SCpotlight: All Of My Feelings

By: Lauren Liang’23

Los Angeles is home to an incredible community of creatives, and USC’s student population is no exception. With 22 schools across the university, there is no shortage of talent. Where talent overflows, however, opportunity trickles – or at least so it seems. While students in USC’s arts-based schools such as SCA, SDA, Thornton, and Roski take classes that allow them to build their portfolios and meet other creatives, students outside these schools often struggle to find creative community on campus. The same can be said for young artists trying to break into any notoriously competitive creative industry. 

Enter Ally Wei: USC senior, photographer, creative director, and multi-hyphenate extraordinaire. After working as a professional in the fashion and music industries and noticing a lack of intimacy and connection, Ally founded Fellows Collective as part of her senior thesis, which she describes as "a community-based art-organization aimed to create intimate and unique opportunities to connect creatives”. With 5 projects under their belt, Fellows Collective has already brought together a cohort of young creatives. The Collective’s latest project is a short film titled “ALL OF MY FEELINGS,” and it needs your help to be produced! 

ALL OF MY FEELINGS is an intuitive short drama co-directed and co-produced by Ally Wei (Media Arts + Practice ‘23) and Liya Yang (Film and Television Production ‘23), both students at the University of Southern California studying at the School of Cinematic Arts. 

Via the ALL OF MY FEELINGS Kickstarter campaign:

The film was originally inspired by one of Ally’s photoshoot concepts entitled “All of My Friends”. The idea was to create something that borrowed the juxtaposition of having strangers depict some of Ally’s strongest memories. After posting a model call on Instagram, Ally quickly realized – it is very hard to recruit people you’ve never met before.

But one of these people was Liya. While catching up over açai in the USC Village beginning of Fall 2022, the old photo project somehow came up. Liya and Ally  started talking about our last couple years and realized just how isolated they felt in our creative endeavors and how emotions and feelings are so inextricably connected to the relationships we nurture with those around us. Their shared experiences and creative ambition led them to develop ALL OF MY FEELINGS together–transforming a shelved photography project into this intuitive short film.

ALL OF MY FEELINGS follows the narratives of five individuals and explores how each person experiences the height of their emotions. Integrating various forms of artistic mediums–such as filming, photography, animations, and even poetry – the film takes on a multimedia approach to exploring how emotions such as joy, nostalgia, love, grief, and loneliness are perceived and translated from person to person.

Drawing on the power that cinema has to tug on our heartstrings and prompt us to feel so intensely connected with not only the characters on screen but also with the rest of the world, the Los Angeles-based short aims to purpose the innate human need for intimate connections by visualizing the intensity of common feelings and lived experiences through an artistic medium capable of invoking the emotions we strive to capture.

(L-R) Ally Wei @allywei | Liya Yang @ll.iya

The ALL OF MY FEELINGS Kickstarter campaign is currently live, aiming to raise $8,000 in only 60 days. Whether you live in LA or far away, ALL OF MY FEELINGS is made for people passionate about learning, growing, and exploring the intricacies of the human experience.

With cute perks and events planned during this fundraising period, backing the film will support creating a community to propel the ALL OF MY FEELINGS story and stay in the loop. 

Like all of Fellows Collective’s projects, ALL OF MY FEELINGS is sure to be not only an amazing opportunity for young creatives at USC and the greater LA area, but also an intimate and touching experience for viewers.

Instagram @allofmyfeelingsfilm

TikTok @fellowscollective

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