Alright I’ve decided that tomorrow will be the first day of my 30 day video challenge. My goal is to make some kind of video everyday for 30 days straight and upload them to YouTube. Their is no length requirements. The only requirement is that the video contain me for at least one shot and that it must be shot‚ edited, and uploaded within 24 hours. Let the challenge begin! Well at midnight…
Tags: 30 day, challenge, ethan thompson, video
Posted by Ethan - 23/04/12 - 0 comments
Wow, I can’t believe how fast this summer flew by. It seemed like it was too short at some points, and just long enough in others. But overall it was a great experience that I’ll never regret. I had the privilege of working on the Audio/Visual team at Word of Life Island for the second summer in a row and had the opportunity to watch campers grow in their faith for 8 weeks.
I have to be honest, during the summer it’s not always enjoyable. There are times when I would think “Why in the world did I come here AGAIN. I could be doing things with my friends at home, going to concerts, etc.” But later that day I would usually hear a great message from one of the speakers and I would have a totally different attitude. I praise God for the fact that I got to participate in helping so many young people hear about His word and what He’s done in the lives of the speakers and staff members. It truly is an experience you can’t explain until you’ve taken part in it. As a tech team we did run into some problems, but God brought us through. I’m sure we grew together as a team more then we realized through the difficulty’s and became closer friends as well.
After I headed home from the island I spent two weeks saying good bye, relaxing, sleeping in, packing, etc. and now I’m currently back up in the Adirondacks attending Word of Life Bible Institute. Right now we’re still in the stages of RA training week. Basically the deans and staff members choose students to be leaders on campus. Some of us will be dorm RA’s, some will be service RA’s, and some won’t get any position. The purpose of having dorm RA’s is too help the students grow in their walk with God, hold them accountable to Word of Life’s student handbook, and help them take care of their daily to-dos. Service RA’s do similar jobs, but instead of a small group of students, they are assigned to different work areas.
I am attempting to get a service RA position in either tech, admissions, or a type of office assistant. I just feel like those jobs have something to do with my previous work experience and talent’s. But I can be put in any position that the administration feels would be best. We all find out tomorrow afternoon whether and what we have a position in.
I’ll continue to blog when I can find time throughout the school year, but please be praying for me that God will continue to grow and mold me into the man He wants me to be.
Tags: college, ethan thompson, WOL STC, wolbi, wolisland, word of life
Posted by Ethan - 10/09/11 - 0 comments
So it’s been awhile since I’ve written anything, so I thought I’d do a quick update post while I’m bored at our local public library.
I’ve been working on a project called “Vidcredible” for the past couple weeks. My original idea for the site came about when I was bored and wanted to watch some cool videos on YouTube without having to scroll through all the junk that is most of YouTube’s content. I looked for some domains and found that one, which is kind of catchy, not totally stupid, and was availible for my budget of $10. The I hired a freelance designer to make the logo for me and now Vidcredible is in its second week of operations.
Recently I also decided to leave both of my fantastic jobs and head up to Word Of Life Bible Institute this coming fall. I’ll be working tech at the Word Of Life Island this summer again in order to qaulify for a scholarship, and because who can pass up a great summer with new friends, old friends, and doing what I love? Well some people could, but I can’t.
I can’t really say what exactly changed my mind about going, other then why not. If God has opened up the doors, its our job to walk through them.
Tags: college, ethan thompson, update, vidcredible
Posted by Ethan - 06/05/11 - 0 comments
Yesterday evening I rode my bike about a mile away from my house and shot a timelapse of the sunset. Went pretty well for only my third timelapse of the sunset ever. Still working on learning what settings work best, but I think it came out okay. Below you can see a photo I took with my phone of the set up I had. Sorry for the low qaulity.
I’m going to put together the actual video using the shots in a couple days, I’ll post it when I’m finished.While I was taking the sunset my friend Destin Danser sent me a text asking if I wanted to go walk around the town and do some night photography. His initial idea was to do some city landscapes, but we ended up doing night portraits instead.I luckily took my Kodak Zi8 along with me so we shot a short vlog of our portrait session. Unfortunatly I didn’t get any actual footage of us taking the photos and moving the lights around. But we’re going to try again next Tuesday so I’ll shoot another vlog and include that stuff. Just a side note, yes we are strange and I already know that. Below the video you can see some of the best shots we took. I think they came out decent for our first attempt at night portraits. If we had one more flash for a hair light, I think they would’ve turned out a multitude better. What do you guys think? Anything we could drastically improve besides the hair light?And here are some of my favorite photos from the evening.
Tags: batavia, behind the scenes, bts, canon, destin danser, dslr, ethan thompson, just passing thru pro, new york, night, nikon, photography, sb600, Vlog
Posted by Ethan - 21/10/10 - 0 comments
Yesterday morning my good friend Destin Danser (Destin Danser’s Photography) and I went to Buffalo to pick up his new Sigma 70-200 2.8 lens. On the way there we had the usual conversations we have about cameras, technology, and so on.After getting his lens we went to Best Buy to check out the computers they had on display and to just hang out for awhile.Then we went to a park to location scout for a shoot Destin has this coming Sunday, which I have agreed to help him out with as his “assistant”. We had fun fooling around with his new lens and just looking around at the beautiful landscape.AND THEN we headed over to Indian Falls, a small local falls about 15 minutes away from my house, and took some photos of the falls to hopefully be used on the cover of a local restaurants new menus.So I’ve been trying to get a lot more video practicing in lately. So I volunteered to cover another football game for The Batavian. This one went a little bit better as far as know whats going on during the game, since I’m not a football fan, and actually getting audio in the final video. You can watch the final result below.Then today I was hired by a local church to film what they call their “Fall Fest”. They have games for the kids, free food, dance performances, and testimonies from some of the church members. I decided to mainly shoot the event with my Canon T2i with the 18-55 kit lens. I got some shots with my 80-200, but since it doesn’t have IS and it was a bit crowded there it spent most of the time in my camera bag. So thats what I’ve been up to the last couple days.
Tags: batavia, city church, ethan thompson, filming, football, indian falls, ny, pembroke, photography, productions, the batavian, videography blog, wny
Posted by Ethan - 02/10/10 - 0 comments
A couple days ago Howard Owens sent me a message asking me to film a local football game for him, so I agreed to do it. I ended up getting there with my friend Destin a few minutes late, which turned out to be fine since nothing exciting happened while we werent there. Then I set up my monstrous Bogen 3066 tripod with my tiny HV20. After getting that level and set I realized I was going to have to move around the field the entire time. Which was a good thing for shooting, since the shots werent from just one angle, but killed my wrist. But it was good excercise and ended up being a ton of fun. I’m pretty happy with the way to video turned out, although because of technical difficulties, I didn’t get sound.Heres the video. Enjoy!
Tags: attica, batavia, batavian, blog, bogen 3066, ethan thompson, filming, football, hv20, just passing thru pro, ny, pembroke, student, the, videography, wny
Posted by Ethan - 30/09/10 - 0 comments
This past weekend I attended the LEAH convention in Rochester, NY. I can’t even begin to explain to you how much God blessed me and taught me this weekend. But I’ll try anyways.I went in to the convention with a good attitude. I was positive, confident, and prayed like crazy the night before. I had asked God to bless me and let His light shine through me when I met and interacted with the people there. Which, for anyone who knows me, isn’t always the way I approach things. Unfortunately I tend to have a negative attitude about things and hardly ever expect or even ask God to truly bless something I do. A lot of times I pray and say “God bless…” and then not really expect God to do it. Why is that? I’m not totally sure. It may be because of what our culture says, or even the things that we as Christian teenagers think and chat about. I think as Christian “teens” or young adults we often joke about God “blessing” us. We throw that phrase around like it means little or nothing that God, the Creator of the ENTIRE UNIVERSE, who cared enough about us to DIE on the cross for OUR SINS, is BLESSING us in what we’re doing. It’s a big deal, and I personally don’t think I’ve ever truly taken it seriously before this weekend.Anyways, I got there Thursday night and set up my booth and right off the bat got to meet and talk with some really cool people. They showed a genuine interest in what I was doing and what my company does, which isn’t always the case. Most of the time people don’t take me seriously, they just think its “cute” that I run a business. They see it as like a teenagers lemonade stand.Over the next several hours or so I kept meeting great people, one right after the other. At about 9 o’clock we packed up and headed home. Once again, before I went to sleep I prayed and contemplated about the next two days and asked God to bless me and shine through me.Friday morning my dad and I woke up around 6:30 and got dressed and ready to go for the day. We stopped by my friend Destin’s house and picked him up. We got to the convention at around 8:30 and set up my booth and got settled in for the day. After we got done Mr. Gorman, the convention coordinator, and someone else stopped over at my booth. They informed me I had been chosen to receive a $300 check from Ian Lamont the next morning. WOW! I didn’t know about this previously and it was a nice surprise, and that was just the first blessing that day. After that Mr. Gorman and I took a tour around the building. He showed me around and told me some things he’d like to have filmed for their video I’m doing for them. During all this Destin dutifully sat at my booth and talked to people for me.Later that afternoon I had ran out of all my business cards. But soon after that I met a man who was interested in me recording his son playing guitar and singing. I told him I had never done it before, but he said he wanted to give me the opportunity. So I have him a quote, and then he gave me $50 in advance! Another big blessing.Then later that afternoon I filmed a workshop for one of the vendors, I ended up having technical difficulties and had to give her a refund. But she’s still interested in me producing a DVD for her, so thats awesome. Another big blessing.Then Saturday came and I received my check and met some more awesome people. I had the oppurtunity to help shoot some footage for the guys over at E3cubes, and in return they gave me one of their cubes. I also got to do my first “workshop”, which was an interesting experience. So overall God really blessed me and taught me a lot of things this past weekend.Thank you to everyone who I got to meet, for those that encouraged me, and those I met in person for the first time. It was great getting to talk to all of you and learning from you. I hope I get the privilege of doing it all again next year.
Tags: blessing, ethan thompson, God, jpt media, LEAH, LEAH convention
Posted by Ethan - 09/06/10 - 0 comments
So a couple weeks ago I created a “fan” page for myself on Facebook.Now I know that sounds conceited, but thats not why I created it. My goal is to market myself. Sounds kind of weird but its worked for other people, so I thought I would give it a shot. Since I enjoy hosting podcasts, videos,etc. I’m going to try and market my personality. So anything and everything I create thats not specifically done for JPT Media will be marketed as eg: Producedby Ethan Thompson. So if people enjoy what I do, or at least are interested I may be able to create a “following”. Which could then be used to market other peoples material, or my own, and at some point God-willing make me some cash. SO, become a fan of me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter!
Tags: ethan thompson, facebook, jpt media, marketing, me
Posted by Ethan - 26/05/10 - 0 comments
So if you guys go back through my archives you’ll notice that last summer I went to work at the Word of Life Ranch. I had applied with the intentions of working on their “tech” team. But soon found out that you had to be 16 in order to work tech. Which was a problem because at the time I was only 15. After a couple months of waiting to hear if I even got accepted, I got a call notifying me I could work in the dishroom. I wasn’t very excited about washing dishes all summer, but I decided it would be a good experience and went anyways. After getting there, meeting my cabin mates and supervisors, I was glad I went. I ended up hating washing dishes, but it was worth it because I got to do so many other fun things.All right fast forward to the end of the summer. I ended up applying to go the next summer (this years) with the hopes that I would get accepted to work tech. After waiting almost 6 months I got an email asking if I still wanted to have them process my application. I emailed them back telling them I had changed my mind and didn’t want to work at WOL this year. But after thinking about it some more, praying, and getting a good nights sleep I emailed them AGAIN saying that I changed my mind AGAIN and would like to come work for the summer.Fast forward to March 31 2010. I received another email, this time telling me I got accepted to work tech this year. I was so excited! I’ll finally be doing the job I’ve been wanted to do for almost 2 years.As of today its only 54 days till I leave for my first year of Word of Life STC on the island. I can’t wait to see what God’s got planned for me this summer. I’m also hoping I might be able to “chronicle” my summer and make my videos into a kind of video blog that I’ll post when I get back.Moral of the story, don’t be afraid to go outside of your comfort zone and keep on trying no matter how young or inexperienced you think you are.
Tags: blog, ethan thompson, STC, update, WOL STC, word of life STC
Posted by Ethan - 26/04/10 - 0 comments
Well I’ve been hard at work saving up for my new desktop computer. I’m looking to save up about $700 and I’m almost at $200 after about 3 weeks of saving and selling a ton of stuff on ebay. I’ll probably end up selling a lot of my book collection to help pay for the computer. If I can sell 10 books a month and make about $50 profit, then add in my dog walking pay, and any video jobs I get and I’ll probably have my new computer in about 2 months. Then I’m going to save up and buy 2x 22 inch monitors. At some point down the road I’d like to update my mouse and keyboard and get a nice wireless set, but thats all extra.Speaking of video jobs, I’m hopefully going to be working with The Batavian and producing some video ads for them. It’ll look nice on my portfolio and will be a nice source of income.I’ve also been working on promoting and setting up a facebook profile picture competition with my friends. You can see the video ad I made for it below.
Tags: desktop, entrepreneur, ethan thompson, video
Posted by Ethan - 10/02/10 - 0 comments