In my Journalism and PR career, I’ve had several opportunities to push myself and step out of the ‘writing’ zone into the ‘multimedia’ zone but I always shied away from it. I often thought that using a camera to tell stories was just another career different from mine, one that I didn’t need to bother myself with. I knew I would have to step out of my comfort zone in Graduate School but I didn’t know it would be so fast and as interesting as it was.

Early this year, I discovered a young woman named Joni Holifield on Instagram. A hashtag on #BaltimoreEvents led me to her Instagram page and I was inspired by the work she does to give kids and teenagers in Baltimore a better chance in life. I saw post after post of the selfless work she does in raising a generation of young people who are informed, equipped and prepared to face the future. Her non-profit organization, HeartSmiles, was founded right in the midst of the Freddie Gray riots. The April 2015 riots which tore the city apart also revealed a huge gap in the preparedness of Baltimore kids and teenagers to compete favorably with their peers across the country. In order to repair this damage, the government, as well as other well-meaning citizens, began to invest lots of money into programs targeted at giving young people in the city a better chance in life. Many of those programs were implemented in Elementary, Middle and High Schools and this was the major target of her organization. With her personal savings and some support from family and friends, Joni began her journey in 2015. Week after week, she visited different schools in Baltimore City and taught the students a variety of life skills, entrepreneurship skills, and leadership skills. My project led me to attend three of these events and it was truly an eye-opener to see her interacting with the students and learning about the needs of kids in Baltimore City.

The major challenge for me on this project, however, was using Adobe Premiere for the first time. It seemed very complicated at first, but with regular use, I began to get more comfortable with the program. I also watched a series of tutorials on Youtube which helped me improve my skills and work around some hitches I had while editing the video. Using Garage Band for the first time was also a bit of a challenge. I had to find the right music to suit the mood and message of the video. At first, I tried to use a combination of different sounds in one track and use it as a soundtrack for the entire video but I couldn’t successfully create one that captured the mood perfectly so I settled for using different sounds at different points in the video.

This has been a truly interesting class for me and I look forward to doing more of such multimedia projects both in front and behind the camera in the near future.