just was an extraordinary person. I mean, some of the things you hear about Rickover, he would interview. And what he would do, he interviewed everybody, first of all, for a nuclear power duty. The things he would do. One is he cut the front legs of the chair about two inches shorter than the back. And so when you sat down, you were constantly fighting the fact that you're going to fall over. And then he would also do things like ask you, do something that's going to get me really irritated. And one person broke one of his models and that got him irritated. So I think that was the guy who spent about six hours in the closet. Because what happened is he would put people in the closet and then let them out at a certain point in time. This particular individual, they forgot about him. So it wasn't until the next day that they opened the closet and there was the poor guy still sitting in the closet. So with a guy like that, you say, what does he have to offer? Well, what he had to offer is he probably ran the best and most complicated project in our history in terms of development of nuclear power submarines and the reactors for those submarines. And so from that, he actually went and grew the nuclear force with all the submarines at the time he was forced to retire as well as the surface ships. So for me, it was inspiring to learn about them and to produce them in the work with Herman on this. Wow, that's pretty fast. That's a very different leadership style, right? Yeah, that's pretty fascinating. And if you relate to that, that's great. I didn't interview for him, so I can speak to what it is. Some of the comments I get by people who are into you, I can't repeat on that. I like how you mentioned about different variations because that seems to be your mantra when you make videos. There was another video I had done with you and we did different variations. But so speaking of that, Frosters. Frosters is one of those videos where there's many different variations out there if you folks do watch that one. But so your playlist deals with Frosters, scams and elder care, and you have several, again, in these areas. So when you created Frosters, the web series with local actors, what was the background regarding all that? Simple. It's the phone calls I hear. The robocalls and the games, scams, right? I mean, come on. I mean, we all were subject to that. We get that all the time. That's true. I've gone to the FCC. I've gone to various firms and said, what can we do to stop this? It just keeps on going and keeps on growing. And it is really annoying. And then when you think about elders in the context of they're living by themselves, they're lonely, they get this phone call from this beautiful sounding person who basically lures them into further dialogue, sending money using these cards you can buy at the CVS, getting scammed. We all know about many scams that generate out of Nigeria. Phone calls that come in that basically lure you to the site and then they charge you an exorbitant amount of money for each minute you're online. That really got me angry. Okay. And in terms of what can we do about that? So, you know, as, you know, the purpose of what I do is to inform, educate, and promote different aspects of living our lives. For me, it was unnatural to go into that. So for us, there was an attempt to create a series dealing with somebody Herman Stern again who was very prone to being scammed. And so, you know, we did a couple of versions of that in the context. They're still up on our playlist in regards to that. And then I also got in contact with the Hawaii Partnership Against Fraud. And they were very helpful. And I did several video interviews of key people in that partnership that talk about investment fraud, elder fraud. And then I worked with the Hawaii Mediation Center to actually look at elder care called Kupuna Pono, which is a way for families to resolve their difficulties. So it grew from scams and fraud into elder care and will continue to grow, you know, in terms of what we're going to be doing. It's just a matter of time and availability of time to be able to get to that. And, you know, we're just going to grow that aspect of what we do. That is very difficult. We have to continue protecting the community. But you also have a video that talks about conflict resolution as an art. Can you explain to me about how do you see a conflict resolution as an art? Okay. To be perfectly honest, I mean, that is an exposition of two things. The exposition is some beautiful flower arrangements. With me superimposed, hopefully people pay more attention to the flowers than to me. That's up to you. Okay. What it feels with a very important subject and that is mediation. And mediation to a degree is an art. It's an art because of the fact that you have to deal with people who are in conflict and you have to work with them to try to resolve it in a peaceful manner. It isn't a court proceeding. It isn't, you know, an adversarial type of environment because the mediator is trying to bring that collaboration into that. So what I tried to do is leverage off of both the beauty of the arrangement of the flowers and the art that's associated with that with the dialogue in regards to what mediation is. So that's basically how I came up with that particular video. That is great. I want to ask you a reference about the negative and the positive influence video has on the viewers. I see that most of you viewers, video had to do with education or promoting something, something that happened with the community. What is your opinion when somebody creates a video and creates a negative influence on the viewers? I guess it's relative to what you mean by negative, right? What we know how to do is there are some videos on there that you don't want to watch. Unless you view what's being shown as positive. Yeah, but that's true. But you have the freedom of speech, too, that people can put in YouTube whatever they feel that is right for their point of view. Yeah, community standards. So what goes on these video channels, whether it's YouTube or Vimeo or others, they could do some work. But I remember back in law school that I learned that the internet, particularly the videos on the internets, what area do you think that got off on a quicker start at the initial stages of the internet? No, for sure. I don't want to venture a guess, Leo. Why don't we let you go for it? I'll tell you. It's porn. It's porn. That's what people turn to in the initial stages. Are you kidding me? I mean, today it's even worse and more prolific than anything else. So when you talk about negative influence, I mean, you talk about the fact that you can get people addicted to that kind of material. And if you're not controlling the age at which your children can go and just freely use the internet, hey, all bets are off and still what they're watching. So from my perspective, there's so many issues that need to be addressed, particularly to young people that need to have a positive spirit behind them and have a community standard we can all live with is really, really critical. All right. So that's why one of the areas that I'm really honing in on is leadership geared towards the young, the Hyman Rickover being one of those, Paul the Apostle being the other. And we'll talk a little bit later about my current productions. Two more, okay, people that I'm looking at. And the other one is education, okay? And again, education is so important. And one thing that they keep in mind, I just saw a program the other night where someone was speaking here about giving children the ability to have their own initiative and their own creativity. And what that gentleman cited is a UH professor who's been there for 50 years where incredible productive, innovative things that children one to eighth grade did that it just boggles my mind. And so recently in the last half a year I've been working with our parochial school in terms of just capturing what they do. And let me tell you, it's inspirational as to what those children can do if you have the right environment in which to give them that opportunity. You have the right staff and you choose the right topics by which to do that, not just in the creative arts, okay, in terms of entertainment like Mabel Stable or what do you call it, May Day, but also things like showcase. Where you give the children an opportunity to basically use a template and come up with their own businesses. And the results are just amazing. I mean I spent a lot of time on them, I enjoyed every second of that to put those videos together. So for me, when it comes to providing a positive light, there are opportunities there and we really need to do that. That is true. And also you too, how the capability that you can view something if you think it is, you know, it's not proper for the viewers that can complain and they can review it and to see if they can take it out from the website. Well, we are going to take a quick break and we're going to return, continue more story about Leo Productions. Hello and welcome to Out of the Comfort Zone. I am your villainous host, RB Kelly. Today we are playing two truths and a lie and I will tell you two truths and you will tell me which one is the lie. Truth number one, this is a real mustache. Truth number two, I want you to watch my show on Tuesdays at 1 p.m. So tune in and let me know which is the truth and which is the lie. I'm RB Kelly with Out of the Comfort Zone and show up next Tuesday to see my mustache live. Hey, Stan the Energyman here on Think Tech Hawaii and they won't let me do political commentary so I'm stuck doing energy stuff but I really like energy stuff so I'm going to keep on doing it. So join me every Friday on Stan the Energyman at lunchtime, at noon, on my lunch hour. We're going to talk about everything energy especially if it begins with the word hydrogen. We're going to definitely be talking about it. We'll talk about how we can make Hawaii cleaner, how we can make the world a better place, just basically save the planet. Even Miss America can't even talk about stuff like that anymore. We got it nailed down here. So we'll see you on Friday at noon with Stan the Energyman. Aloha. Welcome back to Hispanic Hawaii. We are here with Leo Ura talking story about video production. So Leo, let's take a look at what you've produced so far. We want to look at some of your clips. Okay, if you put up that playlist it's very difficult to say but what YouTube gives you the capability to do on your channel is basically come up with topic areas that you want to address and put them into playlists which means that all those videos that are associated with that particular topic are grouped together. In some cases they may overlap because it's about entertainment but it's also an event you may have that particular video into a different playlist. But I just wanted to provide an opportunity here to say that over the years the number of playlists we talked about diversity before has just continued to grow. And so from that perspective I'm very happy that we have this opportunity through YouTube and Vineo to be able to put this forward and if you do enough videos to group them see you have two places you show them. One is in your channel and the other one is basically on your creative studio aspect of it where the individual videos are posted. So when you're looking at this, how to do this you have to think in those ways is how you're going to put these together and the nice thing about playlists is once you play one the other ones in the playlist show up in a separate column and you can actually play through each of those videos to completion if you care to do that or choose one of the videos in that playlist. Okay? Oh wow. Great tools. Exactly. So one of the other areas that you did filming on was iconography with Father Damien Higgins. You produced that. So what's, this is an art topic. How did this come to fruition? A religion art topic? Yeah, okay. Let me start with the video. The icon video just to give you an idea of what this is about. Okay. At a full light served my country accomplished my objectives and drove people to success through assumption of responsibilities accepting accountability and meeting objectives. Isn't that what is needed today? I'm sorry for some reason we didn't rightfully flag the video I wanted to show. So let me talk about this because I'm just one of the awesome people that I've dealt with over the years is this is this priest. He's from the same Catholic right as I am and he was here in Hawaii for a while and we got to know him and now he has actually gone from being a priest to being the abbot of a monastery up in Northern California. Okay. And his application includes iconography. So what the video tried to do was to give you a bit of a hint about what iconography is about. It is a way for development of prayer to get into a prayerful state and what it is is you copy ancient images you basically copy them and you adorn them appropriately following the template. So there's no creativity per se in that regard but during that period of time there's a retreat aspect of it that's going on, a prayerful aspect that's going on that's leading you to create what is a window into spirituality. So I got caught up in this. It's part of my faith. My wife loves to do it and I forgot to bring an icon. Okay, no problem. That's good when you talk about it. But Father Damien Higgins is just one of those people who has so much charisma. It just leaps out of him. So there's two reasons that I'm so enthusiastic about it. One is the iconography itself and second is this charismatic individual who just inspires me in terms of our discussions. He's got a great sense of humor as well. He runs a really tight monastery in northern, we visited up there and so from those perspective that's what iconography means to me. Okay. So can you share some tips for the future of video producers and their productions and writings? Well, I interviewed a documentarian videographer some years ago, a guy named Yuri Lujove who comes from Canada and he was here because he won an award for a program that he produced on the Holodomor which is basically a genocide that occurred between 1930 and 1933 for the purposes in Ukraine for the purposes of providing grains and food so that the Soviet Union could industrialize. Okay. So I spoke with him. He goes back to the days of before the DVDs, before the tape to the actual tapes. To there. Okay, that's a long time. He worked with people like Henry Ford. Yeah, Henry Ford, right? Not Henry Ford. What's the actor's name? Henry Fonda? Henry Fonda. I always get that mistake. But, you know... But one thing he told me in terms of tips, he said if you want to go into this business, grab your camera as a youngster and go talk to your grandparents and capture what their history is about and you have no more fascinating subject than to do that and then grow it from there. Alright? And then the second aspect of it is I mean in some cases people want to be just the person who produces others want to do set design, editing things like that, audio and stuff like that. I've taken the road of A to Z. Do everything, alright? A lot of work. Yeah, okay. That's why I only have 480 videos in 10 years. But in any case, for me that's really important and then as you go along, if you pick out a particular area, then you really got to learn it. There's no way to learn it, just to gradually go out and do it. Although there's lots of good resources. A program for doing that. And then of course, you got the Hawaii Film Collaborative. Hello, yeah. And there are other sources by which you got the Creative Media Center either at UH or Shyamunal to forget what they're at. You can go and take those courses and you got a lot of stuff on YouTube too. So you can probably other sources. But watch those and watch lots of videos in the area that you're interested in so that you can get a feel for what it takes to make a video in a particular area that you are interested in. And then I wouldn't go and invest in a $20,000 camera. Okay. You take something that's modest. Do you start with your smartphone or you start with a GoPro or something like that. And you build up to make sure you like it. You can do it and you're going to get the results you want. Because if you're looking to make money off of this area, not likely. A lot of competition. A tremendous competition. True. So we got about a minute left before we finish with the show. Can you tell me the best and the worst part of creative production real quick? Well the best part of creating it is working from start to finish. And especially when you're working with actors or actresses, right? It's just so much good. It's really great. I think that the hard part to take is if you go to the public and see what you produce. You've got to have a hard skin. You've got to have a hard skin because you're going to get critiqued. And if you can't take it, then don't do it. Don't make it public. Just do the best you can't write. So what are your future plans? My future plans. You can put up the current production slide if we have that. Warrior begins. I got two in production. That I've been working on this. They're both leadership principles. What they're about is role models. Okay, using role models. Forget the theory. Forget all that stuff. Find a role model. And I use two role models to make these productions elucidating their leadership principles. One is Chesty Puller, who's the most legendary Marine highest award. And the other one is Amelia Earhart. And I chose Amelia simply because we're still trying to find out, right? Yeah, we're still trying. You're in big foot. And I'm saying, wait a minute. We forgot about the person. She did some really great things. She's an inspirational model in leadership in her field. Chesty is leadership in the field, being the battlefield. Okay, so that's where I'm going. All right, Leo. I want to say thank you so much for coming to Hispanic Hawaii. We are running out of time. We want to say thank you for all the viewers watching Hispanic Hawaii. And don't forget, you can re-watch this program at ThinkTechHawaii.com and many other programs. Gracias y hasta luego.