Midnight on a Friday is usually a time for going out with friends. However, Jae Cho is at his desk editing the footage he shot earlier that day. He knows that he doesn’t have the best equipment or the best software, but that does not stop him. The world around him just needs to present an idea; then, he takes care of the rest.
Senior Jae Cho is an Accounting major, but he takes an interest in the arts. He moved around a lot prior to EMU. Cho grew up in South Korea, Mississippi, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. When asked why he came to EMU, his answer included social responsibility and interest in environmental sustainability, but in the end, Cho came here for a girl.
His ideas and humor on his YouTube channel give him a unique personality. Cho has been publishing YouTube videos since seventh grade. He first got into video when he resided in South Korea. “My parents wanted me to study a lot and go to the library, but I would always lie to them and go to the movie theater. There was the biggest movie theater in front of my home in South Korea. They played twelve different movies a day, so I could always go and watch movies every day.”
The ideas of his YouTube videos can range from creating a chocolate commercial to waking up a hallmate at 6 a.m. by banging pots together loudly to telling his story about getting his car stuck in the mud. Some of his videos have a substantial number of views. His most viewed video has over 3,400 views. He currently has an average of 113 views per video. He believes that some of his viewers might even be famous.
One of his videos, “Hey Bring me Some Chocolate,” is a commercial advertising for Dove Chocolate. In response to his video, Cho received a box of Dove chocolates and a letter from Dove saying that they loved his commercial.
He found the idea for that video in class. “I think I had the idea that I wanted to fly something in the video with my drone. The full idea and picture of the video came to me in my class and one of my friends in that same class had the same drone as me. So, I asked if he was free and he said he had 20 minutes. So we went to the Den and got some chocolate. Originally, we were going to use M&M’s but there was Dove Chocolate and [we thought] it was going to work better with the taping when attaching it to the drone. So there was no affiliation with Dove, and then he helped me make the video; his name was Sergio. So I texted [my friend] Abigail [to see] if she was free, and she said she was. I did not even feel like making a video that day.”
Cho’s inspiration for his videos can change depending on what is around him. “I think I find my inspiration from my daily life. I go to a grocery store like Kroger or Food Lion, I look at people and go, ‘Oh! I can make this video.’ Or I take a shower and I get a random thought in my head. Or I watch different YouTube videos and they make me want to do something different, like, ‘Oh, what if he did that this way or what if she had this idea.’”
“Jay justs get his stuff ready to film and goes all around campus to interview people,” said first-year Daniel Lopez, a frequent subject in Cho’s videos.
“Sometimes it’s twice a week, and sometimes he doesn’t show up in two weeks; it all depends on how motivated he is and how much time he has,” he added.
Cho continues to be active on his channel and finds new, creative ways to spark interest in his videos. He doesn’t have a set schedule for his uploads.
You can find Cho’s videos and channel on YouTube under “Jae Cho.”
