Today we’d like to introduce you to Abby Wu.
Hi Abby, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I was born and raised in Guangzhou, China. I came to the US for college where I studied Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU. My interests were vague and broad at the time – I was mostly applying for political science & international relations or media & communication during my college applications. I just knew that I’m interested in how the media shape and form identity/opinions, but nothing more specific than that. I decided to embrace all potentials and interests so I took filmmaking and music business as well as philosophy and gender studies classes alongside my major. In my spare time, I DJed Chinese rock music at WNYU radio station, assistant edited and produced a documentary on pornography and sexuality with a professor, made some loose-formed short films.
In a way, although the classes I took seemed scattered, I guess I never deviated from the path of exploring the relationship between media and identity/opinions. Every piece of study alongside the living experience in New York accumulated to make me a cautious and critical thinker of the media being produced. There wasn’t a very clear career path after school but I wanted to keep producing things that can challenge thinking and keep this as an ongoing revisable process.
Fast forward, I am now a producer at 88rising – a record label and media company that creates music, media, and events celebrating Asian culture. Here, I produce music videos, documentaries, short films, and live events for Asian artists all around the globe. I think the reason why I can do this now is an assembly of what I’ve gathered along the way. It was great to be a part of the voices and expressions of the Asian and Asian-American experience, yet there is so much more to do and so much more nuances to how you can do it. I stand by being constantly critical about the process.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I think one of the biggest struggles as a producer is that I want every project to have the best intention and the most thorough angles. It’s easy to get into the rabbit hole of wanting every project to be the ‘perfect’ project and to tell a definitive message. It was a learning process for me to understand that no single work can achieve that and that we should accept a small step at a time. When I was producing the short documentary “Yellow” – a documentary that discusses what the term “yellow” means to the Asian community, I was in this constant debate on whether we are doing this conversation justice or in a way reinforcing the harmful side of this traditionally racial term. I realized that it’s not up to me to define such debate as a singularity. So I decided to find diverse subjects with different opinions and left the interview more as an open forum. It might not have the most comprehensive angles and it might not be a piece of work that tells a vetted truth, but I was happy about it. Every piece of work can just be and will just be a thread in the tapestry of the bigger conversation and I learned to let it be.
It was also a struggle for me to learn how to be vulnerable as a young woman of color at work. I’m sure many might feel the same, but I always try to prove that I know what I’m doing and that I know things even sometimes when I don’t. So I hold back in asking questions when I should and beat myself up when I make mistakes. Because people usually don’t take you seriously to begin with, so I tried very hard to guard myself and don’t show any weakness so I don’t feed into their prejudice. Unfortunately, this doesn’t help me growing and it won’t go away anytime soon. I can’t control if people want to look down on me because I’m a young woman of color, but I can’t let this get in the way of my development. I need to learn to ask more questions confidently and own my mistakes as I go so that I will grow.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am a producer and I mainly do music videos, short films, documentaries, and live events. I’ve worked with artists like Rich Brian, Joji, NIKI, Guapdad 4000, and many more.
I’m most proud of the versatility of the projects I work on. Besides the more standard film sets, I’m always excited to learn new things and work with different people, whether or not it being putting a band rehearsal together for a live performance, talking to production crew in Korea or Indonesia to work on a shoot together, or learning about new technology like AR filters. Such flexibility and global perspective at work are what I’m most thrilled at.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
I always try to break out of my comfort zone. The biggest risk I’ve taken is probably moving from China to New York and subsequently moving from New York to Los Angeles. To learn and adapt to a new environment is the scariest yet the most inspiring. These transitions have been tough, but I only live so long so I want to try to live in as many different places as I can. I still want to try to live and work in Europe or Asia in the near future. If language permits, I’m open to a wider map as well.
However, it’s a different conversation when it comes to risks I take myself versus risks I put my crew through. I’m learning every day as a producer that I’m responsible for the situation I put the crew through and there have been hiccups in the past that I deeply regret. When it comes to my team, I want to strive to manage risks as much as possible so people feel that they are prepared and empowered. I don’t want to put my team through any unnecessary risks and I want to try my best to make them feel comfortable. This will be my long-lasting learning journey and mission.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://abbyyingtongwu.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abbixzka/
Image Credits:
Leo Hsu Jesse Chow Natt Lim
