Staff writer
When Makenzie Deines rented her first video camera from Kansas State University, she thought capturing beautiful moments in video would be a great hobby. But it didn’t take long before it turned into more.
After she videotaped several weddings, her mother suggested she turn the hobby into a business.
She has done just that. Naming it “Capture Grace,” she videotapes weddings, birthday parties, anniversary celebrations, births, and other special moments in people’s lives.
“I named it Capture Grace because I want to capture the grace round the world,” she said. “Grace that God has freely provided, whether that’s a celebration, the birth of a child, or even a breathtaking sunset. All of these wonders are because of His great love for us.
“When I was younger, I would watch movies and wonder how they filmed it and how the angles and shadows filmed in the movies developed the story much more intensely.”
The K-State junior looks at videos as a way of telling stories and bringing people together.
She used her sorority connection to direct and produce her first video, telling stories of insecurities women face for Kappa Delta’s Confidence Coalition. She directed and produced a video that was designed to tell the insecurities women have to face daily.
“Instead of pretending that they don’t exist, we need to be on one another’s team,” she said.
She’s acquired two digital cameras with video capabilities that she now uses to record her footage.
“I like that they are great quality and that I can freely use them,” she said.
She learned how to edit videos as a sophomore in college. She took a digital media class and joined a local news channel where she created packages and spent seven hours a week using her video program.
“Editing is a very long process,” she said. “It can take anywhere from 10 to 20 hours for a four-minute video. It’s very time consuming and detail oriented because your goal is to create a powerful, yet extremely condensed story. The more that I use my editing program, the quicker I have become.
“I like to spend a great deal of time when editing my videos because I want each customer to believe that I created their video to fit them, their style, and their need.”
Deines has a dream of traveling and filming groups of people around the world.
“I want to be a resource for others to see that people are people, who have one mind, one heart, and one soul,” she said. “There’s a lot of miscommunication and assumptions going around. I believe if there was a visual of the people around the world, as well as a platform for people to describe their lives to others, we could at least be a little more educated about one another.”
She will graduate in a year and is taking steps toward her future.
“Whatever my future will be is up to God,” she said. “I’m trusting Him in the process, and communicating with Him about my future options because no matter what I’m doing, I want to do it to glorify Him.”