I've been thinking for a while about creating a short origins video for my website and YouTube home page. A few months ago, I put together a really nice demo reel from the 2024-2025 season and I really wanted to publish it on my main channel but I felt like it was 'unfinished'. To help push me to create more unique content, I set out to create a video that was a little different than my normal videos. I wanted to talk through some of the things that inspired me to make my ORF 2024 video and give some context behind my demo reel. Hopefully you enjoy watching.
Getting Serious About Creating
I’ve always had a love for creating videos ever since I was a kid, but it wasn’t until recently that I started taking it a lot more seriously when 2020 hit. During this period, I was spending a lot of time indoors, so I took up landscape photography. I figured this would be the perfect way to get some fresh air and sharpen my skills as a photographer. I traveled around to a multitude of different nature reserves and parks, many of which I didn’t even know existed until I showed up to take photos there. It ended up being a great way to sharpen my skills and get some great exercise in as well. After several months had passed, the Ohio Renaissance Festival was starting up their 2021 season again, and I figured this would be a great way to combine my new hobby of photography with walking around outside. It was also a great reason to keep coming back every week. Throughout that year and others to follow, I ended up meeting a lot of really great people and really honing my skills as a photographer.
Struggling With Video
Up to this point though, I wasn’t really taking the filmmaking side of things that seriously. I was very unhappy with the quality of my videos, and I was struggling to find a story or narrative that I really wanted to tell. I also felt like shooting videos took away from the time that I could be spending taking higher quality photos. The end result was that the majority of the videos I ended up publishing during that time were mainly montage videos. This all started to change when I watched a short by Audrey Ember. She had expressed many of the same things I had felt during this time as well. After years of studying videos and storytelling, I’ve become critical of everything. I can tell you exactly what is wrong with any video, but I don’t necessarily know how to make a great video myself. Sometimes too much information, too much overthinking, and too much analyzing can become limiting, when the only way you’ll figure out what you want to make and what works is by uploading.
A Plan for 2024
So I started to draw up a game plan for 2024. I decided that I wanted to create a video during the 2024 season of the Renaissance Festival. I watched a variety of Renaissance themed content on YouTube to try and find inspiration for the video. One video that really caught my eye was Inside Renaissance Festival by Paragraphic. I loved the first minute or two and wanted to create something similar, but focus on the festival itself and the performers instead.
Becoming a Filmmaker
With all that in mind, I decided to shoot as much footage as I could during opening weekend. I ended up recording over 15 hours of content and worked nonstop over the next two days to edit together my vision. The end result was something better than I ever could have expected. After spending over a decade working on making videos, this was the first time that I truly felt like a filmmaker. From that moment on, I’ve been recording an insane amount of Renaissance fair content. I want to thank every single person who has taken the time to give even one of my videos a chance. It really means a lot when people watch the content that I create and are able to experience the same magic of Renaissance Festivals. I hope you’ll come along the way. Thanks.