A 2:06 short film recalling my first experience at a funeral.
From March to July of 2026, I gave myself the challenge to post a new animated loop on Instagram each day until I reached two thousand followers. It was a fantastic challenge, and while that goal went unmet, my efforts in the last 30 days of the challenge resulted in this film. I had attended a funeral for one of my great grandparents on Christmas the year before, and in May, I learned that the other had died. Needless to say, death and funerals were on the mind, and my first memory of a funeral was always one that stuck out in my head.
I started out by recording what I could recall of the funeral late at night. The next day, I hammered out 15 seconds of visuals and sent it out to my frequent collaborator Vinny Wang in the hopes that he could use finger-style guitar to add a cozy, nostalgic sensibility to the story. When he sent back the music, I was floored. I knew that this could be really spectacular. Once I finished up the rest of the animation, I asked Jeffrey Lim to create captions for the video and he was able to add an element of dimension and interactivity that was really spectacular.
Now sitting at over 100 thousand views on Instagram, this film is my most viewed work yet. In looking through the comments, it also seems that the video was able to mean a lot to those who watched it. In a world that tends to hide from death at every opportunity, to have so many people feel comfortable in sharing their stories of loss was an extremely moving and humbling experience.