Beverly Hills-based documentary filmmaker John Wellington Ennis already blogs for the Huffington Post. But via video message from founder Ariana Huffington, he was recently gifted with a major additional assignment: helping with on-the-ground coverage of the upcoming Republican and Democratic national conventions in Tampa Bay and Charlotte.

Ennis is one of eight winners of an OffTheBus sanctioned video competition launched in February that sought Ustream citizen journalists. The winners will be divided into teams of four, remotely trained and then sent to one of the two events, with travel, lodging and expenses reimbursed. Here’s Ennis’ winning entry:

Way back in the 1950s, Ennis’ grandfather John ran for mayor of Los Angeles and was also a delegate at the 1952 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The younger Ennis studied filmmaking at NYU and USC, with some reality TV credits and several documentaries to his name including Money Talks: Profits Over Patient Safety, which examined how the pharmaceutical industry influences doctors who write prescriptions. In 2008, he also co-founded Video the Vote, a non-partisan coalition that documents voting problems.