SOPHIE HAMEL

Growing up, I played nearly every Pokemon game on my DS with my brother. I would always get lost in the caves and complain to him that it was too hard. Without hesitation, he would grab my DS out of my hands and get me out of any sticky situation. I still think to this day, I have not beaten more than two whole games by myself, but it was still a lot of fun. This sparked my first dream to become a game designer. However, I realized the amount of programming that is required for this profession, so I decided to stick to losing ranked games with my friends.

As I got older, I started to watch movies, specifically animated movies that my mom would put on like Ponyo and Kubo. All of the motion, colors, and personality behind characters that were not real people felt magical to watch since she would not allow me to watch Spongebob because it would “rot my brain.” It was like a drug. This sparked my undying loyalty to the art of animation that inspires much of my work till this day, and of course, I wanted to then become an animator. I quickly pivoted from this because I realized I was not stellar at drawing and too lazy to learn these overcomplicated softwares.

I was left at a mid-life crisis (I was 14), not knowing what I wanted to be when I grew up. I couldn’t become a professional athlete because although I was a strong defender in soccer, I was not fast enough to chase down the track stars (14 year old boys). I couldn’t become an astronaut or scientist because my brother took all of the smart genes. After years of questioning who I was going to become in the future, I finally landed on what I wanted to do. I wanted to edit anime scenes on Instagram. Unfortunately, there was not a major for that in college, so I settled on becoming an editor, which is ironic because Premiere Pro is also an overcomplicated software.

Now, in the present, I am finally comfortable in my own skin and talent. My time following the post production track at Temple University has reassured me that this is what I want to do now that I am almost all grown up. I love collaborating with directors to bring their visions to life and being on set as DIT or as Scripty. Since I am an editor and live in a dark cave accompanied by my two monitors normally, I am super excited to take a more pre-production approach during my time at JTwo and go outside! I am looking forward to expanding my skills and connections for this term and I am sure I will continue to grow, but hopefully this time I don’t pivot back to being a professional athlete.