It all began with a demo.

I had just graduated from college with a BA in creative writing, and in search of a hobby as I worked a real job, so that I could eat, when my best friend asked me to help her make a demo for an upcoming job she was interested in. As starving liberal arts majors, we filmed the majority of clips and videos with small camcorders, and the occasional phone. We were now two small girls on a mission to make our action demo in less than a month. After a few days trying to get some video and sound off of one of our cameras, we decided we really needed to step it up.

A few months prior, Ashley needed to film a documentary short, and was able to rent a camera and boom from school to produce her piece. It seemed like a great idea at first, all we would need to do would set the camera on a tripod, hold the boom high into the air, and presto!- a movie was made! We quickly realized that this was not the case. The instruments that she was using were bulky, temperamental, and difficult to manage, and she quickly had to recruit myself and some others to help her make the movie possible.

Now, months later, without access to the school’s equipment, we brainstormed on the best ways to shoot her demo. We wondered, did we have friends in high places? No. Did we have rich friends with cameras? No. Did we have our own camera? No. Apparently, we only had our broke-selves to rely on. We decided we needed a camera, one that was small, portable, resilient, and most importantly, cost effective. Eventually, we were led to the GoPro camera. We were hesitant to believe that such a small camera could be everything that it promised, so we were anxious to try it out.

With our new little piece of equipment handy, we set out to make our video concept about through the eyes of the athlete, featuring shots of skaters, surfers, runners, and others, just doing what they love- being active! After days of strapping the GoPro to helmets, hands, boards, bikes, and all sort of things that can’t be discussed in blog-- we decided to take a look at the video feed—would we retrieve what we wanted? YES! The quality was incredible! It seemed as though the audience was experiencing every turn, jump, and bump. We felt as though we had struck gold with this little camera! It was and is, everything we needed, and in the end we shot an incredible demo, for a low cost, without having to sacrifice amazing quality. So that was it- edit, cut, and print, and we sent the demo out into the world.