Comm 2320
Basic Reporting for the School of Communication at ECU

I recently had the opportunity to meet Brad Christian, a sophomore here at East Carolina University and I also interviewed three of his friends to find out what sort of person he is. One thing that stands out in Brad is his involvement in many activities, student and career related.

He not only is the resident director at Campus Towers in Greenville, he is the vice president of the National Broadcasting Society in addition to being on staff at Discovery Church where he provides extensive media production skills including camera work during live services, lighting and post-production. To illustrate his dedication to his extracurricular activities, Brad traveled to Anaheim, California for a NBS convention over this past spring break.

Brad is majoring in Media Production at ECU like myself and when asked about how this passion was first instilled in him he told me about his first experimentation with a digital camera received for Christmas when he was 10 years old. The camera, which was bundled with basic video editing software, was the beginning of an enduring fascination with film and video.

Videos made with legos, coupled with sound effects and music were the humble beginnings that began Brad’s media production path in life. In high school he began to use more advanced non-linear editing systems like Adobe Premiere, which he still uses interchangeably with Apple’s Final Cut Pro. At Discovery Church, Brad utilizes some pretty advanced video equipment like the Canon xh-a1 HDV 1080i camera.

Brad was born in Chapel Hill, lived in Richlands throughout high school, then moved to Surf City and now resides at Campus Towers in Greenville. As for his future, he plans to get an internship to see the media production side of news or perhaps he will take a full time position at Discovery Church. Brad will be there doing his thing no matter what his future holds as long as it involves convergent media.

To get a true appreciation and respect for someone you often have to ask friends and family about the intricacies that make up the person. I was able to get up with three of his friends to answer some questions about Brad and I was able to find out some more stories and character traits that were previously unknown to me. All of these interviewees have known him for at least two years with the longest span coming in at seven years.

Chris Edwards is the sports editor for the Garner Citizen News and Times who met Brad in a history class two years ago and has been friends with him ever since. Chris praises his dedication and work ethic that enables him to “take pride in learning more about the Communication field.” Some of the memories they share include a UNCW-ECU basketball game where Brad was “doing nothing except taking pictures of the trip.”

Perhaps the biggest chunk of “dirt” unearthed by Chris is one of Brad’s nicknames which happens to be “Yeah!” because one summer a group of their friends would hang out together and when Brad got excited, he would yell “yeah” really loud so the phrase naturally stuck as a nickname.

Robert Maxwell from Richlands, NC, has attended the same church as Brad and met him seven years ago. Just like Chris, Robert also believes that Brad’s favorite pastime is photography along with church and says that experiences working with Brad are always great.

When asked where Brad will be in four years, the response is “working for discovery church doing lights and Creative Leadership.” One stand out memory of Robert’s was the time that him and Brad went to a concert in Greensboro, NC and it was pretty “late on the way back and Brad started to freak out and kept hitting the breaks because he thought he saw a cop but it was really just a canoe on top of a car so now every time we see a canoe its good fun.”

The last friend that I contacted was Justin Baysden, also from Richlands, NC, who is majoring in Aerospace Engineering and has known Brad for about six years, ever since Brad’s dad became the pastor at Discovery Church. I get the feeling that Justin knows him a little better than the others because he nailed Brad’s pastime as “recording and editing video.” Justin even worked with Brad on church related video projects in high school so he can honestly say that “He [Brad] always stayed up as long as necessary and went wherever was necessary to finish an assigned project,” which is quite the complement.

Another neat piece of information that I found out about Brad through Justin was the extent of his acting ability. Brad was “a game show host for a mock Newlywed game we did as a fundraiser a couple years ago and he did an awesome job,” and he also “played starring roles in our high school musicals both his junior and senior years.”

Filed under: Classmate Profiles, Spring 2008