Junior Kade Carlson shares his passion of film through video edits 

Standing on the sidelines of the football field watching his friends play in the varsity game, holding a video camera to capture the moment his buddy scores a touchdown for the Bearcats is Junior Kade Carlson, a young videographer. Carlson quickly turns the focus of his camera to the players shouting into the lens to get another great shot.  He smiles while checking his videos, making sure he got the clip in anticipation of the edit that will be coming.

Carlson started filming and sharing his videos about a year and a half ago and has since fallen in love with the process of filming and video creating. He was inspired by influencers like Sam Kolder and Jacub Gomez and knew he wanted to create videos like them himself.

“I started making videos because I wanted to be able to look back on my high school days and when I was a younger teenager and see all the memories I made with my friends,” Carlson said.

Most of his friends are the stars in his videos including football films, surfing days, and Mid-State Fair fun. Carlson recently also started filming professionally for weddings and ads. Some of his recent advertisement videos include ones for Twisted and Glazed and Bravo Construction.

“I personally like to create [videos for] action sports: surfing, motocross, football videos, but also I do weddings and stuff,” Carlson explained.

Carlson has received a lot of support from his family, friends and peers. On his recent video of a Friday Night Football game that he posted on Instagram, Carlson had 3,700 views and over 100 positive comments.

His stats on that local football post pale in comparison to some of his other projects, though. Carlson created a video for amateur motocross racer Ryder Difrancesco last Feb.; the video, when posted on Difrancesco’s Instagram page, garnered 31,000 views and nearly 5,000 likes from the racer’s 100k-follower audience (including a supportive comment from professional UFC fighter Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone).

“He’s one of my best friends and to see where he started making skate clips of me and all of our friends when we were [younger] to shooting weddings professionally, it’s truly amazing,” said Junior CJ Ontiveros.

Carlson’s videos feature cinematic shots and smooth edits combining them all together. This style offers short movie-like videos that show a variation of shots. They are different than vlogs and informational videos, giving them a fresh look.

“I like the cinematic look. I’m a cinematographer [because] it makes me feel like I’m creating movies,” explained Carlson.

His general video process starts after he gets inspiration from other videos such as surf films and old motocross movies which “really just makes me want to create them [myself] and do that sort of thing just in my own style,” Carlson said.

Creating a video can take Carlson anywhere from a couple hours to a few weeks after he records his video clips.  

“I film all day or whatever the subject is and then I use my editing software, Final Cut Pro.  Next I just start off with beginning and go straight through [to] the end cutting, stabilizing, and color correcting everything,” Carlson explained.

Carlson has taken the role of an influencer by having an active feed and sharing his media throughout multiple outlets. He posts consistently on Instagram (@kadecarlsonn) with standard posts or on the new Instagram TV. Carlson also shares his videos on his Youtube channel: Kade Carlson.

“I think [his videos] are awesome. I wish he would do more videos involving the school because I think he’s very talented and it’s a good way to show how fun our school is,” Junior Carra Ford said.