I love making videos. I didn’t know I did until two years ago when I made a movie clip of my family backpacking trip in the Adirondacks. This new found love was then applied to everything I did from cliff jumping and basic camping to Spanish class projects. I find videos to be a true reflection of an experience without anyone pretending to be candid or any distortion of a single moment, which people often use photographs for. This isn’t a bad thing about photographs, it’s what makes them quite wonderful, but for adventure and conveying my message correctly I found videos to be most effective.
Now that you’ve gotten an idea of where I’m taking my second year project and why I chose that media, you need to know what I’m going to do with it.
I was panicking at first when I found out I couldn’t use STEP as my project but now I’m glad that I couldn’t. I first asked myself what I love doing and what would send a message to people about a theme that ENR scholars promotes. Originally I wanted to create a recycling video about promoting correct recycling habits around campus but I wasn’t sure if I could create a quality video with enough footage that was encouraging. I thought I could film some recycling bins with incorrect things tossed in them and then some action shots of people picking up trash from natural areas and possibly figure out how to edit in some animation of putting plastic cups in recycling bins and putting food in the trash bins. That all sounded a little high school class project to me though. I really wanted this video to be something people wanted to watch and something that impacted them.
So I have been thinking for two weeks now and finally have developed an idea that I am very excited to film about and have experience with this type of subject. I wanted to create a video promoting outdoor adventure. This video will hopefully inspire others to put down the game controller, lock their phones, and shut off Netflix and go outside. This video will give statistics of technology use and under-utilization of adventure resources close to campus and around Ohio. It will also provide clubs and organizations available on and off campus that encourage outdoor activities and are accessible to students (ENR scholar’s events, Mountaineering Club, the OAC, the Sierra club, etc.).
This message of adventure is what drew me into ENR scholars because it’s a personal passion of mine. Walking through campus all I ever see is people looking down at their phones and deliberating over what their Instagram caption should be. I hope that this video helps students realize that there is more out in the world than a virtual reality and it’s possible to explore it! My ultimate goal for this project would be to get it shown to the orientation classes, or even at meetings for the clubs I am promoting, or to be shared on the internet so that more people can see it and hopefully get inspired.
I think that the 30-hour minimum shouldn’t be a problem between filming, contacting clubs, doing research, editing, and broadcasting. I am very excited to work on this and hope it comes off more than just an assignment, but a beacon to the outdoors and all it has to offer.