A Look Into The Making Of Matt Wertz’s SnowGlobe Shop Videos
Most of you here know me, Brad Moore, and that I moved to Nashville earlier this year. Since coming here, one of my new ventures has taken me into the world of video. I met Phil Barnes, seen above, when we both arrived at a mutual friend’s concert with the idea of making a video for him. Rather than make two videos, I asked Phil if he wanted to work together on one, and he said yes. Through the experience of working together on this one video, we decided to team up and keep making videos together. Thus was born Phil and Brad Make Videos!
Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when we were approached by Matt Wertz, asking if we’d be interested in making some videos to help him launch his annual online holiday store, The SnowGlobe Shop. Each year, Matt launches this shop to sell some of his own merchandise, but also some other items that are made locally in Nashville. He wanted Phil and I to help tell the story behind each of the locally made products… Why he’s working with each company, the care that goes into making each product, etc.
The introduction video to The SnowGlobe Shop. This was actually the last video we made as it’s mostly made up of clips from the other six videos we created.
For each shoot, I filmed with a 70-200mm f/2.8L lens on the Canon 1DX, shooting at 60fps for slow-motion footage. Since I was shooting at 60fps, my shutter speed was at 1/125 and my f-stop and ISO varied depending on the shooting location. Phil filmed with a 24-70mm f/2.8L lens on the Canon 5D Mark III, shooting at 24fps for a cinematic feel. His shutter was at 1/50, and his f-stop and ISO also varied from on location to the next. We both shot handheld and only used available light since we had to move quickly and had limited time at each location.
Our first shoot was at ThreadCo, a startup fashion company that focuses on creating high quality closet staples at an affordable price. This was where we found our groove and dynamic for this project. I started off shooting wide, then quickly switched to shooting tight once we got into the space and realized what exactly we needed to focus on. As long as I was shooting tight and Phil was shooting wide and we stayed out of each other’s shots as much as possible, we knew we had wiggle room in the edit.
The next day of shooting was when we filmed the vast majority of the footage we used in the videos. We started the day filming with High Fancy Paper, owned by Matt’s sister Bekah, then visited Consider The Wldflwrs, Humphreys Street Coffee and Soap, and ended the day at Ranger Station Candles.
The last bit of filming was spent getting vanity shots, both video and stills, of each product. Throughout the process, Matt was also recording voiceovers for the videos, either spoken by him or one of the people involved in making each product. Once we had all of these pieces captured and created, it was time to put them together. To the edit!
Phil and I have a pretty great dynamic figured out, which allows us each to play to our strengths. I tend to be the primary shooter, then he drives the edit once we have all the footage. Once he has a pretty decent cut ready, I’ll take a look and give notes and we’ll discuss what fine-tune tweaks we need to make.
So, once we have all of our footage downloaded and backed up, we start making our way through it to find the best shots that are both visually attractive and help tell the story of how each item is created. We bring it all into Adobe Premiere Pro CC and delete the clips that are garbage, and cut and trim down the clips that aren’t.
We put the clips together in the order that made sense for the story of each item and slowed down the 60fps footage to 40% for the slow-motion effect, and also scaled it to fit the frame (the 1DX shoots 60fps at 720p, but it looks fine when scaled to 1080p). We also added in the graphics and credits at the end of each video.
Since we were working with a musician on these videos, we knew we would be using his music as the underlying track. He gave us the instrumental title track from his Snow Globe album, and we trimmed it to fit the length of each video. Once we had the voiceover for each video, we did some minor editing to take out the distracting elements (ums, breathing between sentences, etc), then added those to each project. Even once they were in Premiere, we were able to cut them and space them out to be better timed with the pace of each video.
After we got everything just right, Phil mixed and mastered the audio to make sure levels were good and, honestly… I’m not sure what all he did so I could just make up a bunch of technical stuff to sound smart, but just trust me when I say that he made everything sound great ;-)
All that was left from there was to export each one, send it to Matt, get his notes, and adjust each one accordingly! The final edits for each one are here, and I hope you enjoy them. Matt, Phil, and I all put a LOT of time and effort into making these, and I for one am pretty happy with how they turned out. I honestly can’t wait until our next project, whatever it may be.
You can see more of Phil and Brad’s work at PhilAndBradMakeVideos.com, find more of Phil’s music at PhilBarnesMusic.com, and find more of Brad’s work at BMOOREVISUALS.com.
