In this paper, Joseph Riina-Ferrie reflects on his experiences as a youth media educator entering Cyphers for Justice (CFJ). He discusses how experiences with youth media education informed his practice at CFJ, and he focuses on how youth media practice can shift the affective space of a research-oriented program. He draws on affect theory, which invites researchers to consider non-human "actants" like a camera and a classroom as important to shaping what it means to be together (Bennett, 2010), and tries to capture aspects of experience that often elude representational research efforts (Ehret & Leander, 2019). Through the lens of affect theory, he discusses how mediamaking can help make research concepts and practices more concrete and accessible by providing a set of framing concepts and materials. He uses a case from one video workshop in a CFJ program to provide more details on how practices and materials informed by youth media played a part in shaping relationships among youth, adult collaborators and spaces where the program took place, and helped shift away from patterns of schooling and move differently in Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) work.