GRAVITY MAN

Illustrations by Sara McConnell

It’s 1:47 p.m. on a Tuesday, and Brandon Kim is telling Jerk about his recently acquired vaping addiction. In between words, Kim takes long pauses to furrow his eyebrows, look at the ceiling and consider his next thought. Oftentimes, he does so for a full minute. Sometimes two.

“I would just play along and hit it, because at first it’s just funny,” said Kim. “But literally a week into it, I was a fiend and trying to learn vape tricks in my room.”

Brandon Kim, a fourth-year film student at Syracuse University and award-winning music video director, is the type of person that, somehow, everyone knows. At 5-foot-6, he struts around campus with runway confidence, greeting a new person after each stretch of sidewalk— every 10 feet, it seems.

Outside the Schine Student Center, Kim tells Jerk about the busy weekend he spent working on a film set for his friend Mickey Maroulis’ thesis project. Kim is a hot commodity when it comes to projects like Marouilis'.

“Brandon Kim, for me, is one of the very rare occurrences where I would compare a human to gravity,” said Maroulis. “Everyone wants to be close to Brandon; they want his help, his input, they want him.”

Kim, the film’s executive producer, worked Friday to Sunday, 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., without fail. Despite the long workdays, Kim would often stay up until 2 a.m. the night before. His mind requires at least two hours a night to decompress and assess all the thoughts he has throughout the day.

Following his late afternoon class, Kim walks home to a scheduled video editing session with student DJ Samara Vachani. Afterward, he has plans to have his measurements taken by Kieran Romano, a fashion design student who plans to feature Kim in his senior showcase. Poor scheduling results in the meetings overlapping. Kim assures his colleagues that this was meant to happen.

The collaborators stay a few hours past the end of their tasks, chatting the night away.

"I can't recall the specific moment I met Brandon. It almost seems like he was always there," said Vachani. “I just know that he's always had a very good energy around him, a very welcoming, a very present, a very thoughtful energy.”

It’s 10:42 p.m., and Brandon Kim is not going to bed for another two hours; he needs to process all of this.