A fortunate few people know their future career aspirations from an early age, and Blake Silverthorn can count himself amongst the lucky.
“When I was 6 years old,” Silverthorn said, “at one of my aunt’s wedding, I wanted to take pictures with my mom’s camera so bad.”
The now 20-year-old media strategies major at Texas Tech University explained his mother owned an analog single-lens reflex camera at that time, but she was hesitant to allow her young son to use it.
“Finally, she sat down to eat,” Silverthorn said. “She was done taking pictures, and I took the camera, and I went and took pictures.”
With a small laugh, the senior in the College of Media & Communication admitted he cannot recall how the photographs turned out, only that he remembers it was the beginning of his passion in digital media.
Blake Silverthorn sits at his desk in the College of Media and Communication, where he serves as the executive producer of the sports show, the Double T Insider.
This interest was soon supplemented by an internship with the Dallas Cowboys NFL football team, which began in eighth grade, Silverthorn said.
He explained he used to have his parents drop him off at a sports bar in his hometown of Plano, Texas, to listen to a weekly radio show. Toward the end of the season, while waiting in line for then Dallas Cowboys wide-receiver Patrick Crayton’s autograph, a man walked up to him. The man addressed Silverthorn by name and asked if he would like to be on television. He was the senior producer of the team’s video department.
“I became a kid reporter for them,” Silverthorn said, mentioning he then kept in contact with the department, asking for internship opportunities. “And, I’ve worked there for about eight years since, every summer and, of course, some during the seasons.”
According to Silverthorn, he even had the opportunity to shoot and help edit the “Dallas Cowboys Mean Tweets” video last summer. This video was inspired by comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s segment of celebrities reading individual’s hateful Twitter posts about the stars themselves on the show “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” The Dallas Cowboy version became the most viewed online video in NFL history, Silverthorn said.
“My role has grown,” Silverthorn said of his work with the football team. “So, I’ve learned how to edit and shoot my first few years, and when I’ve gone back there, I’ve gotten to put together my own packages, my own pieces.”
Aside from his love of productions, he accredits his career path to an equal devotion to sports.
“I’ve loved playing sports since I was little,” Silverthorn said. “I was never good, but that didn’t stop me from playing. I love watching sports, any sport. I watch everything.”
He detailed his childhood with memories of Little League baseball, flag football and wrestling, but he admitted it was an injury-prone beginning. Silverthorn mentioned five different arm injuries in about a year and a half, including a broken thumb, a dislocated pinky, a broken arm and a couple of shoulder dislocations.
Now out of athletics, Silverthorn noted his ability to stay involved in the sports atmosphere with video productions, as well as simply being a fan.
“I can watch football 24 hours a day,” Silverthorn said, disclosing it is his favorite sport to follow, but he has similar feelings about baseball games. “My favorite thing to do in the world is to sit at the baseball park and watch a game. You’ll find me at a Tech baseball game almost every time they play here.”
Combining his fervor for sports and dedication to digital production, Silverthorn worked for the marketing department at Texas Tech, creating promotional videos for the university.
“You talk to people, and you’re selling the idea of Texas Tech,” Silverthorn said. “I love Texas Tech, so that’s easy to sell the idea of Texas Tech, why people should come here.”
Now the executive producer of the Double T Insider, the official sports show of Texas Tech that airs on Fox Sports Southwest, Silverthorn stays busy overseeing the 30-minute magazine-style broadcast production.
“Politics, religion and sports are what people get passionate about,” Silverthorn said, “and sports is the only socially acceptable one to talk about.”
Silverthorn said the Double T Insider is entirely student produced. He manages the show from the pre-production activities — writing, planning stories and brainstorming ideas — to lighting, shooting and interviewing during production to the post-production process of editing and sound engineering.
The producer explained there are a few staff members, but helping out at the show is also offered for class credit.
“When you work on it, you’re not just taking a normal class where, you know, you come in for an hour, three times a week,” Silverthorn said. “You’re going on shoots. You’re in the real world, so it’s that type of real world experience you get to have while getting class credit, while getting paid, but you’re doing it in college, in school, rather than waiting until you graduate to get that kind of experience.”
The Double T Insider focuses on every official Texas Tech Athletics sport, including football, basketball, baseball, tennis, golf, volleyball, soccer, softball, and track and field. It is a well-established show today, but Silverthorn described its small beginning.
“We started out as an idea,” Silverthorn said, as he and a few other students created the production during his freshman year.
Silverthorn said the students began working in the library, taking shifts watching the computer they worked on, so the system wouldn’t log them out and lose their work. Eventually the College of Media & Communication gave the group office space, and the members operate out of the college’s basement today, in Room 081, where The Hub is also located.
“We’ve gone from little handy cams to DSLR cameras that we are teaching kids to use,” Silverthorn said. “We went from no lighting, to a clamp-on light, to you know, three-stage lighting and LED light equipment. In every aspect, we’ve gone from the very basic you could get to learning how to strategically produce a show so that people will want to watch.”
He mentioned the team refers to the production as a substantial television show, and there is a strict policy of professionalism in dress and actions to maintain focus on the product.
“We don’t recap the sports,” Silverthorn explained. “We talk about the athletes and give their story, so that alumni and donors and future athletes and future students learn what students are at Texas Tech.”
Apart from the Double T Insider, Silverthorn is an active member of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity, where he served as webmaster, secretary and public relations chairman in the past.
“It’s a group of 120 or so guys, and it’s kind of a brotherhood,” Silverthorn said. “A lot of my closest friends are definitely from my fraternity. Guys, you know, that I wouldn’t have met otherwise and who’ve become my closest friends and who I’ll be friends with the rest of my life.”
Scheduled to graduate in May of this year, Silverthorn said he looks forward to a career involving anything in the media industry.
“I’ve evolved over the years,” Silverthorn said. “The Double T Insider has evolved over the years, and I’m just looking for the next step to take.”
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