Friday, October 14, 2022

Hyunsoo Moon

Filmmaker

“Fear and Loathing in Los Angeles: How to Not Starve and Still Make Your Art”

We all have the same dream. Make your art AND get paid a lot of money for it. In 2010, I left my hometown to move to LA. I had a young naive dream of making it as a filmmaker, live in a big mansion, drive a luxury convertible, and date a beautiful actress. 12 years later, I don’t live in a big mansion, I drive a 10-year-old Prius, and while my wife is beautiful, she is not an actress. But I am making my art, I am making a decent living, and my family makes me truly happy. My goals shifted, I have matured, and I learned about the things that fulfill me as an artist. In my presentation, I will talk about the journey I took as a filmmaker - starting as a location scout, to working as an editor and director for my own passion film, all while not starving.

Hyunsoo Moon has always loved movies since he was a kid, growing up on 80s and 90s action movies, like Die Hard and Terminator 2. After college, he worked as a location scout in Massachusetts for 4 years. In 2010, he moved to Los Angeles to work as an editor. Since then, he has worked on many genres, ranging from reality TV, documentaries, to scripted television. In 2018, he won the Los Angeles Emmy Award for Outstanding Editor. He is currently working on his first feature film “The Americans,” a story of immigrants in Storm Lake, Iowa, chasing their American dreams to escape the life of working at a meatpacking plant.