Natalia Bonilla, New Media Productions, FALL 2021, Expected to graduate in SPRING 2021

Since I was a little girl I’ve always functioned as a camera would. If I wanted to remember something I would simultaneously shut my eyes in hopes of never forgetting pizza parties around the living room floor with my cousins, or competitive Just Dance concerts with my older brother. I guess that’s why I’ve always had an obsession with nostalgia and the feeling of being lost in the moment, because ultimately that’s the meaning of life, the choice of being present. Having captured real moments through a lens is my form of expressing beauty in reality.

I value my strengths as a passionate writer and videographer. During quarantine, I was finally able to start my own blog and journal about the people and places that have meant the most to me. Writing for online audiences, blogging, and editing has led me to further understand my capabilities of spending hours on a screen. I have widened my knowledge of Premiere, Illustrator, and Photoshop. These software’s have been my most worked on and have enticed my learning experience. Documentary style filmmaking has guided my attention through its power of storytelling as a visual medium. I have found myself obtaining a common theme in most of my works. I’ve discovered a winsome, beautiful quality about my family that has brought me to record them in daily life where they are their most vulnerable. This has grounded me into my Dominican roots which has ultimately led to my documentation of my senior project, Dominicana. As a lifelong student, I will continue to go through weak points and acknowledge theme from within everyday projects. Though my most sought after skill is After Effects, camera knowledge, and coding. I have struggled with all of these and more these past four years at UT.

I started out at the University of Tampa seeking guidance on my very first day as a freshman. Having changed my major from Journalism to New Media, I was able to confide in Gregg Perkins as my academic advisor and Dana Plays as a saint. Through the FMX department, many have challenged me to understand my weaknesses and work harder to perceive them as minor struggles. Warren Cockerham has encouraged me to think creatively and embody myself as a student who’s always learning. FMX 314 Experimental Filmmaking encouraged me to try new cameras and fall in love with old films. Santiago Echevery has pushed me through the wide world of code and the frustrations that come with refreshing a blank site. Stephanie Tripp and Christopher Boulton led to my fascination of how media is filled with open-ended responses through decades of storytelling. I have practiced writing, filmmaking, and the works behind application development, which have led to ultimately understanding adobe software and camera work.

After graduation, I see myself working for a magazine as a multimedia journalist. I hope to gain experience in this specific position through a variety of professions; social media marketer, digital designer for websites, videographer, and working behind the scenes of production television. While being a journalist, I hope to travel in a world full of visuals and stories that have yet to be told whether that’s in developing the newest reality tv script for Netflix in Los Angeles, fashion networking for different brands at the New York Fashion Week, working with National Geographic on their latest issue deep within the rainforests of Costa Rica, and the list goes on and on.

I simply wish to create.