Around 5 billion videos are watched every day on YouTube, and over 3 billion hours of video are watched there every month. To introduce students to this huge, important, and still growing part of all of our lives one reason why Junior John Lucas Bellingall created a new video-making club.

For Bellingall, making videos is one way he expresses himself. “It’s my way of showing what I think…ideas and messages,” said Bellingall. “What other people do with writing and stuff, I do with videos.” There are many facets he uses in order to convey tone, mood, and pace, just like in writing.

Bellingall often makes his videos for fun — for example, his video for Magneto Fantastico (the school’s talent show held a few weeks ago). However, Bellingall has also created and edited a few videos for other purposes. Most recently he edited a welcome video for new students arriving at MacDuffie.

By making his club, Bellingall wants to share this hobby with others. The club will create videos for fun, like he did, but it will also help other parts of the community. He said, “We might do some for the school if they ask us to, and most of them are going to be for fun, but also we’re going to do some for clubs. We’re already making one with the QSA, and maybe one with the Green Beans.”

Video making goes further beyond practical applications, however. Bellingall said quite simply that (according to Google), “Art is ‘the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination.’ So that’s what I do with videos … It’s art.” And just like any other art, Bellingall’s club isn’t for someone who thinks they could do it with their eyes shut— Bellingall sometimes finds it a little annoying that “some people don’t understand how much work and effort is put into videos.” However, the extra effort is worth it. Bellingall reasoned that his club is worth joining because by doing so, “They get the experience of how videos are made, and then they can help … with their creative skills … The more people are in it, the better it is.”

So if art isn’t your best ability, your musical talent is mediocre, and your dancing and drama are dreary, well, you have to get those credits anyway, but you can still try your hand in the new video making club!