500 Days of Dream-Chasing 💤

Justin Shen joins our "25C" lineup

Justin Shen joins our “Twenty-Five Calls” lineup / Photo Illustration by Moy Zhong

blog.thirty-six // Alright, I gotta be honest—I’ve read a lot of pieces hating on the event app Partiful over the last several months.

“Over the past couple of years, the yassified Evite has had a stranglehold on the invite game,” GQ wrote in December. “Partiful’s aesthetic…feels like a way of corporatizing the concept of hanging out.”

We’ve been using Partiful to organize our regular gatherings. But I gotta ask—what’s your stance on the app?

Speaking of our gatherings, tomorrow’s co-working session has filled up. You can still add your name to the waitlist; if anyone drops out, you’ll be next in line.

In any event (pun intended), on to Shua’s conversation with Justin “Shenny Visuals” Shen, the twelfth installment of our “Twenty-Five Calls for 2025” series.*

— NGL

P.S. Last blog, we laid out our upcoming season schedule—and revealed the release date of our next print edition. You can read it here.

Photo via Justin Shen / YouTube

Justin Shen is a creator and filmmaker based in New York City. He’s become known for his quick, match-cutting style, but don’t be fooled—Shenny has a deep bag of visual wizardry.

The following conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Shua Buhangin: Hey Justin! What were some of your biggest wins last year?

Justin Shen: Okay, my biggest win by far was starting my YouTube channel.

I looked back at my goals at the end of 2023, and my big goal was to start YouTube. And I dropped two videos last year, and that doesn't seem like a lot—but I'm really happy with both of them. I'm happy with the quality.

I wish I took a little more time with my second one, honestly. But the first video, “500 Days of Chasing My Dreams,” showed me how powerful longform could be. And how much of an impact that can really make on people—the importance of depth. I've had tons of people email me and DM me.

Before that, I've only made really short shortform videos. Challenging myself to put together a story about myself for thirty minutes…thinking back, I don't even know how I did it. It was definitely the biggest creative achievement I've had throughout these last four or five years.

Shenny shares his journey to working full-time in the creative world / “500 Days of Summer”

SB: I loved your way of using your trademark fast match cuts to show yourself throughout the years. I thought it was such a cool way to do it. It felt like your coming-of-age movie.

JS: Yeah, I'm super proud of myself for pushing beyond my boundaries and doing something that was really uncomfortable at the time, considering most of my videos are visual effects stuff that’s not about me.

SB: How long did it take you to make your two YouTube videos last year?

JS: Oh man—they both took months.

The first one took, like, four or five months from start to finish. I started the concept at the end of 2023. I feel like it took so long to write it.

While I was writing it, I thought, I should take a lot of inspiration from the films I've watched. And I landed on one of my favorite films—500 Days of Summer. I loved how that film used an asynchronous timeline, which I tried to adapt in my own version. And then I also loved how real that movie is.

It showed that these things that we dream of aren’t always super glamorous. There's no fairy tale ending. So I took those things from Summer and spun it into my own story.

A familiar-looking tower emerges / “500 Days of Summer”

SB: That's really cool. Yeah, when we first met—was it in 2023 or early 2024?

JS: I think at the end of ‘23. We got ramen or something.

SB: After knowing you for, like, coming up on two years now, shortform alone has taken you so far. And I can only imagine where your creativity is going to go with longform.

JS: Thank you. Yeah, I think the big overarching goal is to really be happy with my creative state—in other words, just finding my creative spark. I feel like it kind of died in the second half of last year. Making 500 Days took, like, the soul out of me, to be honest. Then on top of working a full-time job last year…there was too much going on in life for me to really make creativity like a priority.

At that point, I’d been grinding for three, four years. That just took a toll on me, on top of working a full-time job and moving to New York. I feel like I focused so much of my creative energy onto freelance work—which, like, nothing wrong with that. But it took a lot of the artist out of me, which I'm trying to find back.

I have a few underlying goals underneath that. One is to open my heart to new experiences, doing new things and new forms of art. I've been watching a lot of films and started sketching. I've been journaling a lot—doing other mediums besides video editing has helped a lot. Just taking small steps to find my creative joy again.

SB: I feel like that's been a really continuous sentiment across everybody. It's just finding more ways to be creative and allowing the creativity to flow instead of bottling it down to one thing.

JS: Yeah—I wouldn't be excited to learn again if I didn’t try different stuff. That's the main thing. I’ve realized I still have a lot to learn.

SB: That was the most fun part of getting into the creative world. Learning all of this stuff.

JS: It really was. I love how you're trying to play the guitar more! And experimenting as well. I feel like that's super important.

You can keep up with Justin’s journey here.

Thanks for reading! Shoot us a reply, comment, or DM if anything resonated with you in particular—we respond to them all.

* New around here? For more on the mission behind this series, read the first issue of “Twenty-Five Calls” here.