Karen Lum

Filmmaker & Founder of SolarHour

Hi, I’m Karen.

Nobody loves music videos more than I do. (Truly. It’s a lifelong condition.)

I grew up in my dad’s video rental store, spending every weekend rewinding tapes, restocking DVDs, and watching an endless stream of movies, TV shows, and music videos. While other kids were at the mall, I was alphabetizing VHS tapes and memorizing director credits. That store was my film school.

I went on to study Science, Technology, and Society at Stanford, concentrating in Product Design. After graduating, I worked in tech during the early rise of YouTube, when online video still felt like the wild frontier. Eventually, my manager asked if I could produce videos for the company.

That simple yes turned into a production company.

Since then, I’ve created video work for companies like Snowflake, Fivetran, DataStax, and Autodesk, helping complex ideas feel clear, human, and cinematic instead of corporate and forgettable.

When I’m not building SolarHour, I’m working on my own short films, experimenting with new ideas, or posting filmmaking tutorials for the next generation of creators who might be hanging out in their own version of a video rental store somewhere.

Video still feels like magic to me.

And yes, I genuinely love what I do.

About SolarHour founder, Karen Lum

At 14, I joined the film class at Skyline High School in Oakland, CA and an after-school program for young filmmakers. I made a short film called Slip of the Tongue. It screened at 40+ festivals and won dozens of awards, including a Northern California Emmy. I didn’t fully understand what that meant at the time. I just knew I loved telling stories through a lens and that I wanted to keep chasing that feeling.

And then something unexpected happened.

I fell in love with teaching.

I started by teaching at schools like General Assembly and Ironhack. Then I built my own online courses and coaching programs. I realized that empowering someone to tell their own story is just as fulfilling as producing one for them. Sometimes more.

Today, SolarHour combines both worlds:

  • High-level video production for ambitious companies

  • Coaching and courses that teach people how to create powerful videos themselves