JL Blog

As a university-aged videomaker, it can get a little disheartening. You see all the equipment available out there, and it can get overwhelming when you discover just because of the price range that you can’t have it. Me? I hardly make anything off creating videos. Everything I get is either gifted to me or paid for using the money I get for writing. So with that being said, it’s really easy to get down about it.

However, there’s more to it. You see, all this video stuff? You’re basically telling stories with it. There’s a great responsibility that comes with it all. Basically, you are documenting people as they are. Imagine if we had video cameras in just the 1600s or even the early 1800s. Could you even comprehend being able to see those people as they truly are, actually living and breathing? Minus Jersey Shore, the world today has an edge on everybody else before them.

Sure, it’s one thing to hear about people in a certain time period, but it’s another to actually see them living. With that, you start to realize the responsibility that you have making videos. You don’t even have to be good at it – I mean, unless you want to make a living off of it – for anyone can pick up a camera and hit the record button. However, it’s what you record that matters. In fact, it’s even who you record.

One of the most uncomfortable things that has ever happened to me as videomaker (so far) was when I got word that an inner-city ministry wanted to bring me back to shoot a promo video for them. They actually had me about two years ago when I was serving there and volunteered to make them a free video. Of course, I thought this was great, for I loved doing it while I was there, but on the technical side, the turn-around wasn’t nearly as short as I had wanted it to be (it actually took a few months, while nowadays I can turn something back anywhere between a week and a month). Naturally, I thought it would be nice to actually do something even better for them as well as get it done faster than expected.

Just to check up on the ministry and to see how God had been moving through them, I decided I would head over to their Facebook page. It was there that I discovered a member of their staff along with his wife and unborn child had died in a car accident just a month before. I was shocked, for I realized that he was one of the mini-interviews in the original video that I had made for them.

After my initial reaction, I realized that as a videomaker, I could bring his likeness back whenever I wanted. I could see him actively singing with kids, serving Christ, and telling his story of why he was working at this ministry. I watched the video again, and it was chilling. I also knew that I probably had some extra footage of him laying around with his image, and I could pop it into the computer whenever I wanted. That’s almost unsettling.

Granted, videos are not exactly memories, and they are certainly nothing like actually knowing a person. What I’m saying is just this – when you record someone, you are perserving them in a way. Every frame you capture of them can bring them back for just a brief moment long after they are gone from this life, and yes, this adds a little bit of romanticism to the profession. It’s beautiful in a way, and eventually, you’ll realize that you hold the responsibility of allowing a person’s loved ones and friends to simply remember who they were while living on Earth.

Can you physically bring them back? Of course not. Can you let people see the beauty of who a person was? Absolutely. They can see them move, hear their voice, and see the life in their eyes. No other media format can do this all at once.

So to my fellow videomakers, do it big.

I want you to think for just a moment – what is it that you want to do? What do you want to create? I’ll ask you this – have you done it? Did you go out and do it? Did you make something and then share it with the world?

There’s a stark difference between constructive criticism and blatant slamming, and I believe anyone can tell you that. However, even though anyone can tell you that, it doesn’t mean that they will tell you that. Many people reveal their creative works for the world to see only to receive harsh, opinionated slams from faceless entities, telling them that their art is horrible. That’s not constructive criticism, and although you can always improve with whatever you do, you don’t deserve that. I’m here to to tell you that you don’t suck, and you should continue being creative in every way that you possibly can.

The fact is that the lot of you are creative in some way, bursting at the seams with inspiration. However, many of you will think to yourself a variety of things:

• “I’m not good enough.”
• “I don’t have the tools to do what I want.”
• “Other people do it better than me.”
• “I won’t do a good job.”
• “I’m not sexy.”

You need to tell your inhibitions to shut up and just go do what you want to do. You’re a beautiful person, and you should let your inner beauty and vision shine outward as well. Go make something.

The title that you see here doesn’t really have anything to do with a new year. Not really. I mean the events mentioned in this post take place at the beginning of the new year, but realistically… never mind. I’m rambling. I told myself I wouldn’t write a cliché blog post, so that’s why I’m insistent on this not being a post related to the new year.

Does that make sense?

Anyway, I’m starting up a new YouTube project called Lift Channel, and I just wanted to take some time to share it with you. Basically, it’s a rebirth of my mom’s local publication – Lift Magazine – in video form. I’ll be covering things in a documentary-style, but the content will be slightly different than the original magazine. For instance, I’ll be covering human interest stories, throwing in some mockumentaries, and including the occasional short sketch. However, it will mostly still be coverage of ministries, missions, and God-stories. The purpose of the channel is to provide an oasis in a desert of cynicism and hopefully brighten your day.

So with that being said, I hope that you subscribe to Lift Channel, and you can expect the first human interest clip in the next two weeks if everything goes well. This will be my first time out with my new-new camera, so wish me luck!

By the way, you’re awesome. Oh, and here’s the link to Lift Channel. Go. Subscribe.

As of now, I’d like to remind you all of a tale that involves a multi-faceted master cosmic engineer, two deviant machine supervisors, a force comprised of power-hungry rogues, a self-inflicted soul disease, a humanoid courier, a sex-less birth, a universal benevolent king, a heroic sacrifice, and a spiritual antidote. On paper, this tale appears to be the craziest concept in the world, and the thought that people believe it to be true seems insane. The story itself has been corrupted, misused, overanalyzed, mocked, and dismissed countless times. However, the core elements of it have survived for years, and it still remains one of the most retold pieces of history ever.

With that being said, I whole-heartedly believe in all of it, and I want you to know that God loves you.

Merry Christmas.

I’ve received a couple of messages that were something along the lines of ”Josh, aren’t you going to blog anymore?”

Well, yes. I am. But with me, blogging is something along the lines of a middle school dance. You arrive at the dance, and for a while, you watch everyone else dancing. At some point, a girl that is a foot taller than you will ask you to dance, and then you’ll go do some awkward swaying paired with a bunch of hover-handing. However, you’ll eventually get bored with her, and then you’ll go find your buddy John who brought his Game Boy and sit with him for the remainder of the night, taking turns at Pokémon.

If you understood that analogy, then good for you. It’s 4 a.m. where I’m writing, and I sure as heck didn’t understand it. Didn’t stop me from writing it, though. But yes, this is me telling you that I haven’t expressed my thoughts in blog form in a while.

You may be wondering why I haven’t written anything on here for a bit. I used to write three times a week on this site alone (back when it was under some other name). The thing is that back when I was writing three times a week, I was writing a lot of nonsense, and I wasn’t even putting any thought into it. It was an experiment – a way to experience the challenge of writing every day.

At some point, I got a job writing for a publication with the help of this site, and then I realized I probably needed to step my game up a little. So I stopped writing as much on here and ended up writing a few times a week for them. On top of that, I started doing television shoots every once in a while, and with that (and school piled on), I ended up becoming simply too tired to write anything personal.

During November, I found myself locked in my room for the majority of the month swamped with an overwhelming feeling of depression and lack of energy. Since then, my hours have found themselves strangely swapped – I have become a creature of the night, driving out at 3 a.m. to get hot chocolate from McDonald’s and cruising the countryside alone (only to become fearful of potential modern highwaymen and turning around almost as quickly as I leave). I feel slightly better now, though.

The other day, I actually woke up early, and I rediscovered that bright light in the sky – the sun. It had been so long. I’m writing this as an effort to get back in the swing of the things. The semester is over. Hell is over. I finally have time to work on personal projects again. I’m back.