This series of short videos were shot for the Shenandoah Film Collaborative to help promote their annual Strasburg Film Festival, a small town event held in northern Virginia.
Much of the intent behind these videos was to also promote the small businesses that were hosting the festival. This meant filming in various local businesses, ranging from a yoga studio to a brewery. This presented challenges in regards to ensuring the quality of the final product, challenges that were further exacerbated by a shoestring budget.
As I was the only one volunteering for the festival who had any sort of videography experience it fell to me manage each shoot, which meant that I had to rely on static shots and tripods as I moved from each camera to ensure that everything was recording as planned.
This also meant that I was tasked with the editing of each episode, but I was sadly often limited by mistakes during filming or the attitudes of the quests. The animated text intros were not my doing, as the festival organizers felt that anything more would turn off potential festival goers. The same went for thumbnails, as the non-profit felt that the local community would react better to images depicting our host and quests, who were all known members of the community.
The result of all this was a series that slowly improved in quality over time, as I learned to better direct small shoots such as these and work with the limitations I was given.
It was a blast, I am incredibly excited to keep learning.
This was my first attempt at filming an episode for the film festival. Due to time constraints I was forced to film the episode before I had a chance to acquire any equipment, and was forced to use two consumer grade camcorders and a Yeti USB mic. While the banter between our two hosts was quite funny, I could not help but feel self-conscious of the final quality.
The second episode, "Between Two Brew Masters", marked my first time being able to use a half decent camera (a Canon EOS 80D that I managed to borrow from a local photographer). At this point we were still using the two camcorders from the previous episode, which really shows in the color grading between some of the shots, but seeing as one of the camcorders did not have an option to alter white balance I was forced to bite the bullet and move on.
Due to her ability to ad-lib, we had decided that TJ would be a permanent host and would star alongside the representative the local business. It soon became clear that was the right decision as some of her co-hosts were unused to being in front of a camera.
This also marked my first time using lapel mics for the series, as I had invested in a cheap pair that I found on Amazon. It is clear that I got what I paid for, as the audio in this video suffered quite badly from filming in a noisy brewery. I wish that we could have had a static set for the series, but it was insisted that we film each episode at the local businesses that would serve as the film festival's venues.
By this point I had saved up enough money to buy a camera of my own (a Nikon d7500), a couple tripods, and three soft fill lights.
The result was not only did my shots end up matching much closer than in the previous episode, but the overall quality of footage was much higher, (although the wide angle was still covered by a camcorder, an angle which I felt would help hide the camera's limitations.)
Having learned my lesson with the audio from the Brewery episode I had managed to convince the non-profit to procure some higher quality lapel mics, as well a Rode shotgun mic for backup.
By the time filming of the final episode rolled around, I felt that I had a good handle on the new pieces of equipment. Audio was the cleanest we had yet, which was good since the banter was the best it had been since the Yoga episode. Michelle was a great guest, and her sense of humor really allowed me freedom to mess around in the editing of the video (something I would never have been allowed to get away with the previous two episodes.)
Really my only regret for the Public Official episode was the set. Once again I was forced to film on location (this time it was the local town hall), and the room which we were allowed to use was shaped in such a way that we really were not able to use any sort of background. I decided that since the videos were meant for locals anyways, they would be used to the busy background of the council chamber.
