Today we’d like to introduce you to Brandersen.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I fell in love with video production when I was around 9 or 10 years old. I remembered watching behind the scenes at that age and was instantly hooked. I would take the family video camera out and just capture things happening in the backyard. Being a kid though, I couldn’t quite wrap my head around taking this passion to another level. Unfortunately, YouTube wasn’t a platform yet so having access to the information that’s available at our fingertips now made realizing this dream a bit more difficult.
Fast forward to 2004, I had gotten into rollerblading and through that I found out about making skate videos. It was at that point I had realized I just found my subject. In 2008, I bought my first video camera. We would go out on the weekends, I would film and then during the week, I’d edit what we captured. It was cool having the ability to practice and grow my video skills within rollerblading. It really allowed for experimentation which I think is important when starting out. This was an ongoing cycle for about 10 years as I really started to develop further into the passion I had for making films.
Over the course of those ten years, I made a large amount of projects both working with companies inside of rollerblading as well as professional rollerbladers needing video content to promote themselves or a product. It became a perfect catalyst for understanding company branding and individual marketing. With that knowledge, I released two major films in rollerblading the first in 2019 titled “Way of the Road” documented pro rollerblader Jon Fromm in five different states. From the release of that video, I got an opportunity to be an assistant cam op & edit my first massive corporate hiring campaign where I delivered roughly 26 individual projects. That campaign really taught me the creative process of working with a marketing company along with corporate branding; it also taught me efficiency and cutting the fluff in an edit.
In 2021, I released a second major rollerblading film titled “Gravity” the film explored the massive uprising Atlanta has seen in Rollerblading/Roller-skating participants with groups such as SK8TL. While filming that project I traveled to Pittsburgh and worked with local Atlanta artist Megan Mosholder on my first short documentary titled “Lui Na Greine – Window Of A Sunset”. I knew going into that project I wanted to run it down the Film Festival Circuit with no expectations, but an Official Selection would be cool. January 2022 I had an opportunity to go to New York for Fashion Week where I produced and documented a video for a model & talent agency. Followed up by going to Italy to produce a second project with Megan for a piece she was presenting for the European Cultural Centre during the opening of the Biennale. I ended last year having applied to 10 different festivals, coming away with 8 official selections and four wins both international and domestically. Atlanta Docufest being one of them where I won Best Local Documentary as well as Best Short Documentary in Naples, Italy at Robinson Film Festival.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It hasn’t been a smooth road, I’ve always had to work really hard to see the rewards in everything that I do, but every struggle has taught me perseverance and work ethic. In the beginning, I didn’t know what I was doing. One thing was certain, I knew I was passionate about filmmaking, but I didn’t know the direction I wanted to take it. Over the years through trying and failing you start shifting how you do it until you have a formula that works for you! I think one of the biggest struggles is just learning how to deal with the internal battles with myself and not letting that dictate my personal progression or growth. One of my struggles comes after completing a project. I tend to ask myself how can I top this? I naturally always want every project I create to be significantly better than my last and often have a fear of reaching a peak. When that happens, I tend to go find a passion project that has no constructs. It doesn’t have a deadline and there are no revisions. It solely opens the opportunity to clean my creative palate
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
This is tough because I don’t create one type of genre. A lot of my work recently has been specialized in documentary-style branded content. In other words, my intentions are to humanize your brand by sharing stories that can motivate and inspire. I typically work alongside marketing teams or individuals to help them develop their stories and vision. I think one thing that sets me apart from others is my ability to truly grasp the authentic nature of someone’s story and then highlight that. In my opinion, it takes a delicate touch of not being so connected to something you captured and being able to hit delete on things that don’t move the story along. It’s a fine line and requires being very detail-oriented as well as knowing what’s best for the project and not always what looks the best.
I think my most proud moments are coming home after being on location and scrolling through my favorite takes from the day. Those moments when you realize the story or content is even better than you envision. Those times when you share the final project with the client and they have tears in their eyes because you nailed their vision. Those are the moments that I’m most proud of and the ones that keep me passionate about filmmaking.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
Right now our industry is in a very interesting time since it’s still such a new space. There’s so much room to grow. The way we consume content is so vast I think you’re going to see more and more creators pushing the bar on what we didn’t think was possible. I believe we’re going to see some big changes over the next ten years that will change the way we create and consume media, but it’s hard to tell what that’ll look like. I’d personally like to see all creators get what they deserve and I hope that becomes to be one of the larger focus points but, as they say only time will tell.
Contact Info:
- Website: wereWLVES.com
- Instagram: @cameraguybrandon
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/brandersen
Image Credits
Auston Robinson Jarah LeNoir Anthony “Truth” Gary Kevin Seiffert
