Co-Founder’s Diary: Emily Cohn

Although today is our premiere of The Do Not Enter Diaries, it is a little atypical of what you’ll usually be experiencing on our site. We’re kicking off DNED with two videos, Emily and Emma’s respective co-founder diaries, which will explain a bit more about them and their responsibilities as collaborators on The Do Not Enter Diaries. Tune in next Wednesday at 4PM for our first “official” bedroom diary.

DNED: Emily Cohn from The Do Not Enter Diaries on Vimeo.

Bonjour, fellow members of the interwebs! My name is Emily Cohn…but most just call me Emily. I am the creator and co-founder of The Do Not Enter Diaries.

It is no secret that my best friend, Emma, and I spend a lot of time together. Sometimes we sign our emails as Em2 . Sometimes people tease us about it. And most of the time teachers confuse us in person or in our report cards. We understand. It’s confusing. Now, on top of all of the other endeavors we take on together, we have added this venture to our list.

One fine January morning, after watching my usual dose of online inspirational video content, I suddenly had a realization: I was so wrapped up in obsessing over figuring out how to make connections with the people creating these videos, that I never thought about actually starting a whole new project of my own.

Most of my favorite video web series focus on filming artistic people (designers, musicians, models, etc.) talking about their respective professions and opinions on a variety of subjects. However, I realized that the videos I liked the most were the ones that focused on kids my own age–teenagers. As a blog expert, Emma loves and visits these sites as well. I immediately knew what we had to do. I wasn’t sure exactly how, but I wanted to film teens of all sorts in a space that demonstrated and fostered their creativity….their bedrooms.

I called Emma, grabbed my camera, and walked through the park over to her house. When I got to her house we started filming without any real structure; we mimicked what we liked about other video series and added what we thought they were missing. Mainly, I wanted to start filming people who might not necessarily have any reason to be filmed aside from just being themselves. I wanted to film other kids like me, with a passion, but who weren’t solely famous actors or boy-geniuses–just normal kids who were doing what they love and showing how it manifested in their bedrooms.

Through a lot of trial and error, Emma and I finally settled on a consistent format and outline that we were satisfied with for our project, which we titled The Do Not Enter Diaries. The goal of our video web series is to show a variety of teenagers, across the country and around the world, and highlight how their bedrooms reflect (or don’t reflect) their personal tastes and interests.

We’ve already made a lot of progress in fine-tuning our mission and our videos and we look forward to sharing the awesomeness of the teens we have filmed with you all.
Please enjoy and check back with us here every Wednesday at 4PM EST to see a new diary!
– Emily

To learn more about Emma or me, please click here. To learn more about The Do Not Enter Diaries in general, please refer to our “About” page.

This video’s music is credited to “Good Times” by Sam Cooke. Available on iTunes.

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