Dave Yim

Welp! After 5 years on the freelance grind, I’ve landed back where I started. 😅 As they say in LinkedIn parlance, I’m ✨thrilled✨ to announce I’ve taken a full time role at @cnn as a senior producer. There are definitely aspects of being a freelancer that I’ll miss, but my new team has some cool stuff cooking up, and I can’t wait to share it with you all! Shout out to @thelauracoates for the pic on location at @badlandsnps . PS: Don’t worry, we’ll still be chipping away at @alwayschinatownfilm , too! (CNN HR said it was cool.)

Hey all! We can’t believe it’s been 2 months since our crowdfunding campaign ended! We’ll be honest, we needed to take a little break—managing a campaign is a lot of work! So, we spent the summer doing a fair amount of recharging, but also did a bit to keep things moving, especially as we prepare a final push to complete production and start editing. ✂️🙌🏼 Hope you all had a fantastic summer and here are a few moments from your friends at Always Chinatown. ☀️😎 1- Hungry Ghost Festival at Welcome to Chinatown’s Hub 2- Interview with COO Jackie Wang 3- Upstate working session 4- Post-production kickoff at the Hub 5- Herbal arranging at Wing on Wo with Kim Chou 6- Cooling down at Chinatown Ice Cream Factory 7- Catching vibes at our favorite Yu and Me Books

WOW. WOW. WOW. The last month has been a whirlwind, and these last few days especially. When we hit our green light goal at 80% I was thrilled. I thought, “Whew, we did it!” I honestly didn’t imagine we’d actually get to 100%. But holy cow… you guys SHOWED UP. Again and again, you put your support behind this film and reminded us why we do this. For connection. For community. And to tell the world that our stories matter. And it’s YOUR support that has carried us to 100% of our goal!!! Our campaign is wrapping up in about 16 hours, and we want to just say THANK YOU for being part of this chapter of the journey of making this film with us. And of course, a big shout out to our supporters who carried us to the finish line! Alison Grasso, Joyce Lin, Teriha Yaegashi, Ray Wong, Miko de Leon, Kristen Garcia, Suzanne Baldwin, Annie Su, Wincy Wong, Phoebe, Kelly Tieger, Christine Yi, Victoria L, Eben, Shiho Fukada, Sarah Wong Thompson, Hanna Choi, and Daniela F! This isn’t the end, in fact, it’s just the beginning. Thank you and we’ll see you soon.

WE. DID. IT. We hit 80% of our fundraising goal, which means that we are GREEN LIT and can OFFICIALLY keep all the funds raised! 🎉🎉🎉 I truly don’t have the words... except THANK YOU!! Thank you to each of you who showed up and proved that stories like this are worth telling. For that, I’m truly, deeply, and forever grateful. Every moment I work on this film, I’ll be thinking about this beautiful community we’ve built and will continue to build. 💪🏼 We still have 20% more to go to hit our very ambitious fully funded goal, and less than 48 hours left to get there! Let’s sprint across that finish line! 🏁🏃🏻‍♂️💨 And last but not least, a shout out to some of our final week contributors! Vaibhav Aggarwal, Bohan Phoenix, Tina Reddington, Jimena L, Geneva, Francis Cheng, Jason, Gregory Kong, Jennifer & Joseph Manuel, Garrick Yu, and Christina Kuo @sweetyippie_crafts . You all ROCK!

We’re in a documentary! 🎥🎞️🎬 In 2023, filmmakers @dave_yim and @kittyxhu approached @welcome.to.chinatown to be part of an independent documentary film about the future of Chinatown. 🔮 Little did we know how deep this documentary would go into exploring what it actually takes to run a community nonprofit and why we do what we do every day. From the closing of @tingsgiftshop to visiting our co-founder @jenniferzhenyu in Houston, to megajail protests and TWO ribbon cutting ceremonies for our Small Business Innovation Hub—they’ve seen it all. 👀🎥 The documentary @alwayschinatownfilm is currently running a crowdfunding campaign on @seedandspark that will allow them to take this project to the next level. It will give them funds to film the final scenes and start the daunting process of editing over 100 hours of footage shot over two years. 😳 We believe so deeply in the power of sharing Chinatown’s stories, and we hope you can help the documentary team share ours. Link in bio to join the campaign! 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼 #aapirenaissance #supportaapivoices #documentary #seedandspark #documentaryfilm #chinatown #newyorkcity #indiefilm

To wrap up Week 1 of our @seedandspark campaign, we’re spotlighting our first perk! If you donate $25 today, you’ll receive a one-of-a-kind digital postcard, “Make Memories in Chinatown,”that features 35 landmark locations in this historic neighborhood, including the main subject of our film @welcome.to.chinatown ! We’re so grateful to artist @christinacyoung aka @thebaobaestudio for sharing this incredible piece with our supporters. We’ve seen it all over Chinatown, and even in @welcome.to.chinatown ’s Hub through their ongoing partnership with @posterhousenyc to uplift Chinatown stories, small businesses, and heritage through art. Time to create new memories in Chinatown! Have a BEAUTIFUL weekend and we’ll see you on Monday for Week 2!

Are you seeing a bunch of dope Asian films fundraising all of a sudden and wondering, what the heck is happening? Well, @alwayschinatownfilm is proud to be part of the @seedandspark and @goldhouseco #AAPIRenaissanceRally, a crowdfunding rally dedicated to making stories that lead with multidimensional or unexpected AAPI leads.  
Your support can bring our story to the finish line and help us win some amazing prizes from Gold House. Every dollar, every share, and every follow helps. Link in bio to support us and join the renaissance! 💃🏼🕺🏻 #AAPIRenaissance #SeedAndSpark #GoldHouse #SupportAAPIVoices #crowdfunding #fundraising #IndieFilm #AAPICinema #documentary #documentaryfilm

Today, I’m thrilled/scared/excited/terrified to share a first look of a little film thing I’ve been cooking on for three years and FINALLY ready to share. It’s a documentary called Always Chinatown that follows @welcome.to.chinatown and the amazing people behind it: @veeeeleeee @jenniferzhenyu @harry_trinh @_jacq___ and the businesses they support. And I’m also asking for your help. We’re launching a crowdfunding campaign on @seedandspark to help us get the film to the next stage. Get the link in the bio to read more about the film and support if you can. I’ll see you there! #seedandspark #crowdfund #documentary #films #chinatown #newyorkcity #asian #asianamerican #goldhouse

Without the work of journalists like @cefaan and @kimmythepooh , the world might still be blind to the harsh realities of AAPI hate and the resilience of our communities. Their voices have pushed mainstream news outlets to confront uncomfortable truths and tell the stories that need to be heard. Join me in celebrating and supporting their work at a special live taping of @thehopekingshow @welcome.to.chinatown . All ticket sales will support WtC’s equally important mission of creating spaces where AAPI communities feel safe, seen, and uplifted. Seating is limited. RSVP now @ lu.ma/mwg9bpb2 or DM for tickets. Not in New York? Stream the show live on YouTube and Instagram. #aapijournalists #aapiheritagemonth #aapiheroes #thehopekingshow #aapihm

Here’s a thing! I produced a few episodes of a show called Quantum Marketing for @bloombergoriginals on the future of marketing with Mastercard CMO @raja_rajamannar . This first episode features Pranav Yadav, the CEO of a neuro-marketing company where they measure how people’s brains react to pieces of content. Pretty wild. Here’s some behind the scenes snaps from our shoots in New York and Cincinnati last year. Thanks to the awesome team @jeffriesmovies @joshua.neverran @j__.li joplinger Link in the bio if you want to watch it.

Some BTS from the music video @_pasr_ and I shot for @lealeathomas ’s new single The Gift. Lot of ambitious ideas went into this one, some of which didn’t make it into the final cut, like our oh-so-janky hatchback trunk rig lol. One thing that did work out, I wanted to try attaching a spotlight to a drone. By slowly tracking it above the tree line, it would give us an effect of moving shadows. It was a very warm, humid day last September, and so we did what we could to cool down. 💨💨💨😌 This was the first music video I’d ever directed and a true labor of love. Link in bio for the whole thing. Thanks for checking it out!

Here are a few of my favorite moments from the music video @_pasr_ and I made for @lealeathomas ’ new single The Gift. Lea and I talked about the video being guided by the themes of light and dark that she explores in her lyrics. The song has two distinct halves, and I used that natural break to transition us in the video from day to nighttime, where things get a little trippy. In the day scenes, the lyrics are front and center, I used hard cuts between shots, and we utilized mostly natural light. In our night scenes, I was guided by the section’s repeating phrase, “Everything is one.” We enter a world where the forest lights up in shades of red and white moonlight, and shots slowly fade from one to the next. I wanted to create an alien and psychedelic energy to follow the layers of the song as they build and crash. Here, everything blends together: light and shadow, color and white, forest and artist, one shot to the next. At any rate, I hope this video is something cool for you to look at while you get lost in Lea’s beautiful song. Full video at link in bio!