Georgia Southern is bursting with amazingly different and diverse people on campus. From loving personalities to unique backgrounds, this Statesboro campus is overflowing with Eagles worth getting to know. Here at the George-Anne, we want to introduce some of those Eagles that make life on campus exciting.
Meet Joshua Johnson, a senior Eagle who is a Multimedia Production Film major and minoring in Entertainment Industry.
George-Anne Staff: Could you please go into more detail about your major and minor?
Joshua J.: “So my major really has to do with the behind-the-scenes work of filmmaking, so just anything production-wise, in general. They teach stuff about news production, there’s sports, there is documentary. I mainly focus on the narrative side of things, with a little bit of an edge back into media and marketing, which is why I work here in the College of Business. And so mainly the thing I focus on is the cinematography aspect of it. Working in the visual side, anything with cameras and lighting, is usually where I stay, and it’s where I have a lot of fun. Right now I’m working on two senior projects. I’m the producer-director of my senior project, which is a series of episodes about teaching younger people filmmaking concepts to kind of help them grow faster. And the other senior project, I’m the director of photography so, I’m teaching this stuff, and the other one, it’s like, okay, well, if you’re gonna teach it, then got to actually show that you can do it. And so I’m like, sure. It all looks actually good.
George-Anne Staff: So, when you’re a freshman coming to college, do you feel like Georgia Southern has met your expectations?
Joshua J.: “I think in a lot of ways, it’s exceeded my expectations. I really thought, especially the first couple of weeks at Georgia Southern, that I really wasn’t going to fit in, or I wasn’t going to find the kind of space that I wanted. I questioned a lot of things at that point, to be honest with you, but as I kind of kept going with it, I found my space. I was part of the marching band, and I’m now the photographer for them, and I found those people, and then I found people in film, and it really shaped my entire rest of my time in college. I mean, really, I think, from what I’ve heard from most people in the college experience, it really has to do with finding the people who care just as much about the things that you do, and being like, Okay, let me, like, grapple on you guys. Like, please let me. Let me be a part of this and I was lucky enough to find that really early on, so I’ve had a really great time.”
George-Anne Staff: So what has been the hardest and most fun class that you have had so far?
Joshua J.: “I’ll start with fun. So they offer a partnership with the Georgia Film Academy here, and I learned about this, you know, in the middle of my junior year. And so I started signing up, and I went through the whole program, and I was really enjoying it. I realized that there’s so many opportunities through that. And so I got to go down to Savannah and I got to work with people in the film industry there, learn from them, and work with a ton of equipment that we don’t have here at Georgia Southern, and that was really fun. The most challenging class, oh my gosh. Media ethics was really challenging, especially coming for someone who didn’t really have any, like, journalistic training or anything beforehand. They’re like, Hey, go and figure out how to write a paper for ethics journalistically and do all the interviews. And I was like, oh, okay, well, I’ll try. That was fun, and I ended up with a paper that I liked. What’s another one? History of cinema? Oh my gosh. Every, every week, every week, more and more writing. I’ll talk with you about analyzing everything, writing it all down is not my, not my forte.”
George-Anne Staff: What are some things you do outside of school?
Joshua J.: “I’m in school so much right now, it’s terrible. I don’t remember what my life is like. I really signed up for film because it is my passion, and production is something that I really enjoy. So I work with several audiovisual companies in the area to be able to do kind of stage hand work and being able to do stuff like that. So I recently just worked at the Savannah Jazz Festival, and I was able to help set up with a company there and move different bands around. And that was a lot of fun. I’ve got a mountain hiking trip lined up on the Appalachian Trail with my dad in November, which I’m really excited about. Oh, I like to woodwork. Oh my gosh. I love woodworking. I love it so much. I’ll build anything. I love it. I have such a good time. My family has started to just send me random piles of wood. And they’re like, Josh, do you want this? I’m like, absolutely, that would be great. But it’s been a lot of fun to also still be able to get some time for those things in college. Not so much this semester, since I’m wrapping out in general.”
George-Anne Staff: What’s a fun fact about yourself?
Joshua J.: “Trying to think of something funny that’s happened to me. What’s something ridiculous? Oh, when I was younger, when I was, like, really young, like, just learning to walk or crawl, my family was in Arizona, and I guess they weren’t watching me for a second. I’ve been told that I started crawling towards the Grand Canyon. Apparently, they caught me right as I almost fell into the Grand Canyon. So I thought that was a fun fact.”
George-Anne Staff: What is some advice you would give to younger students?
Joshua J.: “I touched on it earlier, but it really is all about finding your people and finding out who here matches with you, and really is passionate about the things you are in the same way that you are. And again, I was lucky enough to be able to find that really early, and a lot of people don’t find that until really late or don’t find that in general. And I think that that’s a tragedy, really, if you don’t go out and look for the spaces that you love, your college experience will be half of what it could be.”
