How to Make a Professional Cover Photo Without a DSLR Camera

JennethDesign, PhotographyLeave a Comment

When I launched my blog last Christmas, the most comments I got were directed toward my cover photo at the top of the screen. Friends that were heavily into photography and videography nodded their approval, and several asked just exactly how I did it.

Well. I’ll tell you it definitely wasn’t with a Canon Rebel and a light studio, that’s for sure.

Imagine a nineteen-year-old college student alone in the house and an ambitious project in her head. Oh, and a random pile of boxes, books, and her brother’s school supplies stacked on a chair across the table. Imagine a large hole puncher propping up her iPhone on the top of the makeshift tower. Yeah, that’s my “studio” for you.

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New film hobbies amongst young people have creative and educational benefits (Editorial)

JennethNews Articles, Writing3 Comments

For my journalism class this semester, we had to write what our teacher called a “packet project.” A packet is a collection of different news stories on one broad topic. I chose my topic to focus on the impact of online videos, which was both fun and challenging. We had to write a feature story, profile, and an editorial, which took us about half a semester.

This is the last of my packet stories. For my editorial I got to interview high school filmmaker Elijah Perry, a founder of Coming in the Clouds Productions, who’s a YouTube friend of mine. Through our common ground of filming, we’ve gotten to know each other a little bit and hope to collaborate with one another in the future.

For my feature story, click here.

For my profile story, click here.

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Perry as his lead role in CITC’s short film, Paladin’s Conquest.

PENSACOLA. Fla. —In the late ’80s, the average cost of a camcorder was about $1,500, according to Videomaker.com. Modern young people, however, have access to video and multimedia content wherever they turn. If a child or teen doesn’t have a smartphone, tablet, GoPro, or camcorder of his own, his parents or friends probably do. With the rise of the digital era, young people are adopting a new hobby to fill their post-school evenings and hot summer afternoons: filmography.

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Teenager creates online presence with YouTube (Profile Story)

JennethNews Articles, Writing2 Comments

This is the second of my packet stories. For my journalism class this semester, we had to write what our teacher called a “packet project.” A packet is a collection of different news stories on one broad topic. I chose my topic to focus on the impact of online videos, which was both fun and challenging. We had to write a feature story, profile, and an editorial, which took us about half a semester.

For my profile story, I got to interview Kenneth Knight, a high school teenager who enjoys video editing and spent long hours building an online presence through YouTube.

For my feature story, click here.

For my editorial story, click here.

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Knight: “I liked YouTube because I could put up whatever I wanted and I also could get feedback from anyone in the world.”

PENSACOLA. Fla. —It’s one in the morning with everything silent in the house save for a single voice coming deep from within a walk-in closet on the second floor. Inside the closet is set up like a studio, complete with cameras, a large desk and computer, and even sound panels mounted to the back wall. At the desk is a teenager known by YouTubers as KnightDukeGaming, RestartBurger, and ActualKenny — depending on the name of his YouTube channel at the time — as he busies himself with filming his newest YouTube upload. With giant noise-canceling headphones clapped over his ears, a Blue Yeti microphone, a webcam hooked up to his computer, and several empty Mountain Dew cans scattered around him, he cracks jokes and talks video game lingo to his online viewers.

Kenneth Knight, an eighteen-year-old high school senior, has enjoyed video editing and creating YouTube videos for several years. With nearly 4,000 subscribers on his channel, Knight is just one of many teenagers who have delved into the current YouTube trend, a trend that allows anyone to establish an online presence by filming videos, creating content, and voicing opinions for others to enjoy or learn from.

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Organizations turn to online videos to further reach their audience (Feature Story)

JennethNews Articles, Writing3 Comments

For my journalism class this semester, we had to write what our teacher called a “packet project.” A packet is a collection of different news stories on one broad topic. I chose my topic to focus on the impact of online videos, which was both fun and challenging. We had to write a feature story, profile, and an editorial, which took us about half a semester.

This is the first of the packet stories. For my feature I had the opportunity to interview Rob Bluey of the Heritage Foundation‘s Daily Signal. Probably the best thing that’s come out of this project isn’t the paper or grade itself, but that I scored an internship with Mr. Bluey for this summer after the interview. At the beginning of the semester, I applied for Heritage’s Young Leaders Program (a highly competitive internship position that selected forty college students out of 470 applicants). After contacting Mr. Bluey for an interview request, I received word that he would be happy to help me with the project, but also wondered if I’d let him interview me. By the end of the interview, he sent me an official request to join the team.

For my profile story, click here.

For my editorial story, click here.

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Rob Bluey is the editor in chief of the Daily Signal as well as vice president of publishing at the Heritage Foundation.

PENSACOLA. Fla. —An ordinary day for Rob Bluey often consists of a single idea. A single idea that is then bounced around with members of his multimedia team, who then draws up an outline including budget, headlines, and interview questions. After filming and careful editing, Bluey and his team release a new video to the Daily Signal’s website.

Organizations are now turning to online videos to promote themselves and reach the public.

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Behind the Scenes of “Faint Not”

JennethProfessional Videos, VideosLeave a Comment

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Several people have asked me how I put together my Scripture For Life chapel challenge video (If you haven’t seen it, you can watch it here!) So I thought I might take the night alone in my room to write a basic tutorial explaining how I made the animations using just Photoshop and Final Cut Pro X.

I started out with the idea. My roommate suggested doing an animation versus a live-action video because I wouldn’t have to feel bad about collecting the prize scholarship when so many actors would have helped with the project. With a cartoon made completely from my computer, I would have done the entire video myself.

The first thing to do was come up with a verse I’d like to center my video around. That was easy, since my college verses are Isaiah 41:10,13. I liked the visual image I got when I read the verses, since it specifically talks about the God of the universe holding our right hand and leading us along through our life’s trials.

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Late New Year’s Resolutions

JennethWritingLeave a Comment

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Twenty-sixteen has been a year of intense emotional turmoil, starting from even just the first week of January. Several unexpected changes in friends’ families, drama in my community, the most deaths and permanent accidents on college campus in recent history, a cruelly busy semester of my own design, the build-up to elections that left me in such a panic that I could barely keep from crying as I walked to classes because just thinking about the potential future of our country made me physically sick….

Although I’m not a superstitious person, I was really looking forward to 2017. Read More

Five Steps to Character Interviews and How to Use Them to Write

JennethWriting1 Comment

I’ve been working on a single story for over six years now, ever since junior high when the idea for a YA science fiction popped into my head late one night after most of my family was in bed. Eager to tell the tale, I began writing. The first things that appeared in my head were automatically “canon” to the novel for no other reason other than I needed content and a story; I wrote what I’ve since called a “word vomit.”

Seven months later, when I finished the draft, I was so proud of it. But as I took time off, learned how to write better, read more of the YA genre, I realized I was woefully unprepared for the publishing house at the eager age of fourteen. One of the things my mom told me when she read over it was that my characters needed work, and that, when I wrote the second draft, I would better learn who they were and be able to write them consistently.

Six years later, I’m still working on the same series, but this time my characters are completely different people from when I started out. I started considering them to be friends — friends I didn’t try to bend to my will, but friends that had their own personalities, beliefs, likes and dislikes. Suddenly my two main female characters weren’t carbon copies of my “good side” and “bad side,” but their own persons.

One of the ways I solved problems for underdeveloped characters is through character interviews. These are different from character journals, which I’ve been told also work, but never did well for me. Maybe because I was still pulling the strings of my character’s marionette instead of jumping into the story myself as my own character.

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