Art In The Making

I had the pleasure of meeting Jeff during the Autumn With Topsail Festival celebrated in the southernmost town on Topsail Island. At the time I did not realize this would become one of the most important relationships I’ve had with a fellow artist. A year after our first encounter we sat down at the Daily Grind. That conversation led us down the production of multiple commercials, wedding videos, a YouTube mini-series, and a long format documentary called Swing Bridge Memories. Jeff Wenzel is the owner of Above Topsail and CanvasPrinting4Pros.com.

Above Topsail is segmented into various services like photography, videography, and studio rental. His artwork can be found across multiple stores like East Coast Sports and Herring’s Outdoor. Canvas Printing 4Pros on the other hand is his newest business, it is dedicated to large format printing with archival grade material and framing. As an artist that has used various printing services, I can guarantee you will be impressed with the quality and speed of his service.

What is more amazing is that Jeff found the time to work on his art while establishing successful businesses and over the past four years I have seen good portraits turn into breathtaking works of art. He has a love for sculpting subjects with light that matches his creative compositions. Take a look for yourself here.

Working with him, I get to see his passion turn into art, those experiences informed the creation of this video where we take the viewer through the river of Jeff’s workflow.

Behind The Scenes

For this behind the scenes I want to focus on sound design. Sound design, or for that matter the audio portion of any audiovisual work of art, composes 75% of the storytelling. This isn’t a rule but an assertion of the importance that soundwaves have in informing your senses about a world or a story. While getting my bachelors degree at the University of Sacred Heart in Puerto Rico, Prof. Salvador Méndez Resto, in my humbled opinion, was the source of the deeply held understanding, that if you are forced to pick, it is better to have good audio and bad image. For this video we used clips from Artlist.io FX library and sounds recorded from our Zoom H4N to create the immersive soundscape to this video.

In this video we show the different effects the music and sounds have on the emotion perceived by playing the edited footage with and without certain elements. Adding sound is a subtle but powerful way of allowing viewers to connect better with the story. I always have a recorder on me even if the project does not require audio. If you don’t happen to have a high quality recording device and are unable to get the sounds from the live set, don’t fret. There are various free and paid libraries that can help you find audio you can layer under your projects to elevate your work.

The takeaway here is simple, audio is king in audiovisual projects. If there is ever a question about what gear you should get, instead of thinking about your next camera or light, a good recorder and microphone might be the way to go. If you have any questions about our pipeline, gear, or methods, just reach out through our contact page, Facebook, Youtube, or Instagram. Stay creative!