Brett Steinsdorfer

1/24/20

Mrs. Lazarski

Video Production IV

Film Festival Refelction

I diverted from what I originally wanted to do entirely and decided to go a more

important path to me, which was to show a short music video on what I film for a studio I work

for. My original plan was to film a documentary on the Adirondacks, but I found it more

important and interesting if I showed the Film Festival where and what I film for a music

producing studio. My final project plans had changed from there and I made these plans after

filming at the studio. I asked the rightful owner and producer of the song, Anthony Pierro if I

could use his song “Free Your Mind” and he gladly let me use it for film festival submission.

With the footage, I had from the session in the making of many of their other songs.

There wasn’t much to the pre-production, it was mostly free-hand filming. The

challenges I had to face prior to filming the session was if I had enough storage to keep the

footage on a flash drive. I need to upgrade my computer and I need to get an external hard drive.

Along with getting better equipment, I had to think out of what kind of shots I should take.

Having a brief thinking period to imagine and plan out what kind of shots I’ll get knowing that

this was my first time filming a music studio session, I figured out exactly how I wanted to film

and the style I wanted my shots to be in.

 During the production phase of my filming for the highlight reel of the music studio

session, I had to figure out my shots. The obstacles I had to face was learning what shots I need

to tell the story of what’s going on in that studio and something that will go with the music track

I wanted to use. I was utilizing my abilities to know my selective shots of what exactly the

producers were doing and B-Roll of equipment to use as short filler shots for the highlight reel.

At the end of the day, I felt confident in my shots and I knew I could make something great in

Premiere with that footage which made me confident. I imported all my footage and thought out

exactly what I wanted to do with all the footage I shot.

During the post-production editing phase, I thought out the order of my selected and cut

shots and the effects I wanted to apply to them. Once I was done cutting all my footage to the

clips I felt good with, I had to order them right and make sure they went with the beat of the

music along with the climax and the calming down of the track. Once I had everything cut and

position and lined up with the audio, I then thought it would be fun to try out new effects and

toyed with ones that will go with the vibes of the video. I found some effects I really liked and

thought would work perfectly with the video. I worked with keyframing and positions of the

effects and I got into detailed specs of exactly how I wanted the effects to act in each clip.

My favorite part of the production process is usually the editing which was fun to play

around with the effects but for this project, in particular, it would have to be the filming. The

filming experience was much more fun to work on. Learning the camera I needed to work with,

testing the shots, using my film selection skills while filming, and just having a great time with

everyone while doing my job was the most fun part. Gathering and reviewing all my shots was
exciting. I was already thinking out exactly what I’d want to do with my shots while editing.

Working in the field is a lot of fun and it’s an amazing experience for people like me, who want

to create something out of nothing and present a story to the world only using a camera, a

computer, and my creativity.

The weaknesses of this project, though I was very proud of the work I did, I found small

glitches in what I was doing but nothing major. While editing I should cut back on the effects,

using a lighter amount and focusing more on telling the story through selective shots rather than

basically sugar-coating the video with effects. The effects don’t make a good video, the shots

you select in order to tell a story make a good video. With selective shooting which I find I do

best, I should definitely try to get more of those shots in my next project that way while editing I

have a more expanded amount of clips to choose from.

I believe I met the program objective with what I wanted to put out to the film festival. A

music video that had a good beat and told a story of how music producers work in the studio to

produce music. The target audience for this project is for people who are interested in music and

how it’s produced. This project, I feel will reach out to many people, because the majority of

people enjoy listening to music everywhere, so I thought this would be perfect to show to a more

broad audience at a film festival. I felt this project would envision the audience as if they didn’t

know what a music studio looked like or the experience of how recording and editing the music

was. I felt like I really put out the story of how the experience of making music is.