Making Wishes Work

We recently shot the first episode of Wishlist and like everything else in life, we are learning by doing. Even before we filmed we would think of other things to figure out that we hadn’t considered. Some of these things were technical and others were creative.

But creativity and practical work are interwoven. Individually they are useless without each other.

I actually enjoy working. I like seeing how anything comes together, whether it’s seeing all the ingredients on the kitchen counter and seeing my wife turn… stuff into amazing food or watching a makeup artist transform me from an overworked middle age masculine person into Hannah.

These moments are reminders that magic takes effort.

Essentially, dreams don’t work unless you do.

I like to think of Wishlist as a show as opposed to just a series of videos. With that mindset we thought about what a normal show has and what aspects we wanted to emulate.

Credits were important. As this whole thing started to gain momentum I realized that although I am the host, I am probably the least important person in this whole thing. What I mean is that if this was a proper show with executive producers in charge I could be easily replaced by another t-girl who would probably do a better job lol.

Wishlist can’t exist with Sophie and Shawna. Sophie is behind the camera but she is more than that. She patiently listens to all the crazy and stupid ideas I have and gently gives me perspective about whatever I am rambling about. Thank goodness she isn’t hesitant to tell me what is a bad idea. She is my sounding board and is my friend.

Shawna is our editor. She takes alllll the stuff we shoot and works her magic and turns what we send into a narrative that is better than I had dreamed. She is also patient but in a different way. Shawna is able to think in a technical way about how to take the footage and have it become what we imagined the show to be.

The best part of all of this is the complete confidence I have with these amazing girls. We have all to do group projects in school or at work and there’s always at least one person that can’t be counted on to do their part of the task but Wishlist doesn’t trigger those same fears.

And of course I can’t forget The Breast Form Store. They have been so supportive and helpful and enthusiastic with this. I love how active they are on social media and I want Wishlist to be very visible in the world.

One thing I feel is important is that everyone involved in this thing WANTS to be involved. This is all very much a labor of love and it’s a lot of work. I hope that Shawna and Sophie find joy in this and I hope they continue to put their creative touch on what we’re doing.

So, end credits absolutely had to be a thing. But we also needed opening credits since most shows have them. A little video at the beginning with the logo and an episode title to help with the show’s brand, I suppose. I don’t know, I am not in marketing.

Since the whole concept of this show is about wish fullfillment, we kinda of leaned into the magic aspect of that. The idea we came up with is short and simple but I think it’s fitting. I had a hard time communicating to Shawna what I was thinking and since the idea would require editing and magic on her end I needed to somehow get what was in my head into an email.

I am a visual person and I felt that if I had images to show her I would be more successful in being understood. I thought it’d be fun to share what I sent her for and a little behind the scenes action about creating the opening title sequence.

Sophie and I show three different versions of the opening credits. Here’s the one I liked the best without the special effects obviously:

Essentially I am causing the title to magically appear out of nowhere. You know, MAGICALLY.

I uploaded the three videos and these images and hoped that I did an adequete job of explaining what was in my head.

Shawna sent over the credits as rough works-in-progress and used the three videos we sent her so we could have a few different options.

I was sooooo happy and excited! Shawna and I were very much on the same wavelength about the credits and it was so fun to see a creative project come to life.

I hope you like seeing posts like this. I am having so much with this project. We have our first two Wishers lined up and we’ll be shooting in late September and early October.

Love, Hannah