Aaden Taylor (10) began taking photos around his house and neighborhood during the summer of 2023. Taylor said, “I was seeing people record sports, making cool videos and taking cool pictures. So I was like, I want to try that.”
He bought a Canon EOS R10 and began his photography Instagram account — @at.prods — shortly after. He started taking photographs of many different people, including a basketball photo shoot with Madden Smiley (10) as well as a photo shoot with Camden Smith (10).
Smith explained, “I’m really happy with how they turned out … It’s just really cool. I love pictures, I love videos and I love that he loves to do that and it’s just really cool to be able to see myself in like a good quality video or a picture.”
Taylor puts a lot of time and effort into his projects. “I kind of just sit down, sort through all my videos, and import them into Premiere Pro because that’s what I use to edit my videos … I find my music first, I line up all my clips, make them cut right. Then I go in, add sound effects, transitions, text, all that,” Taylor said.
Taylor has previously taken the video productions I as well as video productions II classes. In these classes, students learn how to create and produce videos. These classes are taught by Mike Vasa (staff).
Vasa explained, “There’s four things I want them to learn (in video productions I), and that’s how to script, how to storyboard, how to record a good video and how to edit …. Video two is more about, we start to get into hype videos for the sports teams. We’re doing ‘Chopped’ right now. We’ve filmed that a couple times. We do our news show as well. They’re about to start working on short films … So just progressing from the basics of video editing to telling good stories.”
Taylor credited video productions II for getting him interested in making videos and giving him the skills to edit videos. “Video two really got me into the hype video stuff because that’s what, that’s what you do in video two. You just make hype videos. That’s kind of where I really got interested in the video thing,” Taylor said.
With the digital age continuously growing, more and more jobs are being made with digital media. “To be able to acquire skills that you can just go into a job and say, ‘I can do these things, I can show you that I’ve already done these things’ is pretty sweet,” Vasa said.
Taylor hopes to continue a career in digital media: “I can actually find a career in doing it, because I don’t really wanna work a 9 to 5 or do something I don’t like or you know, just work at McDonald’s. I mean there’s nothing bad against that, but, I just wanna do something fun, that’ll pay me well.”
