The lights shine down, and the roaring cheers of over 70,000 fans surround him as he walks onto the field and into the spotlight. The chants grow louder as the band blares, and the curtains begin to open on UGA’s first football home game of the season at Sanford Stadium. With equipment in hand and his signature black Ray-Bans on, he’s ready to tackle the day. Ready. Set. Aim. Shoot.
It is the start of just another workday for 23-year-old Trevor Blesse, official video production assistant for the University of Georgia football team. After graduating in May 2016, 
Blesse was hired by IMG Media, the world’s largest independent producer and distributor of sports programming. He has shot, edited, and produced highlight packages for a plethora of UGA games ever since, some of which have garnered tens of thousands of views from adoring fans nationwide.
“My name is not on any of these IMG videos I’ve made, so it’s funny seeing 50,000 views on a video my friends share on Facebook that apparently played at kickoff,” Blesse said. “It’s interesting because I did not do this for fame at all. I did this for community and for my friends. I wanted to bring Athens together to feel emotion for this game whether they know the video is made by me or not.” He boasts an average of 50,000 views per IMG video, but his most watched creation comes from his personal Vimeo account with over 100,000 views.
WATCH: To watch Blesse in action, see the video below. Here, he is traveling through Yosemite National Park with some of his closest friends. He recommends you watch the video in HD.
Blesse has only been creating video content for three years — and says he’s only been making what he deems “good content” for a year and a half. He bought his first professional-grade camera at the end of his senior year. “The only reason I bought a camera in the first place was because I had a ton of Amazon gift cards from Christmas. I was just wondering what the heck I was going to buy with all this money,” he said, laughing at himself. “I always loved capturing memories and photos of my friends and family on my iPhone, but the quality wasn’t where I wanted it to be. That’s why I started messing around with my new camera.”
He expressed his concerns with never having an avenue to create and imagine as a child or teenager. “I had been restrained from creating for so long. It was almost an emotion of freedom when I posted my first video of me and my friends after finals week senior year.”
Soon enough, these short pieced-together video clips of the Athens community went viral. UGA students were sharing his personal posts on their social media, and local organizations like My Athens were noticing. Just months after his camera came in the mail, he was getting project offers.
Given Blesse’s lack of experience, his parents were concerned for the trajectory of their son’s life. “I just kept thinking, ‘You are not going to make a living by just making videos,’” said Susan Blesse, his mother. Both she and her husband have always considered themselves business people. Blesse played sports throughout his youth, he took accounting and calculus classes, and he always thought he was doing what was expected. He had his eyes set on applying to major marketing firms in Atlanta the summer after his junior year. In their eyes, their son was on the right path.
After months of debating with his parents, they finally compromised. Blesse could take a creative part-time job with Athens-based Broad Collective as their head Director of Video but only if he was to continue taking online business classes over the summer. “I think this was where I really started to see him at his full potential,” said best friend, Caroline Wise. “You just really got the sense that he was feeling so much more complete than he ever had before. It’s like he finally understood his purpose or something.”
However, Blesse still worried that his parents thought of his videography as a small hobby with no money in it. “I realized business was very beneficial for what I wanted to do and understood their concerns, but that was going to be on the side. There just came a time where I had to say that my hobby would be on the forefront of my passion and my pursuit. I would find a way to make money and make a living.”
There are moments where Trevor Blesse wishes he could go back and tell his freshman self to change his major and take up videography sooner. However, in his opinion, he doesn’t think he would have ever found this passion if he were to have chosen a major that he was “truly excited about.”
Blesse believes that had he enrolled in Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication from the start, he would have enjoyed his classes, but may not have found his own style or had as much of a passion as he does now. “School is an environment where you’re forced to learn. I feel like that’s the same thing with photography and video. If I was forced to do that, I would not have been inclined to do that outside of class and that probably would’ve drained me,” he said. “Looking back, it’s nice to see where I’m at now.”
If there is one thing Blesse hopes future students learn from his success story, it’s that you are not constricted to what your parents or the world tells you to do.
“I never thought I’d find something I was passionate about. I just feel like it was one of those things that was hidden. I had no place to put that creativity, but my mind knew my passions were always there. It’s when students realize they are allowed to put their passions before sensibility where they can really start to do what they want to do.”