brandonhinsley  +

It was the summer of 2008 when my best friend, Jeff, and I set out to be the Joel and Ethan Coen of the future. My Dad introduced me to the world of online video streaming when he would show me old clips of WWF wrestling on YouTube. That is when I saw a greater potential to these websites. Over the past five years I’ve spent thousands of dollars, earned from walking through miles of cornfields during summer break, on camera gear including my first camera, the Canon 60d. I believe that I was born in the perfect generation for a budding filmmaker simply because of the tools that are easily accessible to me such as YouTube and the modern digital camera. It is now easier than ever to make your own movie and I get my practice in every day. Working the insides of adobe premiere, my camera, and lighting is what I do best. It all began in fifth grade with our minute and a half long, unscripted videos filmed with our Sony point and shoot camera and a few Nerf guns for props. After six years of countless hours of self-educating, I was noticed by my school’s yearbook teacher. It finally helped me find something school related that made me happy and kept me busy. In yearbook I shot videos including the varsity football team’s season wrap-up/highlight reel that played at their end of the season banquet for the players and their families. On November 4th, 2014 the fifteen best of the ninety kids on our yearbook staff went to Washington, D.C. for the Journalism Education Association convention. I entered the national contest in the category of videography. I arrived in D.C. not knowing how my contest was going to work and I was in for quite a surprise. We had two hours to create a short film that was between 1 ½ to 3 minutes long, at the Smithsonian Zoo. No editing was allowed and we had to use all of our own camera gear. I won first place with the superior rating in the national contest. There were 2,168 teens in contests and only 122 received superior awards. I was the superior winner in the category of videography. This past summer I attended Northwestern Universities Nation High School Institute for film where I spent five weeks on Northwestern’s campus, living in the dorms and taking classes in cinematography and directing at Louis Hall. Having seventy-five students total we had to establish our own production crew and actors in groups of around six including the director, cinematographer, boom operator, sound mixer, and actors. We made roughly two short films per week with every group. We also took electives such as “Long Take” which taught us how to successfully film a long take scene similar to the infamous ones in Goodfellas or Oldboy. I took my turn at directing, but working rigorously on ten films in those five weeks made me realize that my true love and where my talent showed the most was in cinematography. All of the friends you make during the challenges and fun of creating is my favorite part of the entire film making culture. When I was ten years old, running around with a camera and a couple friends I never thought that this hobby would turn into a passion and follow throughout all of my adolescence. I know that film will be an enormous part of my life until the day I die. Turning words into a moving picture with the challenging, yet fun skills that I spent years practicing to get to where I am now is what makes me proud of myself and what keeps the others around me proud as well.