We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Vanessa Plaza Lazo a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Vanessa, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
Resilience is part of everyones growth process. When people acknowledge the meaning of it, it becomes easier to find a way to embrace it as well. In my personal experience, I’ve have had encountered different situations where things turned very difficult and thought I wasn’t going to be able to make it through. It is easy to forget sometimes our personal power and how valuable we are. For me, my family has always been that perfect word of encouragement, that hug that make me feels safe and ready to keep moving forward, look inside of me and realice I can achieve and overcome any situation, if I purpose it to myself. Nowadays, living in a world surrounded by so much hate and wars, it feels hard to be resilience. However, seeing how there’s people surviving worst situations and being hopeful about future, it becomes a source of resilience for the rest. There’s still more people wanting to spread love that the ones that cause pain as a desperate cry for love and help without realizing it.
Resilience doesn’t come by itself, it is still a constant personal exercise of reminding yourself what matters, how valuable we are, and how every situation can be a new opportunity for something else. I’m a strong believer that everything happens for a reason. Thus I always try to be grateful, connect with myself through introspection and spread good energy to people around me.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
My job as a Production Designer consists of creating the visual world for a production. I design from the overall space where the story will unfolds to the smallest prop the actor will perform with. I also assign a color palette to each environment and characters to create a mood and a specific atmosphere to these spaces. I’ve work in different kind of productions, from Music videoclips, Ad commercials, to independent features, Theme entertainment attractions, among others. The beauty of this job is the ability to create spaces that seem fictional and turn them into reality. Being able to make people immerse in stories through the sets is very rewarding. It is a way of sharing a story through visual storytelling: period furniture, customize character’s personal items, color hue and tones, spaceships, enchanted spaces, etc.
When it comes to my designs I’m always looking a way to give each new set a twist. Even if you are recreating a space that already exists, and you are getting a prompt for what you need to design, there’s always a new way to present it and a new perspective to create to make it unique.
I’m very proud of my multicultural background. It has given me a more open perspective about things with different references in life. It wasn’t easy, it’s been a long run, but something that has always helped me overcome every challenge is my courage and persistence. I’m very passionate about my goals and I don’t stop trying until I get where I want to go. It takes a lot of knocking doors, reaching out to people, sharing your work and always keeping myself up to date with new resources and tools to improve my final product and always deliver astonishing results.
I keep updates of my work on my website (www.vaneplazalazo.com) and share some of my on set processes on Instagram (@vaneplazalazo), you can take a look at either and tell me what you think, I love feedback.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Before starting specializing myself in Art Direction I went to school for Advertisement, I learned a lot of branding, video editing, graphic design that came really handy when I had to start creating my brand, designing my portfolio, reel and website. Those skills that a production Designer not necessarily has, helped me a lot to get new jobs and get in contact with new people in the field. A Production Designer should master multiple areas of creativity, management, and speak fluently scenic and architectural language, but something that will help you and boost your presentation card will be the way you show yourself and brand to the world.
Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?
I’ve always been a person that likes to fit their agenda with lots of activities. I am very organized and like to keep my spaces that way as well, but not always things happens the way we plan. Sometimes different things come across that can take us out of track and overwhelm us. It’s been hard, but I’ve been learning to do breathing exercises, take a pause and take things easier. I always keep track of my agenda and to-do list, which helps a lot to get me back in track. I can always re arrange plans, but something very important is make sure we can flow with circumstances and things that are out of our control. I have the privilege to live with a very calm and easy going partner. He brings me down to earth and reminds me every time to take deep breaths when I feel overwhelmed. It works very well, I get more clarity to come up with solutions and I feel I can handle situations differently.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.vaneplazalazo.com
- Instagram: @vaneplazalazo
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessaplazalazo/
- Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm9818475/
Image Credits
Headshot: @davidmullerphotography
