A Video on What to Do in Ada

Last week, Aggie assigned us a video project about what to do in Ada for my Principles of Social Media class. When she first mentioned it, I had no clue how I wanted to approach this project. I love the village of Ada and going to school here, but if I am being honest, there is not much to do. So, I immediately began thinking about what I do everyday on campus. I attend my classes (yes, mom, I do go to my classes everyday), watch Netflix, eat, play volleyball, sleep and occasionally I take a walk. As I reflected on my boring life, I realized I didn’t do enough interesting things to do a serious video. The next class, Aggie went into more detail about how she wanted to video done, and that is when the lightbulb went off in my head. If there is anything I know I can complete a project on, it would be eating. So, I decided I was going to make a video that only featured the restaurants Ada has to offer the people who live here.

I have been trying to eat better lately, so this project was not necessarily going in the right direction, but I decided I would just take one bite of everything I got. Then, I decided I shouldn’t  feature only myself because I did not necessarily want people think that is what I do on an everyday basis. Ada has a plethora of different restaurants and hits almost every type of food: fast-food, Chinese, Mexican, Italian and even a Panera-like restaurant. I haven’t been to every place yet, so I decided I would only choose my favorites. In the end, my list consisted of McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Cosi, Padrone’s, El Campo and Jalapenos. I called up my big, Karlyn, and asked her to go on this adventure with me, and since she loves food as much as I do, she said yes. We went to all the restaurants and ordered our food and took turns recording each other eating it. Once I had all the videos in my possession, I realized I had missed Padrone’s, which is one of my favorites. So, one night when I couldn’t be there, I made my friends take a video of someone eating there. I finally had all of my videos and was ready to start the editing process, but then I realized I had no clue how to make eating for a minute and a half straight look interesting. 

I decided no one wanted to watch someone eat at normal speed, so the entire video was sped up to make it easier to watch. I added text to add a little description to every clip and I played “Obsession” by Jon Bellion in the background, since food is my obsession. As I was finishing the editing, I realized I needed a way to end the video. So, to continue with the comedic theme, I went with a clip of myself eating alone in my room. Once I was finished, I was proud of the way it turned out and decided to post it on Twitter for my friends at ONU to see. Little did I know the engagement I would get on the video. Since the last time I checked, I had 408 favorites and 80 retweets on the tweet, along with 12,000 views. Most of the feedback I got was positive, but since I didn’t mention the video was for a class, some people thought I did it just for fun and thought it was dumb. Not including the fact that the video was for a class was a mistake on my part, but I don’t think I would have gotten as much engagement as I did if I had included it. I would call this video success, and honestly, I am proud of it, even if in the credits I spelled the word “producer” wrong. I have always enjoyed filming and editing videos, so I actually enjoyed this project and I am glad I am not the only one who enjoyed it. If you are interested in watching the video, you can either visit my Twitter, or watch it below.