Well.... I've yet to reflect about The Heralds and hence there's no closure to last year at all.
The Heralds is this self-initiated project by Jonathan and I've no idea how I got myself tangled in it considering that I can't really sing and that I can't even play an instrument properly. Nonetheless... I became the financial manager and external liaison.
I never thought that joining this project would require 1/2 my holidays and really a lot of time. It's indeed wild for 6 teens to produce a Christmas album out of nowhere to raise funds for the victims of typhoon Haiyan. Neither did we think that there were a lot of logistics involved.
The first recording took place at the music room in christopheri in which they couldn't record finish and hence... going over to my house to continue recording since I stay nearby. That recording itself went on till 11pm that night and I just couldn't believe what we were doing.
Weixin, Ngan and Leonard went overseas and the entire recording had come to a halt for 2 weeks while my job was to email organisations to ask them if they could do some caroling. (well, we didn't in the end because we didn't have enough time). Recordings then resumed.... 4 days BEFORE the release of the album... And that took 1 FULL day to 'complete'. I also had to contact Mercy Relief and come up with the publicity in which it was really rush. I could have done those earlier if I had known. Luckily, Mercy Relief responded to quickly and that our publicity wasn't a flop. I remember vividly that I was even calling mercy relief in the gardens by the bay which was the day before our release on 11/12/13 and even met leonard that night at 10pm just to get the full soundtrack.
Anyway, we had ORDERRS on the day of our release. ((Phew)) and we started getting our materials. Finding the cheapest CD casing, CDs and even printing and designing all on our release date. Bona and I even stayed up at 2am to discuss about the size and design of the album 1 day before and printing was the next day. Being really profit driven... I made everyone walk like the entire simlim square to find the cheapest stuff and then heading all the way back to our headquarters, Weixin's house, to start cutting the album covers and all.
Weixin even wanted to re-record his solo in which we did it the next day and it took me 17 hours to burn finish 200 CDs at one go. ((folding our handmade Christmas cards and waiting for the CD to pop at the same time)) I. COULDN'T. BREATHE. It was really crazy.
Nonetheless, in 14 days, we sold 300 albums including delivering the album to wherever our customer ones and raised $3600 (profit) in total. It was a crazy December together, meeting everyday and whenever we were unmotivated, we just thought of the victims. In addition to that, friendships were forged and we achieved many things in just 1 month- interview with the straits times, selling to the teachers (including our principal). I still remember when we were doing our handmade Christmas cards in addition to our album and still getting scolded by WeiXin because I didn't stick them properly. It was tiring okay. This includes karaoke-ing together (watching retarded videos on youtube) while making the album and just talking about silly stuff.
Difficulties faced:
- Time constrain
- Trying to keep cost really low
- Not having seed funding
- Uncertainty that it will sell
- Hard publicity
- Did not have an organization initially
- Our designer, Bona, was back in Indonesia and it was so difficult to communicate.
How we overcame:
- I gotta admit that we YOLO-ed a little.
- Being really shameless when approaching everyone with regards to the cause we are advocating for.
- PM-ing Mrs Lee, our principal for support
- Remembering the reason why we came together.
I just want to thank everyone in the Heralds- Jonathan (Pianist), Ngan (Vocalist), Bona (Vocalist cum designer), Leonard (Vocalist cum Producer), Wei Xin (Vocalist)- for everything during the holidays and even now. All of us from S6, S7 and S8, (and bona from s17) talking in the morning before assembly, having outings together and encouraging each other on whatsapp. I also want to thank everyone for being patient with me even though all I did was to be really cheap with our finances and being tad slow in contacting people... maybe being really terrible in cutting paper but much better in peeling CD covers and burning CDs.
I also want to thank everyone for their support especially the teachers and Mrs Lee from our school and everyone who bought our albums including our parents.
I definitely miss our headquarters and it was indeed a December well spent.
All photo credits: Weixin
