Read more about the Serbian Festival Promotional Videos (2023, 2024)

What I learned

At the point in my career, when I had made the first promotional video for the Serbian festival, I was straight out of high school, and I had five years of experience with filmmaking at this point. I was ready to start college in a few weeks prior to filming, and even uploaded the final video from my college dorm! I had already done two promotional videos for the Serbian Cultural Center, so a simpler video that was more of a commercial would be a piece of cake for me. Development was super easy, the people who had commissioned me saw my work with the Serbian Cultural Center and gave me a similar prompt to promote the Serbian festival. This time, I did not have to rely on the interview of other people, they kind of just handed me the outline of a script and went with it. This promotional video was also much shorter, because it was intended to be just a quick commercial the church could post on their Facebook so other people could see. 

One thing that I did learn during filming, which I realized later on when I had to learn lines for my Acting and Directing Workshop (CINE 128), was how to get actors to learn their lines super fast. The person I was given as the spokesperson was not a professional actor, she was just a regular person. I had given her the script that I wrote once we got to location and I started setting up. I gave her a technique that I thought might work, and to just read one sentence, repeat it over and over again, and then once you get it right, move on to the next sentence. It took her about less than twenty minutes to memorize the script and shooting took about ten minutes because of how well she grasped the paragraph I wrote for her. We did at most ten takes, because there were not many issues with the delivery of the script, the biggest mistakes she would make were forgetting a few words here and there. Now I know for the second time around, how to prepare the spokesperson before filming so we can take up less time. 

I am not a sound designer, but I had bought a special microphone I could attach to my DSLR so I could record sound better. The sound for this promotional video is fine, I did have to turn up the sound a bit in post production, but you could hear other noises, such as cars passing by while the speaker is talking. I had zero to none location sound recording training because my high school did not have the resources to teach us sound design, and also it was not something I was very interested in, so I did not do any research on it. I know that part of the reason why the microphone picked up loud noises so loudly was because of where the camera was positioned, it was right by a street. For this next promotional video filming, I know not to place the camera right next to a street where it can pick up a lot of unwanted sound. Also I know to position the speaker closer to the camera so it can pick up more of their voice rather than the camera. 

And just like the Serbian School Promotional Video, I have a success story for the second time around. The second promotional video was incredibly easier than the first one, because the people organizing the festival already knew what they wanted in terms of a video, and I had already made a video in the past. It all happened so fast, they reached out to my manager (my dad) and he put them in touch right away, no months of back and forth of what they want because they were unsure. They told me the basic information of the festival, gave me one great video for B-Roll footage, and told me to run with it. Even on the date of filming, I sent the spokesperson the script ahead of time and by the time we were at the shoot, she already had it memorized, so we did not have to waste any time. Also, I positioned the camera in a location where we would not pick up any other sounds from the street. And, because of my on set experience, I learned about holding for sound, so we did have to do that a couple of times because of cars and planes. Even the editing is super easy, because the organizers were lucky enough to have someone go to the festival last year (2023) and film twenty five (25) minutes of footage of it to be on youtube. 

Helping the Serbian Community

If you read how I felt I could help the Serbian community in my Serbian School Promotional Videos, you know I grew up very immersed in Serbian culture. I grew up going to this church, my brother and I were both baptized there and my parents got married there. I know that when September and October roll around, it is time for the Serbian festival. I grew up going to this festival every year as a child. For a Serbian person going to the festival, it is mostly just a day where you hang out with your friends and eat Serbian food. But I imagine the experience is totally different for a non Serbian person going and probably experiencing our culture for the first time. I hope I introduced people to a new culture they may have never experienced before, and also informed a bunch of Serbian people when the festival is so they know how to plan out their weekend. Even though I unfortunately have not attended the festival since 2022 because of being in college, I hope that with the exposure they get through these videos helps them make the festival bigger and better. 

Fun Facts

-Natalija's entire family ended up volunteering at the 2023 Serbian Festival 

-The best food to get at the Serbian Festival is sarma and prebranac

-Natalija almost edited in her parents into the second promotional video because they were in the background of the B-Roll video 

-Natalija and her childhood friends used to make palačinke at the festival

Film Credits

Directed, Produced, Edited, and Filmed by: Natalija Plavšić