September 6, 2018
Coming to Ashesi University as a Management Information Systems major, filmmaking was not on the list of likely career paths for David Boanuh ‘19, founder of Beautiful Stories, a filmmaking start-up and President of the Photography and Film club on campus. However, after taking Foundations of Design and Entrepreneurship (FDE), a required course for first years at Ashesi focused on entrepreneurship and design thinking, David changed his career aspirations entirely.
“Taking the mandatory FDE class in my first year at Ashesi propelled me into the world of videography,” said David. “During the course, my team decided to make a video to explain our final solution and I was put in charge of that. That was my first video and it was terrible, but it was then that I fell in love with videography. I kept making videos even after the course and by my second year, I was certain I wanted to build a career in film-making.”
In the months following, David developed his expertise in videography; watching tutorials on YouTube and by the time Ashesi’s Career Services held their annual career fair on campus, a portfolio.
“While everyone was presenting their carefully laid out CVs at the company stands, I had my laptop in hand, presenting one of my videos to the company representatives because I knew what I wanted,” he shared. “That particular video was a compilation of event snippets I had recorded with my friend’s camera. Most companies were impressed with it and I got multiple job offers that day, including my first job with Unilever.”
Since then, David has worked consistently as a freelancer for Unilever, a world leading consumer good company. A year into the partnership, he has produced social media and television ads for multiple Unilever brands; Baileys, Vaseline, Blue Band, and Geisha, including his biggest ad campaign yet for Rexona, Be the next champ campaign.
“Working with Unilever has been challenging but really fun, and has boosted my work ethic and, especially during the Rexona campaign where we scouted for football players in all the regions in Ghana. My job was to produce a video after each region and so I tasked myself with producing a TV-worth video every 24-hours. It was tough because I stayed up most nights until all the work was done and so even though we were in a hotel, I slept on the bus.”
David also created his first short film over the 2018 long break and shot a documentary for “My Runway Group” in London, whose mission is to publicize positive moments among the youth in an attempt to mitigate the negative perception of London youth.
Moving forward, David, now in his senior year at Ashesi, hopes to delve deeper production work. Currently, in collaboration with the Ashesi Storytelling club, he is working on a short film, that he hopes will integrate the whole Ashesi community.
“At Ashesi, I discovered my passion for videography and through that, I have been exposed to a wealth of opportunities and built a great network. It is really fun doing what you love for a lifetime.”
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