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PORT OF SEATTLE | R/V RACHEL CARSON

Saturday 06.13.26
Posted by Derek Edamura
 

PORT OF SEATTLE | C Concourse Expansion: Episode 01 - Creating a Sustainable Framework

The story of the C Concourse Expansion begins long before the first travelers stepped into the new space. In Part 1 of this three-part series, we go behind the scenes of one of the most ambitious capital projects in the history of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. From early design concepts and sustainability goals to major construction milestones, hear from the architects, planners, environmental specialists, and Port of Seattle leaders who helped bring the vision to life.

Discover how the project was designed to reflect the spirit of the Pacific Northwest while pushing the boundaries of sustainable airport construction. Learn how innovative ideas, carbon reduction strategies, and a commitment to creating a welcoming passenger experience shaped every stage of the project.

Thursday 06.11.26
Posted by Derek Edamura
 

PORT OF SEATTLE | C Concourse Expansion Documentary

The C Concourse Expansion project has entered into the countdown phase to its grand opening at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA). As it gets ready to open to the public, get a glimpse into a video series coming up, spotlighting some of the team and the thought that went into designing, constructing, and getting ready to open a redesigned building in an active airport.

Monday 06.08.26
Posted by Derek Edamura
 

MOGRT MANIA | Main Title Mogrt Design

Thursday 12.18.25
Posted by Derek Edamura
 

PORT OF SEATTLE | 75th Anniversary of SEA International Airport

In 2024, the Port of Seattle celebrated the 75th Anniversary of SEA International Airport. As part of the celebrations, I created an 8-episode docu-series exploring some of the fascinating stories of the airport’s history. We explored the development of the opening of the airport in 1949, the hiring of the first-ever Airport Wildlife Biologist, the development of the Third Runway, and the discovery of a fossilized sloth at the airport.

This project was a partnership between Port of Seattle and History Link.

categories: Port of Seattle
Friday 10.24.25
Posted by Derek Edamura
 

NORTHWEST FILM FORUM | Murdock Charitable Trust - Leaders of Color Cohort 2025

In 2024, I was selected to participate in the Murdock Charitable Trust’s Leaders of Color Cohort. This space that we have cultivated is one that has been supportive, healing, and deeply educational. We have discussed the impactful ways that we lead community, the ways that we must care and heal ourselves, and how to move our organizations forward in the most positive direction possible.

To conclude our most recent session, our co-facilitator, Derek McNeil, shared a fable that he wrote with help from an AI assistant.

 

The Cedar Circle

In a rain-washed forest of the Pacific Northwest, a stand of old cedars formed a  natural circle. The forest was bustling—rivers rising, winds shifting, seasons  changing faster than anyone remembered. Leaders from across the forest met  there once each moon to share counsel. 

There was Salmon, who knew how to swim upstream but felt alone in the  current; Hummingbird, tireless and bright yet anxious that her wings would fail;  Bear, strong and steady but wary of asking for help; and Loon, whose beautiful  song often went unheard across noisy waters. Each carried a different burden,  and each had a different gift. 

Guiding them were two wise wayfinders: Owl, who saw patterns beneath the  bark and could name what others only felt, and Raven, who told hard truths with  humor and invited everyone to sit closer to the fire. Owl and Raven did not give  the Circle a map; they gave them practices. 

First, the Practice of Seeing: they took turns speaking from the stump, while the  others simply listened—no fixes, no interruptions—until the speaker felt fully  seen. 

Second, the Practice of Bearing: each leader named one weight they would not  carry alone this moon. The Circle chose who would shoulder it with them— sometimes with time, sometimes with skill, sometimes with prayer. 

Third, the Practice of Returning: they set small, courageous promises and  returned the next moon to tell the truth about how it went—celebrating progress,  grieving misses, and adjusting the path together. 

As the moons turned, something subtle changed. Salmon still swam upstream,  but now Bear walked the riverbank beside him to break the ice. Hummingbird  still moved quickly, but she learned to rest on Cedar’s low branch while Loon  kept time with a steady song. And Loon, once drowned out, found her voice amplified when Hummingbird repeated her notes and Bear held silence like a  shelter. 

The forest noticed. Streams cleared where confusion had pooled. Saplings  survived windy nights because the Cedar Circle blocked the worst of the gusts.  Even storms felt different—not smaller, but shared. 

One day a young Fox asked Raven, “What magic did you teach them?”

Raven chuckled. “No magic. Just this—care is a structure, not a sentiment.  Build it, return to it, repair it, and it will hold you.” 

Owl added, “And remember—leadership is a long river. No creature crosses it  alone.” 

From then on, whenever a new leader felt the weight of the woods, the Circle  widened. The cedars did not move, but their roots intertwined, and the forest— once fragmented—began to hum with a familiar sound: the quiet, resilient music  of neighbors carrying neighbors. 



Friday 10.24.25
Posted by Derek Edamura
 

NORTHWEST FILM FORUM | Building Community Through Film

Northwest Film Forum continues to amplify emerging voices throughout the state of Washington through the power of cinema programming, mentorship and apprenticeship, and artist support services.

Northwest Film Forum - Sharing Diverse Stories Through Film (KIRO 7 News)

categories: Film
Thursday 10.02.25
Posted by Derek Edamura
 

NORTHWEST FILM FORUM | Filmmaking Fundamentals (Spring 2022)

Waiting For Cleo

Tuesday 08.15.23
Posted by Derek Edamura
 

NORTHWEST FILM FORUM | Filmmaking Fundamentals (Winter 2022)

Back in January, 2022, we endeavored to restart our Filmmaking Fundamentals program at Northwest Film Forum. It was a huge undertaking at the time because we had only done one other class since the COVID-19 Pandemic, and we were still very unsure of how people would respond. We also decided to completely revamp the program and separate the Production and Post-Production tracks into two individual programs. What this allowed for was a more robust look at all the technical departments and also gave us more time to explore Post-Production with individuals who were interested. Here is a sample of the curriculum that we developed for this first year:

Week 01 - Introductions and Screenwriting

Week 02 - Intro to Cameras

Week 03 - Intro to Sound

Week 04 - Intro to Lighting

Week 05 - Pre-Production

Week 06 - Casting

Week 07 - Advanced Camera Techniques

Week 08 - Production Day

Week 09 - Review and Reflect

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Friday 08.04.23
Posted by Derek Edamura
 

CORNISH COLLEGE OF THE ARTS | Summer@Cornish

Fountain

Two pen pals correspond on the bathroom walls.

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A Taste of Memory

Joan can’t remember the death of her friend, if it really happened?

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Loretta

Sammie searches for her sister to give her one last important message.

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tags: Summer@Cornish, Filmmaking Fundamentals, Teaching
Friday 08.04.23
Posted by Derek Edamura
 

ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE CENTER | When The Mikado Was Home

The Mikado Hotel and Bathhouse opened in the heart of Portland’s historic Japantown in 1908 and was a center of retail and activity until it closed in 1942 due to Executive Order 9066, which forcibly removed 110,000 Nikkei from the West Coast and incarcerated them in various confinement sites. When the Mikado was Home shares recollections of this special place through an intergenerational conversation between Joni Kimoto, whose family owned the Mikado, and her granddaughter, writer Lauren Yoshiko Terry.

categories: Film
Wednesday 04.05.23
Posted by Derek Edamura
 

AE EXPRESSIONS | Week 02 - Planets and Dashboards

Thursday 04.14.22
Posted by Derek Edamura
 

AE EXPRESSIONS | Week 01 - Dance Party on the Moon

I’m taking another course from School of Motion this quarter. I have always wanted to learn more about expressions in After Effects and now I will be diving into them for the next 12 weeks. This is my first assignment, we were tasked with animating this whole scene without using keyframes. All of the motion that you see is driven by expressions. We learned about the wiggle and linear functions this week and how to implement them into the scene. It was so much fun that I didn’t stop at the robots and animated the stars, the sun, and the smoke in the crater.

Used the wiggle function to add random movement to the head, arms, and claws.

Used an if/else statement to control the random placement of the selector button

Thursday 04.07.22
Posted by Derek Edamura
 

JAPANESE CULTURAL COMMUNITY CENTER OF WASHINGTON | TOMODACHI GALA 2021

DIRECTOR | EDITOR

tags: JCCCW, Tomodachi Gala 2021, broadcast
Tuesday 03.08.22
Posted by Derek Edamura
 

PORT OF SEATTLE | INTERNATIONAL ARRIVALS FACILITY

I started filming this project back in 2019. At that point the building was merely a shell and the bridge was being constructed at an off-site facility. I just starting filming things that I knew would be useful someday down the road when we wanted to do a sizzle reel about this project. Then one day, I went to go meet with the artist who was doing an art installation in the building and was blown away by the work that they were creating. It was this intense blend of organic shapes, textile patterns, and the culture and tradition of her cultural mythology. I knew that that would become the focal point of the storytelling. She symbolized everything that this building was and that it intended to be. Over the weeks and months to follow we stayed in touch, and I continued to film the progress of the building and her art practice. In 2022, we finally were able to bring all the elements together into one singular piece.

Welcome Home, is a short-documentary that follows the construction of the International Arrivals Facility at SEA Airport, but more importantly it is about the limitless potential of international travel and the ways that it strengthens us as a community to be connected to the world.

PRODUCER | DIRECTOR | EDITOR

tags: SEA Airport, International Arrivals Facility, IAF, Marela Zacarias
categories: Port of Seattle
Tuesday 03.08.22
Posted by Derek Edamura
 

SEATTLE REP | WINTER'S TALE

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY | EDITOR

tags: Seattle Rep, theater, Public Works Seattle
categories: Film
Tuesday 03.08.22
Posted by Derek Edamura
 

SEATTLE REP | INDECENT SIZZLE REEL

SHOOTER | EDITOR

Friday 07.31.20
Posted by Derek Edamura
 

CINEMA 4D | Week 06 - Lights, Camera, Action

We are coming to the end of the Cinema 4D Bootcamp and things are starting to come together. I am starting to turn the corner in terms of confidence with the program and I starting to be able troubleshoot my own problems and also put concepts together. In this assignment we were focused animating the camera utilizing different camera types and different camera angles, but in addition to that I am continuing to use mograph effectors and fields to animate on all of the elements of this scene.

Monday 05.25.20
Posted by Derek Edamura
 

Chasing the Sun

ASSISTANT EDITOR

Sunday 05.24.20
Posted by Derek Edamura
 

CINEMA 4D | Set Driver, Set Driven Experiment

One thing that I am learning to comfortable with are the imperfections of experiments. I was able to accomplish some things that were important to this specific topic, while there are other issues that I still I need to learn how to correct for. I learned the basic foundations of how to utilize XPresso in Cinema 4D to create basic expressions that can control objects and attributes. I also used an HDRI for the first time, which had limited success. I need to fine-tune this experiment to reduce all of the grain and noise in the video, but I am excited for the small accomplishments that I was able to work through with this topic.

categories: Cinema 4D
Sunday 05.24.20
Posted by Derek Edamura
 
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