Christopher Gent. Communication: Print and Digital Journalism or Broadcast and Digital Journalism

Hello, my name is Christopher Gent, I am a senior from Starkville, MS. I am currently majoring in Communications with a concentration in Broadcast and Digital Journalism. I chose to pursue this field because of my interest in video making. Ever since I started watching videos on youtube when I was a kid, I wanted to make and edit videos for other people. The classes here at State helped me start my career in video making with their classes.

I chose broadcasting because when I first started college, I wanted to work with WWE’s video production team, since I am a big fan of wrestling. I took some broadcasting courses here and learned that I was not very interested in news production, so I applied to hail state productions so I could gain more experience in sports broadcasting, but they never replied to my application. As a result of this, I began to make my own videos using Adobe Premiere and upload them to youtube. I started to put my videos onto the platform and began to fall in love with the story telling side of video production. Which is a trait that I’ve been able to appreciate more in the broadcasting side of both sports and news production.

The main thing I enjoy most about this concentration, is honestly using Adobe. My current career uses both premiere and photoshop, so having access to them throught the student discount, as well as learning new ways to utilize them is enjoyable to me. Adobe offers thousands of options to let someone express their creativity, and I like that there are courses that help me understand the basics or other tools that I am not familiar with. The TV Production courses helped me take clips from videos easier. While, Photographic Communication helped me with the basics of editing photos, rather than making photos, which is what I’m used to.

My favorite project that I’ve done throughout college would be a forestry video I had to make for CS Video Production. This project didn’t have any real guidelines for it, besides a time limit. Everyone involved had full creative control over how they wanted their video to look which I enjoyed. No one’s video was similar, and getting to work with music was interesting, considering that most videos we had to make for news productions only involved natural sound for audio. I enjoyed the editing process of this, more than the others since I was making my own video. I didn’t have to worry about how it would look compared to other students, since it would be mine alone.

My favorite topic would be videos. It’s probably pretty obvious since I’ve been talking about this entire article, but it’s true. I also enjoy photography a lot, since it’s usually a very comforting experience. It’s a chance to be outside with the sound of nature surrounding you, as you take a picture of a moment in time that can never be recreated. Or a chance to find hidden details about something you would never look twice at.

During this class, I hope to learn more about making websites look more appealing. I deal a lot with creative services, so knowing how to make and apply new techniques to help make a better website is important to me. I am interested in learning when and where to put certain graphics or videos to help diversify blocks of texts, without making them too distracting. There is a large difference between an appealing website and an unappealing website. I hope to learn more about making appealing websites from this class.

As for the future, I hope to continue my career as a Youtuber. I uploaded my first video on October 9th 2022, and I’ve still been posting videos there for a year and a half now. There were definitely low times were I thought about quitting. But I stuck to it and I am very glad that I have been. I hit 100k subscribers in April of 2023, and I’m thankful that I have the opportunity to make this my career leaving college.

Once I leave Mississippi State, I’m not sure where I’ll move towards. I have a job that allows me to work wherever, as long as there is good internet. It has been a difficult decision trying to find where to go, because there are times where I would like to go to a big city because of all the opportunities, but I also don’t like being around a lot of people. I would like to leave Mississippi before I turn thirty. As of now, I would like to move out west, but not anywhere past Arizona.

If YouTube does not work out for me, I would probably try to work with WWE. Like I mentioned in the beginning, I am a wrestling fan and have been since I was 9, so I would love to work behind the scenes. In my opinion, WWE has the best video production out of any sport in the world, and it would be an honor to be apart of that scene. There is more to professional wrestling than it seems, and it’s so much more than just “fake fighting.” It’s about storytelling and characters which are aspects of video production that I adore.

In conclusion, I’m just a guy from Starkville who wants to make YouTube videos. I’ve had the opportunity to create multiple projects as a result of the courses here at state, and I am grateful for that. I plan on continuing youtube once I graduate, and that’s about all I know concerning my future. I’m grateful for the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription we get for being a student, as well as what it’s done to help me express myself.  I hope to be able to create more passion projects throughout my last semester here in this course.

Email me at cag634@msstate.edu with any questions