Kaiden Hancock
BFA Film and Media Arts
Expected to graduate in May of 2024

When I was in elementary school I always had a book in my hand and another in my backpack. And if I wasn’t reading, I was writing. Storytelling was my favorite thing to do, and when I got my first DSLR camera at 12 years old, I realized that I could tell stories through photos too, not just the written word. When I was 14, I got my first taste of the film industry at a weekend filmmaking camp at the New York Film Academy, and it was like I was addicted. I couldn’t wait to get to college and start learning about the film industry and film in general depth. 

When I arrived at The University of Tampa majoring in Film and Media Arts, I was terrified. I felt like everyone in the department was going to have skill levels far beyond mine and it would be hard to fit in. I am happy to say that that wasn’t the case, and those who did have skill levels beyond mine took me under their wings and taught me everything they knew to further help me in my career. I truly learned the importance of connections and networking within the industry during my first month at college. My first semester was exhilarating, producing tiny projects in my freshman introductory course, learning the proper techniques of screenwriting, and hearing about the history of filmmaking, I knew I had chosen the right path. In my second semester, I found myself thrown onto numerous film sets with my classmates, learning skills faster than I ever knew I could, and I began to learn where I fit in on a set. Gaffing came easy, as well as production design, as working to create and build out the scene that the director visualized was something I enjoyed immensely. 

When my second year of film school came around, I rediscovered a prior passion within the world of films, documentary filmmaking. In Documentary Filmmaking, taught by Professor Aaron Walker, I realized where my skill set resided. Suddenly, everything made sense and I knew that documentary filmmaking was a genre that I wanted to keep pursuing. It came easier than narrative filmmaking, as something I struggle with in the filmmaking process is screenwriting, finding it difficult to fully decide exactly what kind of story I am telling and what kind of characters I am creating. I have so many story ideas floating around that they often get crossed and I lose the main throughline. However, in documentary filmmaking, the story is there, and it is up to you to harness and share it with the world. Having the truth there, just having to uncover it and share it in the best way is what draws me to documentaries. The documentary I created in the course taught by Professor Walker was accepted to multiple film festivals and won Best Documentary in one of them, and I was beyond excited to see other people enjoying my work.

When I graduate from The University of Tampa with my BFA in Film and Media Arts, I want to further pursue documentary filmmaking and attend a conservatory program to fully immerse myself in the process. I then hope to continue to create documentaries, preferably ones that share stories that people may not have known about the world around them. I also want to continue to work with production design, as that is a passion I don’t want to forget. Regardless of where I end up, I know that I want to keep telling stories, and I know that with everything I have learned at The University of Tampa, I will be able to.