Creative Minds Scholarship Essay

Creative Minds Scholarship Title The idiom “Practice makes perfect” has been in the vernacular of man for hundreds of years, and has always carried the same immeasurable level of truth. Through experience, we hone whatever craft we may practice, and every day we find things to improve on from our past work. This is especially apparent in creative work, at least in my own instance, because I find flaws in past projects to improve upon with each revisit. As far as I can remember, the video camera took quite a significant place in my life. From early home videos flowing throughout my time as a toddler, or my first choppy attempts at creating stop-motion Lego shorts as an elementary student, the camera made a presence and I was always fascinated
One of my most vivid first memories was playing with our VHS box of The Empire Strikes Back at a rental beach condominium on a family vacation. Growing up, I watched the movies with my Dad and alone obsessively, and as I grew older I gained nothing but respect for them. Though in early February 2015, after just having finished viewing the first six Star Wars movies again with my Father, I viewed them differently. After studying the Star Wars films as many times as I had, it was on this particular occasion I observed the series with a fresh perspective, and discovered an essential thematic element found in all six movies I had never noticed before. Curious and intrigued, I searched the Internet and resulted with nothing on the subject I had discovered. So, as a dutiful fan of the franchise, I immediately went to work on my first serious video essay. From February to October of that year, I was constantly writing, re-writing, recording, and editing my project, always with fear of being ridiculed and proven wrong in my findings after uploading it to YouTube. Terrified after sinking over half a year into the thirteen minute project, (Or my “two-thirds of a baby as it has been informally dubbed), I uploaded the video, and astoundingly it took off. Within the span of three months, the video surpassed one million views, and had surprisingly generated over three thousand dollars in revenue from the video as well. Saying I was shocked was an understatement. After spending nearly all of my free time on a project I had no intention of being viewed by a mass audience, I was blown away to hear how amazed people were at my work, complimenting the excellence of the final product, and how interesting the premise was. Though, after a year of the video being public and the view count amounting to nearly 2.5 million total, I have realized a great many mistakes I could have improved on in