A blessing in disguise, Adrina talks about how the pandemic pushed her to pursue her dream of videography and filmmaking, and the journey so far.

Growing up, Adrina always had an affinity for creating stories. It started with elaborate plots with her dolls, and she slowly graduated to journaling and writing stories. However, it wasn’t until college that Adrina found the courage to pursue something with creating stories. Adrina went to SUNY New Paltz for college where she actually studied marketing and business. However, after Adrina was furloughed from her job during the pandemic, Adrina took the leap of faith into pursing her dream. Here is her story.

Q: What were you doing before you ventured into your business? 

A: Before committing to filmmaking entirely, I worked as a marketing coordinator for a promotional company. I graduated with a degree in marketing, even though I knew it wasn’t what I wanted to pursue. It worked out because with the steady income I got from my marketing job, I was able to fund my own projects. However, when Covid hit back in March, I was furloughed from my job, which was the best thing that could’ve happened to me. With New York quarantined, and no work for me to do, I decided to dive headfirst into the filmmaking and videography world entirely. At that point, what did I have to lose?   

Q: What made you decide to take the risk into the entrepreneurship world? 

A: Something that had a big impact on me was the death of my mother. After seven years of battling pancreatic cancer, she passed away in 2018, during my very first week of college. Seeing her suffer for long and then seeing her pass away at only 45, made me realize how short and precious life really is. When I graduated and started working my marketing job, I knew this wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. God forbid I was to die at a young age, I would want to at least die having done something I wanted to do. What was stopping me? Money? Money will always be there (in various volumes, of course). Lack of experience? You earn experience from doing. Cause it won’t be good? The only way you get good at something is by making mistakes. The only thing stopping me from doing what I wanted was me, so I told me to shut up and move out of the way.  

Q: What have been some of the daily struggles that you have faced on your journey?

A: Uncertainty is definitely one of the biggest demons I’ve had to battle. Especially now with COVID and things being so up in the air, the future is so uncertain. I won’t lie, it’s kept me up at night not knowing what will happen. Not knowing if my businesses will make it, if my short films will go anywhere. But I’ve also learned to embrace this uncertainty, enjoy it even. I like not knowing for certain what’s going to happen three months from now. I always prepare myself for the worst. So when something great actually happens, it feels almost euphoric. 

Q: Do you deal with self doubt? If so, how have you managed it? 

A: Every day of my life. I’ve struggled with confidence issues ever since I was a child. I’m not sure what it was, but I never seemed to have any sort of self-assurance, and always felt like everything I was saying or doing was wrong. I carried this attitude throughout my childhood and most of teen years. It wasn’t until college I finally broke out of my shell and learned to put myself out there. But the self doubt still remains. Everyday is a battle with myself. Some days I can ignore it. But as I’m starting a project or trying to write a script, it’s almost crippling. On days like those I find it’s best to just calm myself down. I remind myself why I decided to do this in the first place, and how unhappy I was in my old life. Knowing how far I’ve come, and how much further I want to go, I manage to shove that doubt aside, and continue pushing forward.

Q: What lessons have you learned so far during your journey?

A: One important thing I’ve learned is to “expect the unexpected.” In this industry, anything can happen, good or bad. You have to prepare for both. You’ve got to be quick on your feet, especially on sets. Many times I’ve had to make quick changes to my scripts, both on and off set. Thankfully, I always have the help of my crew to come up with quick solutions! 

But there are also good surprises. In this industry, I always try to make friends, rather than enemies. You never know who your friend might know, and what they may have that one day you may need.

Q: What are some of the obstacles in the independent film industry that you see?

A: Finding funding for projects is definitely an obstacle I see for many filmmakers (myself included). Yes, you don’t need a big budget to make a film, but you still need some sort of a budget. Most starting filmmakers don’t have a lot of funds to begin with to fund a project themselves. I was fortunate enough to have a steady job that provided me enough to pay for the expenses of my short film. But a lot of filmmakers may not be fortunate enough to have that. They may be able to reach out to family and friends for donations, but if they don’t have a circle that has enough money, the only other option would be to find an investor, and I don’t think I need to go into that headache that may be.

Q: Why do you think creativity is important?

A: Creativity, I think, is what helps keep humans so interesting. No two humans are the same. Similar, but not the same. Creativity helps us open our minds to new things, and allows us to be entertained, enthralled, and even enamored. There is something about the human psyche that craves something different, something unique. This is why children are pivotal to society. They are the true creatives, never letting anything stop them. Ask a child to draw you a picture, he or she may draw a flying octopus with a baseball bat. Creativity allows you to believe that not even the sky's the limit. It allows your mind to expand and see beyond a flat reality. While some may argue that this mentality would only be useful to an artist, think of people like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. They allowed themselves to see beyond their reality, and create something that at the time was out of this world. It takes hard work and endurance, for sure, but also a dash of creativity to make something people have never seen before.     

Q: What helps you tune into your creativity? 

A: Ironically, the one thing that helps me a lot with my creative process is music. Now, I’m no musician by any means. I would like to be, but I can neither sing nor play an instrument well. However, as a filmmaker I recognize how important music can be to a movie, just as important as the script, the directing, and the acting. Music can help transform the tone of a film, and even convey its message. 

I've always been an avid jogger, since I was a teenager. Jogging for me is strictly recreational, and helps me relieve stress or get any excess energy I have in me. When I jog, I always listen to cinematic scores. I listen to everyone, from Hans Zimmer, James Newton Howard, my man Ennio Morricone, and more recently, Hildur Guðnadóttir. Their music really does capture the essence of the movie it was created for. It gets my adrenaline pumping and my creative wheels turning. Sometimes, I listen to this music as if it was the soundtrack to my own story or film, and this helps give me some perspective on the story itself. 

Q: What are some values that you can say to describe yourself? 

A: There are two values that I live by, and I feel can describe me as a person. The first one is positivity. In general, I always try to remain positive about things. No matter how bad the situation is, I always try to look on the bright side. From my experience, it does no good to anyone, especially myself, to be negative. 

Another value I treasure is one I learned from my 12 years of being in Catholic school. While I’m no longer a practicing Catholic, there is one thing I took away from the teachings of Jesus, “Love thy neighbor as thyself”. I always default treat people with kindness and respect, just as I would treat myself. And this travels on to my sets. No one person is higher than another. We’re all part of the same team. 

Q: Who is your biggest inspiration? 

Without a doubt, my biggest inspirations are my parents. My mother was a strong woman, and while I still meek when she was alive, she instilled in me the principles to be confident and to not take nonsense from anyone. She was also an amazing role model for motherhood, and I hope if I should be blessed with children one day, I can be at least the half the mother to them as she was to me. She also taught me strength. Through the years battling the cancer, she showed amazing strength and perseverance. While I have never (and hopefully will never) experience pain from cancer, I have experienced many other pains in life. And every time, I would say to myself, “If Mom endured through it, so can I.”

My father is also a big inspiration. He was always an incredible father to begin with, doing everything and anything to provide for his family. When my mother died, his world was turned upside. But his selfishness never subsided. If he had to chop off his own leg to ensure me and my sister would be okay, he would do it in an instance. I love my father with all my heart, and I’m blessed to have such a caring and devoted father like him.

Q: What is your view on the power of technology and the influence it has on people?

A: Technology has opened so many doors of opportunity to us. For example, as bad as this pandemic has been, it definitely would’ve been worse if we didn’t have the technology to help. At the same time technology has caused many people to become entirely dependent. I don’t just mean in terms of functionality, but for entertainment as well. Call me old-fashioned, but I believe there is still a great deal to learn from books. Many good books have inspired my own stories. People don’t go to the theater or see movies anymore either. Everyone just stays home and streams. While I don’t believe this is entirely a negative, I do see it as humans further isolating themselves and becoming less social creatures. Even at social gatherings, people will be more involved with scrolling through their phones than talking to other people.   

Q: What are your views on what is currently going on in the world right now?

A: In my opinion, people at any given time in history always thought their present was bad, and how they wished they could go back to the “old days”. The movie Midnight in Paris is a great example of this mentality (I highly recommend it). Is the world perfect right now, of course it’s not. But then again, I don’t think the world will ever be. However, I will say, as a Hispanic woman, I feel I am blessed with more opportunity now than I would’ve been twenty years ago. I’m living in an age where there are more opportunities for minorities in this country, and I’m taking advantage of every single one of them. 

Q: How can we help leave this world a better place for future generations?

A: Understanding and patience are two very important things I would instill to every child on this planet. Children are the key to our future. It is through them that we build the future leaders of this world once we’re gone. And if we teach them to not only understand each other, but to be patient with one another, then I think humans will have a better chance of peace in the future.  

Q: What are you doing to leave the world a better place? 

A: To be honest, I don’t know what I’m doing. I just hope I’m doing it right. I simply try my best to do right by people, and treat people with kindness and respect. My hope is that I can lead by example. Show others how you can still win in this world by treating people kindly.

Q: What are you most proud of in your life?

A: I’m proud of the steps I’ve taken this year. I’m proud that I took a risk for myself, and that I’ve begun to build a life I want for myself. I still have many ways to go, and a very unseeable future. But I can say I’m very proud of where I am now. And I hope to be just as proud as I am of myself now ten years later.  

Q: What does success mean to you?

A: Success to me is more than just getting a job done. Success, real success, is when I achieve something that people thought could not be done. When I was furloughed at the beginning of the pandemic, and I decided to become a full-time videographer, I told my father. He pushed for me to get my old job back, and to continue doing videography part-time. He didn’t believe I could make a good living off of videography alone. So I worked extra to make sure I did. Fast forward to today, I have my own business and my clients, and getting more each month. I may not be making a lot, but enough to sustain myself, and I know if I work harder, I will make more. The fact that I achieved something someone thought I couldn’t, that to me is success. 

Q: What does happiness mean to you?

A: Happiness to me comes in many forms. It can be making someone smile, completing a project well, achieving a new goal, meeting new people, doing new things, it can be a lot of things. But I can tell you what happiness feels like. When I wake up, and I don’t have any angst towards myself or my life, and I can embrace the unknown with bliss instead of anxiety; when I feel fortunate for all the things I’ve gone through (good and bad) and all the people I’ve met (again, good and bad); when I take in all that’s in my life and I still smile, that to me is happiness.

Q: Where do you see yourself in five years?

Never say never, but where I’m hoping to see myself in five years is to be bustling with business and projects. I want to continue to grow as a videographer, and be able to produce more professional and mature content for my clients. On the filmmaking end, I want to make a feature. I have one ready to go and I’m very excited to get it started. Again, you never know who’ll meet in this industry, and I hope the more I travel down this rabbit hole of the filmmaking world, the more people I meet, the closer I’ll get to the person or people who can help bring my feature to life.  

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IG: @adrinahere

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