We are pleased to announce that ASB President John Grayson is January’s Artist of the Month! Enjoy John’s reflections below about his journey in film making. I began making movies when I was in 6th grade. My science teacher gave us an assignment that we had to create a 1 minute video about “Saving the Oceans.” She told us that the MacGillivray-Freeman Film giant was having a competition for students and we could enter our final product if we wanted. My friend and I produced the movie together and decided to enter the contest. To our surprise, we won the 1st place Judges Choice Award. We won some cash and a GoPro camera. This was a turning point for me because it gave me confidence that people liked my work. Right after this happened, I started going to the Apple Store on a regular basis and signed up for tutoring in Final Cut Pro, a film editing program. I did that for a few years until they stopped offering the one-on-one training; but during those times, I continued to make fun movies with my friends as well as movies for any school project where it seemed to fit. In my 8th grade English class, we were studying idioms and I had to do a presentation on the idiom, “Bite the Dust.” This was one of the first movies that I made for a class assignment. It turned out great and my school then asked if I would consider making a movie for an event that they were having. They loved the movie I made and continued throughout my 8th grade year to ask me to make promotional movies for them.

One of my ongoing areas that I love to explore is visual and special effects. I have always loved watching Hollywood Blockbusters and marveled at how they could accomplish incredible visuals and make them look real. I love being given a challenge, or a certain effect for a project and experimenting and researching how to accomplish it.

When I got to SM, I was so excited to enroll in the film classes. I have continued to learn and grow through those classes with Mr. Naylor and Mr. Lindabury as well as watching YouTube videos. I applied to be a video commissioner for my sophomore year and made a couple promotional videos for the Eagle Regiment, Robotics, and for Jazz Band. I look for every opportunity to make movies in my classes and for ASB. It is a lot of work, but tons of fun as well.

These videos below are just a small selection of my larger body of work. If you would like to see more of my films, search “johncgrayson” on YouTube for my channel.

Click here to enjoy John’s work.