Central Vote’s vice president Avery Harbison co-organized the annual Fire-Up The Vote event, outside the Park Library Lawn, on Tuesday, Sept. 17. This event is tailored to get students “fired up” to register to vote and get informed on different ways to vote.
Central Votes is a bi-partisan registered student organization that informs students about voting and encourages them to vote. Harbison said Central Votes can sign students up to vote and give them direction on where and how to vote.
“I think oftentimes people just need a little bit of a push to remember to vote,” Harbison said, “Or just someone to remind them that they’ve got the power to actually go out and vote.”
Fire Up the Vote Day is held every year on the lawn of the Park Library on National Voter Registration Day. National Voter Registration Day usually occurs every year on a Tuesday in the middle of September.
Students are given tips and links on places to vote and how to sign up. Harbison said food and games were provided for students to keep the event both informative and fun.
Harbison said to go to Michigan.gov/vote for all your voting needs and questions.
Video Story #1 Experience
I had a lot of ups and downs when filming and planning this video. My original idea for this video was to cover the presidential debate watch party put on by Central Votes. I went to that event and did all the filming then went home and went to bed. The next morning I planned to upload the footage to my computer and it slipped my mind and I cleared my SD card for a UComm photoshoot. I lost all my footage because of a silly mistake.
Luckily after filming that event, I spoke to the Central Votes vice president, Avery Harbison, and they already told me about the Fire Up The Vote event later in that week and I decided to do that instead. That way, it was still a similar idea but I figured it was a more interesting idea and got more footage, so it worked out in the end for me.
I went to the event and was immediately greeted by Central Votes, so I got to filming interviews. I decided to only use the interview of Avery Harbison to make the video more concise and easier to understand. I got a lot of B-roll of games, the food, and students signing up to vote.
Filming was overall a great process, the only issue I really ran into was the music. Since it was an event, Central Votes was playing loud music throughout, so that ended up in many of my shots when shooting B-roll. This made editing a bit more difficult because I had to find clips where the music was not totally overpowering the rest of the noise.
Overall, I think the first video went well; I had many issues arise, but I was able to adapt and handle them.
Jo Kenoshmeg Visual journalism 