This position is generously funded by Ontario Trillium Foundation
Luis Manzur is a Peruvian content creator, videographer, and photographer. He creates videos, takes photos and enjoys working with new technology. Luis enjoys travelling all around the world, and taking videos and photos of the places that he’s been to. He likes to talk with people from different cultures and his hobbies are photography, science, biology and traveling.
Education
Luis Manzur studied business and multimedia communications in San Ignacio de Loyola University and advertising and gastronomic photography in Centro de la Imagen.
Experience
Luis Manzur has experience creating content for radio, television and social media. He has worked as a teacher and as an account executive for an advertising agency. Luis has had the opportunity to travel around Peru and other countries creating content for different brands. Additionally, he has had the opportunity to be part of many different projects such as recording with Peruvian aborigines with an autochthonous language, recording luxury hotels in Mexico, photographing an African wedding, doing an interview flying a paraglider, and recording a European trip for a travel agency.
About Luis Manzur. An Interview with Luis.
Where Are You From Originally?
I am Peruvian. What I like most about my country is, without a doubt, the food. The variety of flavours that my country has to offer is thanks to the mixture of cultures that have been given over the centuries. Another thing that I really like about Peru is the variety of flora and fauna it has, and the places to visit. Traveling through Peru is amazing and also cheap. It’s a great destination if you are looking to travel on a budget.
You Recently Moved to Mississauga? What is your favourite thing about Mississauga?
I grew up in Chincha, a small town south of Lima, the capital of Peru. It’s a peaceful place. Mississauga reminds me of that place. I like that it has everything I need to live peacefully without necessarily being a busy and bustling city.
I also like the idea that if I want the entertainment that a big city can offer, I can be in Toronto in less than 40 minutes.
Do You Have A Favourite Book?
I have a few books that are my favourites. One of my favourite books is “The Little Prince”, because of the amount of things they have to teach you. Another one is “The Bible”, and although I don’t consider myself a religious person, I think it is a book full of teachings.
Do You Have Any Hobbies?
My favourite moment of the day is to get home and take care of my aquarium. I really like feeding the corals with plankton, cleaning the fish tank, and checking that everything is going well with the water parameters. It may be a lot of work, but I enjoy doing it, and I take pride in how beautiful my aquarium is. I have many different types of coral and fish in my aquarium. My favourite type of fish are clown fish. Think of Nemo from Finding Nemo. Did you know that the scientific name for this type of fish is is an ocellaris clownfish. I also like Blue Hippo Tang Fish, also known as the type of fish Dory is in Finding Dory.
I also love cooking and food. My mother is a chef and has a catering business, so I have always grown up eating delicious things. I believe that one of the best pleasures in life is eating and one of best ways to show love is cooking. It is an expression of love and to immortalize traditions. I really like making pizzas from scratch. Bake bread filled with olives, bake a chocolate cake or cook a paste with cheesy bechamel cream. The options are endless when it comes to cooking and eating.
Do You Have A Favourite Food?
My favourite meal to eat is by far “Ceviche de Pulpo” or “Octopus Ceviche”. I love Peruvian ceviche!
Can You Tell Us The Recipe?
I can tell you the ingredients but not the way to make it, or my grandma would kill me for telling her secrets.
The ingredients are:
- 3 medium onions, thinly sliced
- Juice of 8 to 10 freshly squeezed key limes
- 5 finely chopped aji limo / Chili
- Salt
- Pepper
- 1½ tablespoons chopped cilantro
- 3 to 5 cloves crushed garlic
- 3 leaves of lettuce
- 3 yellow sweet potatoes
- 8 1-inch slices of maize corn
- 1 ají limo / Chili cut in thin slices for decoration
- And the most important:
- A fresh boiled octopus of at least 1kg.
If you ever get to try it, probably you will fly away to a different dimension. In my opinion Octopus Ceviche is the most delicious food in the world.
We are a company that speaks many different languages. What languages do you speak?
I speak Spanish and trying to improve my English. My favourite language is Italian and I can understand cosi cosi.
Is there a skill you have always wanted to learn?
3D animation is on my list of things to learn. It would be great to expand my knowledge in this area to make greater videos and special effects. Another thing I would love to do is diving in the ocean and see the corals in its natural habitat. I’d love to take a course of marine biology in Australia and dive in the Great Coral Barrier. Other thing I would love to do is to learn Arabic and Italian. I think knowledge is power, and be able to speak more languages always open more doors and possibilities.
What is something you have always wanted to do?
I’d like to travel to the seven wonders of the world. I’ve already been to four. My next travel would have to be to the Great Wall in China, Petra in Jordania or Taj Mahal in India. Lebanon and Palestine is also in my bucket list, and I hope it happens in the next few years.
What is one project you worked on that you are proud of?
I always do my job with passion and I am proud of what I always do. There is a recent piece of work that I am especially proud of since I not only achieved the result I wanted, but also helped many students at a school achieve their dream of having their end-of-year theatre play. There is a school in Peru that always has a big theatre play at the end of the year, and for the children who study at that school, it is one of the most anticipated times of the year, since they can put their artistic skills into practice, and for that, they practice long in advance. Unfortunately during the pandemic they were unable to carry out the theatre play physically due to the risk it represented. I came up with the idea of recording them with a green background and replacing the colour with different sceneries to simulate the different locations. In this play, up to 5 actors interacted on the screen at the same time, so it was a great challenge at the time of recording and editing. The result was great as the students were able to perform and have an end of the year play lasting over an hour. This work would not have been possible without the help of Charito, an amazing art director who helped me with all the details to handle such a large group of students.
In production, 1+1 is never 2, it is much more, since the work that two people can do separately is much less than what those same two people can do together, the force multiplies exponentially and the results speak for themselves.
Do you have any advice for aspiring content creators and/or videographers?
My parents gave me as a present a Sony Handycam for my 14th birthday, one of those cameras with low-quality DV tapes, very modern for its time, and I started doing the stop motion technique without really knowing by that time the name of the technique I was doing, then I started to record my cousins following the scripts of children’s stories, and I even made a funny copy of a talk show with my friends. I started to like a lot making content telling stories, and I knew from that time that was something that I really liked. Then at the age of 20 I discovered a career in multimedia and I knew from then on that this was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life and not just as a hobby, but for a living.
I have always believed that if you want something with all your might, it becomes true, dreams come true, but you cannot sit and wait for them to come true, you must move for that to happen, and fight against any adversity that you may have along the way, and trust me that there will be many, but you must know how to take things calmly and find the solution to the problem that appears in front of you.
