After finishing school, I knew I had to start somewhere. So I gathered a few people I had met during undergrad and took my shot.

That’s when I learned how hard filmmaking really is. Did I fully know what I was doing? Not really. I had the basics from school, but a lot of it was me figuring it out as I went. The script was too long, my planning wasn’t great, and I didn’t always have the right people in the right places. But none of that mattered as much as actually doing it. I didn’t have some big master plan. I just wanted to finish something.

The idea was simple: a contained Korean American gangster short I could shoot over a couple nights in my apartment’s game room. The characters were loosely based on people I grew up around.

One of my favorite crime films is Heat, especially the diner scene with De Niro and Pacino. Two people sitting across from each other, talking. It sounds simple, but it’s not. That scene stuck with me and became a big inspiration for Daebu. I cast Hayden Won as Boss Park and Kang Kim as Boss James, and their performances helped shape what the film became.

The film is rough in a lot of ways, but that’s also why it means so much to me. It taught me more than any class could. I learned how important preparation is, how much the right people matter, and how filmmaking is really built on trust and collaboration. More than anything, I learned that finishing something is its own kind of victory.

This project will always hold a special place for me, not just as my first short, but because of where it came from personally. I wrote the main character with my best friend James Kang in mind. He passed away in 2006 under tragic circumstances, and I carried a lot of that with me while making the film.