My History with Video Production
My first major experience with video production was back in early 2015, my sophomore year of high school. I volunteered at my local library, and I was part of the Teen Advisory Board, an organization that worked on some programming events for teenagers at the library. One of the programs that we participated in was the Teen Video Challenge. Teens around the nation had the opportunity to make a 60-90 second video promoting the Summer Library Program. I had very little interest in acting in the video, so I became the director, camera operator, and video editor. I enjoyed editing the video, but at that point in time, I didn’t see video production in my future
With this project, we collaborated with Janesville Access Television (JATV), a PEG (Public-Education-Government) Channel housed in the basement of the library. Come September of 2015, they’ve decided that they want to hire their first teen intern in an attempt to create more teen programming. Because of the work that I did with the Teen Video Challenge, JATV reached out to me to be their first intern. I accepted the job, and worked primarily in editing videos and adding in lower thirds. I worked at JATV through the rest of high school, and then during my first two years of college. I truly enjoyed working there, learning about video production, and working with my local community. Yet, I was determined to get my degree in Elementary Education
I truly believed that being an elementary school teacher was going to be the best option for me in my future. It wasn’t until very late in my first-year at Drake University that I realized that teaching just wasn’t for me. I went back home and used my summer vacation to really figure out if video production was something that I wanted to do. That summer, I was one of the Production Assistants for Tales of… Downtown, a play written in collaboration with the library, the historical society, and the performing arts center, to document the history of Janesville’s downtown. I edited some of the videos where members of the community told stories, as well as the picture-elements of some of the songs. This was a really fun project that solidified for me that I could see myself doing this as a career. But it wasn’t until my first day of Video Production with Drake professor Todd Evans that I decided that what he was saying about video production was what I wanted to do. After that class, I switched my major to Digital Media Production.
Since my sophomore year at Drake, I’ve been involved in video production through Drake Broadcasting System (DBS). I was a Junior Producer for the spring of 2019, and a Line Producer for the DBS Relays Productions. Both of these positions gave me experience that I wanted in live show production. For the 2019-2020 school year, I am the Video Producer on the Executive Board, and for Spring 2020 I am an Assistant Producer for the DBS Relays Productions. With the in-person classes coming to an abrupt end this semester, there were a lot of projects that we were hoping to do in the latter half of the semester, so we’ll see if they come about once in-person classes begin again.
