Areg Azatyan is currently attending Oakland Community College and is planning to transfer to the University of Michigan.  He is leaning towards a degree in computer sciences.  He is 18 years old and lives in Rochester Hills, Michigan.

Black Turtle Media: What kind of a background do you have in video production?

Areg: I got into video production about two years ago.  My English teacher assigned a couple of video projects and my videos turned out to be really good.   I really enjoyed doing it so I bought a video camera and messed around with it. I shot a couple of videos, got some editing programs, and messed around with them.  I eventually got a green screen.  Basically, I learned everything I could about making videos. I had this internship at Oakland University and the television station there.  I also took a couple of video production classes in high school where all we really did was mess around.   But yeah, that’s about it. 

Black Turtle Media: What kind of equipment and software do you use?

Areg: My camera is a Sony hard drive; it’s pretty nice.  Loading the files is pretty easy; you don’t have to wait for the transfer nearly as long.  The quality isn’t really that great, especially for the money that I paid for it.  But my editing software is Adobe After Effects and that’s pretty good.  I like it at least. 

Black Turtle Media: How did you get the idea for your Halo video?

Areg:  I just thought of a couple of ideas.  I actually found out about the contest a couple of hours before it was due so we really didn’t have much time.  I just thought of a couple quick ideas and called my friend who came over.  We just talked about it; he had some good ideas, and we kind of changed a couple things.

Black Turtle Media: How did you find out about the contest?

Areg: I found out about the contest on a website called onlinevideocontests.com.  I was on that and saw the contest listed there.

Black Turtle Media: What was the production process like?

Areg: Well, it started out with an idea and we tried a couple of things.  We thought of the green screen and we got a couple of shots of the game and then edited them. 

Black Turtle Media: How long it take to complete the project?

Areg: It probably took around five hours and that’s just because my computers renders at ridiculously high speeds.

Black Turtle Media: How did it feel to find out that you won?

Areg: It felt really great.  I mean, its kind of a bummer that I didn’t get the five grand but I still hadn’t won anything in my life before so that was pretty exciting. 

With the money, I’m either going to save it up or maybe use it for video production or a new computer or something.

Black Turtle Media: What advice would you give to other people looking to create winning videos?

Areg: This is the first video contest I’ve entered.  If you have an idea, just go for it.  It’s probably the best advice I can give anyone.  If you have a hard time motivating people just make sure they’re excited about it. 

Black Turtle Media: Anything else you’d like to add?

Areg: I’m planning to do more videos in the future.  I’d love to make a career out of video production but there’s the whole film industry that’s not most stable profession.  You’ll never know if you’ll have a job in the future so, but I would love to.