2019 Middle School Winners

Sydney Hopkin is a seventh grader at Plaza Middle school in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Sydney found out about the contest at school and was excited about the opportunity to participate. She created her video for a class assignment and was encouraged by her teacher to submit her video to the World of 7 Billion contest. She began researching with the aim of finding a unique topic to focus her video on. When she found her topic, the real challenge began: taking a large topic and turning it into a 1-minute video.

Sydney has had some experience making videos with friends using iMovie, but this is the first time she’s made what she considers a ‘serious’ film. She found it challenging to take all the interesting information she found and condense it down, so in the end she really had to decide what was most important to convey to viewers. She told us, “I struggled with keeping my video short and talking at a correct speed, not too slow and not too fast so people could understand me.” Sydney recommends choosing a topic that is unique and will stand out compared to other videos.

Sydney loves to dance and she currently participates in jazz, ballet, lyrical and tap. Her favorite is a tie between lyrical and jazz. She is a big sister to two younger twin brothers and has a lovely French bull dog and Boston terrier mix called Sophie. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with family and friends and also volunteering at her local SPCA.