Sometimes, the best escape from college stress can be found in creating content for entertainment, expressing talent, or even having simple conversations. Several students at Milligan College use their free time to unravel their creativity into YouTube videos.
Brent Doolittle is a senior majoring in communications who is currently hosting live streams and video skits on his channel “The Thursday Show.” Doolittle started using YouTube when he was 10 years old, uploading several videos that are now private. While attending Milligan, he started another channel for his portfolio and used a second channel to alleviate boredom by hosting live streaming on “The Thursday Show.” This show features several college students, including Brent, having conversations with a live chat. The Stampede was able to sit down and ask several questions about the livestream channel.
Q: What are your plans for your YouTube channel?
A: I’ve not really got any plans for this channel, other than to keep doing what we are doing and document our lives. I’d like to come back in a few years and look at the last little bit of my life in college, through the wonders of the Internet in high quality. Also, I want to keep practicing production, even if that means directing with a mouse and keyboard in my dorm room between a couple of cheap webcam feeds to YouTube.
Q: Do any other Milligan students help you?
A: The only Milligan students that help me are my suitemates/crew Michael Kelly, Daniel Peacock, Drew Baldwin and occasionally my brother Aaron and Daniel’s fiancée, Kennedy Weber.
Q: Is it hard to create and upload videos?
A: So far, it hasn’t been hard to come up with ideas for videos that accompany our streams, but as I’ve learned the hard way it is incredibly hard to keep up with four schedules plus whoever we are making a video about that week, or what equipment we need, or what have you.
Q: What all equipment and software do you use?
A: We use some old (and one new) webcams that I have had lying around for some time, and a heck of a lot of cables that I don’t use often that crowd up my drawers. Cables and components are like Legos to me; every once in awhile I pull the drawer out and dig around and see what I can build with what I have lying around. That’s where the stream got started. To edit video, I use Adobe products, like After Effects, Premiere, Audition, etc., but for live production I use Open Broadcaster. It’s tricky to figure out, but it’s a good, open source, free tool.
Q: What do you do during your livestreams?
A: We basically just talk. It’s sort of like a video podcast really; we just talk about whatever comes to mind. Sometimes we have specific guests and topics in mind, but usually once we are live it’s just a free-for-all.
Q: Would you recommend students to upload content?
A: I mean, do whatever you want to do to be happy. If you want to try and make the next viral video, or whatever, go for it. The days of sustainable monetization of YouTube videos are over, or at the very least not what they used to be, so I don’t think that it’s in everyone’s best interest to quit school/their jobs and make this a career, but it can be an entertaining pastime and a good way to document your past for free.
Students can follow “The Thursday Show” on Twitter @ThursdayShowYT.
