Read on Twitter
For some reason, this week a few people have been discovering my music video for Megaphone, over 10 years since its release. This song, and the video I made for it, set off a long chain of events that changed my life forever. (Here comes a thread!)
I was 15, at the height of my brickfilming productivity, and always thinking about new animations I could make. @ParryGripp songs were going viral everywhere online, and when I heard Megaphone, I could picture EXACTLY how it would look animated.
The video took about two weeks to make, working in the evenings after school. I remember being almost surprised at how well some of the dance moves turned out.
A fair number of people have asked “Who is Joe?” He was a very little kid I had met around that time who was obsessed with LEGO, loved my animations, and was eager for a shout-out in one of them. This was for him.
I put the video up on YouTube and Parry saw it almost immediately, which I was super happy about and would have been satisfied with just that. But then...
The story in the song is based on a true event that happened at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Parry said he would show the video to the festival staff, but before he could, the festival director, Roger Durling, found it himself and liked it.
He reached out to ask if the video could be used as the festival’s trailer. The following January I touched down in the USA for the first time, rushed to the hotel to get changed, and was zipped from there to the opening night red carpet in a limousine. I was just 16!!
Here’s the vlog I made about that experience. I talk a lot about my first impressions of the US, but I must warn you that I was much snarkier back then...
My film festival trip was featured in the local newspaper back home, and by PURE, INCREDIBLE CHANCE, it just so happened that the PR company managing LEGO’s brand in the UK also managed the brand of the local shopping centre and regularly read that newspaper.
They invited me to their offices and commissioned the first of several animations I would make for them, to be used for PR campaigns to promote the LEGO brand. It was the first time I had ever made films for anyone besides the YouTube audience.
The second of these was 2012: A Year in Bricks, a retrospective on the great moments of 2012. I’m not hugely proud of it, but it did make a splash and the client was happy:
In the third massive stroke of luck in this story, 2012:AYiB was picked up completely by chance by a Japanese TV show. I always found it amusing how the editing at 2:40 makes it look like I live next door to Big Ben.
That was the start of the Japan connection. I kept in touch with the reporter who had interviewed me, and during my first year of studying animation at university, I reached out to him to ask if there might be any opportunities for work experience in Tokyo.
He very kindly offered to introduce me to people he knew in the industry, and in September 2015 I visited Japan on my own to be shown around a variety of different media companies. I also got to travel around the country a bit using the money from animation commissions.
I barely knew any Japanese at the time, besides the basic greetings and really simple sentences. I drank a whole beer for the first time in my life on this trip, because when someone ordered it for me, I couldn’t explain that I didn’t drink. No choice but to go bottoms up... 
I returned home filled with motivation to learn Japanese properly, as a show of thanks to everyone who had so kindly accommodated me. I spent the remaining two years of university dedicating almost all my spare time to Japanese study.
It was the perfect escape from the stresses of university deadlines, and once I got good enough to hold a conversation, became an excellent way to make new friends. I started frequenting Japanese language exchange meet-ups in London, and became a regular in that lovely community.
I battled through university to graduation, after which I received a message from someone I’d met in Tokyo, offering me a job at their company. (Here’s my graduation film.)
A few months later, in June of 2018 (exactly two years ago today!!!) I got on a plane to Japan with a one-way ticket and Working Holiday Visa in hand. I spent two months here living way out in the countryside.
Then I moved to Tokyo to join a company that makes Japanese dubs of foreign TV shows. I stayed there for the rest of that Working Holiday year, editing videos, checking translations, and being the native English speaker who could explain stuff that got lost in translation.
That first year in Japan was tougher than expected. I thought that because I already knew a few people here, I would be fine socially, but it turns out that ripping yourself out of your old social network and trying to build up a new one from zero is not easy. It was a bit lonely
But I decided early on that I would say YES to every invitation, and that I would go out and be proactive and try to meet as many people as possible. As a shy introvert who had never had to do this before, none of that came naturally, but I grew so much during that time.
It worked! By the end of the first year, I had a growing network of people I cared about and wanted to spend time with. It felt like everything was falling into place, and I was not ready to leave, but my 1-year Working Holiday Visa was nearly up.
That’s when I applied to Polygon Pictures. With a year of video editing experience under my belt, and Japanese ability capable of functioning in the workplace, they hired me just in time before my old visa expired.
A year has passed since then, and here we are on my second Japanniversary. I have a cool job, a network of friends more amazing than I could ever have hoped for, and nothing but opportunity from here out.
Coming to Japan is the best decision I ever made, and it’s funny to think that it was only possible because of a little LEGO guy with a megaphone. Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who has been part of this story. (END!)
