To the everyday person, Jacci might seem like your average 14 year old. She goes to school, hangs out with friends and enjoys playing with apps on her phone. What you might not gather upon first meeting is her natural flair for creating and editing videos. Jacci utilizes her talent on a social media platform called Flipagram. The sole purpose of this sharing app is to help you make short movies with images. With 200 million users and 14 million videos uploaded monthly, it can be challenging to make your video stand out in the crowd. We sat down with Jacci to learn how she managed to do just that!
Q. When did you post your first Flipagram?
A. Oct 25th, 2015. The first one was of me carving a pumpkin. It was featured on Flipagram’s Halloween page the day I posted it. They added me to the suggested users page the day after.
Q. What interested you so much about that particular platform?
A. There’s so much diversity with what you can post – videos that you’ve made or pictures. You can use your own designs, or overlays that you download from the internet and then use a green screen when you record.
Q. How long does it take to create one of your videos?
A. It really depends! A white wall video would take about 20-30 minutes to film but hours to edit. Outside videos take a couple hours to record, but are quick to edit. Stop motions take a long time – those move, so I have to remember to be in the right place at the right time.
Q. What kind of set up & planning do you do for each video?
A. For the outside videos, I’ll have an idea in my mind of what I want to do. With white walls, I sort of make it up as I go. For the 9 grid videos, I make a whole outline and write down everything. It’s complicated because you have to record 9 different scenes.
Q. How do you come up with the ideas for the Flipagrams?
A. I watch other Flipagram users and professional music videos. I think, “I could do that but like this.” I’ll start and then change it up as I go. The ideas come in the moment.
Q. How many followers do you have? In what ways do you interact with your following?
A. I was featured on Flipagram, so I gained a lot more recently. I have a little over 185k followers. It’s fun! I have no words. If I tell other people they’re like ‘oh my gosh!’ This is my first time being on social media, so when I first got 500 followers, that was awesome. A lot of them follow me on Snapchat, where I post every day. I snap people back and comment. I for sure have more online friends than in real life. I’ve been thinking about doing a collab with some of them. One lives in Florida and there are a few on the East Coast but I’m not sure my parents would be cool with it.
Q. Along those lines, how do you deal with social media safety?
A. If I feel uncomfortable, I always block people. I’ve had multiple hate pages but my online friends have my back. Some people will get really mad at me for random things and spam my page. For the most part though, it’s all been positive.
Q. You wear those cute cat ears – is it part of your personal branding?
A. I started doing Flipagrams the week before Halloween. I had decided that I was going to celebrate the holiday all week, so in my first video I was wearing the ears. People loved it, so I kept wearing them. The only annoying thing is, they get caught in my hair sometimes.
Q. What is your overall goal with devoting so much time to creating Flipagrams? Do you hope to utilize it in a future career?
A. I think it’s a cool thing to put on a college application. It’s just so much fun to do! I really like the technology of it all – adding designs to videos and learning new things. It would be cool to have a career with video editing. It’s made it super easy to adapt and start learning other technology related things, especially in school.
Q. What other Social Media platforms do you use?
A. I have a Musical.ly and Instagram. I’m trying to grow into YouTube. Yesterday I posted a Behind The Scenes video there, but I’m trying to go really slow into YouTube because I’m not sure I can sustain it. I just got a MacBook Pro and have been playing with editing, so we’ll see!
Q. What advice would you give a person your age who wants to do what do you?
A. Experiment with things. Make music videos, write blogs, try DIY videos, but don’t post anything till you find what you love. Do that when you find it!
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