A Video Camera Changed His Life

Now we’re democratizing the medium…

All this week we have been working with BET, the Black Entertainment Television network.

Like always we’ve got a group of producers and reporters that we’re teaching to shoot and cut their own stuff.

We always say “tell it in your own voice”.

Most people can’t help trying to sound like CNN.

But every once in a while you get a break out.

On Tuesday, I nearly fell over.

The guy sitting next to me, Sampson Styles, was speaking in a voice that was so honest and so unusual to hear on television that I was completely mesmerized.

My friend, Lashan Browning, who had set us up with the gig with BET said, ‘ask him about his past’.

So I did.

Sampson Styles may be a reporter and a producer for BET, but he didn’t start off that way.

And he is not the product of any Graduate School of Journalism.

He’s a graduate of The New York State Prison System.

Styles has done 7 years in prison for a variety of offenses. He was also shot and nearly died:

"I was shot five times,” he said. “I was shot in my neck. I was shot in my shoulder. I don’t have a collarbone on one side. I got half a chest on one side. On my left lung, the top lobe was removed. I was shot in my right foot; I limp if I wear flats. This injury took me from the sport that I love the most, which is basketball"

He might have ended up dead, but four years ago a friend gave him a video camera and suggested he start shooting… video.

He took the advice and it turned out he hand an innate talent. I have to say, having seen his stuff, a fairly remarkable talent.

He took the camera to the streets and produced Brooklyn Girls Fight Club.

BET bought it, aired it and hired him.

That’s how I came to meet him.

He’s in the group.

So I am keeping an eye on him.

I think he’s just at the very beginning of a very different journey than the one he started on.

And he’s able to do it because he can turn his life experience and world view into video… his own way.

That is, in my opinion, what the Video Revolution is all about.