Today we’d like to introduce you to Christian Klein.
Hi, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I’m excited to share that after two years on the festival circuit, my short film Sweet Nothings is now available for the whole world to see on Omeleto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
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?
Getting to this point with the project took a massive amount of hard work, planning and patience. We first filmed it in the summer of 2018, and putting together a team for a film shoot of any size is always a challenge. Once I had the footage, it took over a year of night and weekend work to edit the film and do all of the sci-fi visual effects. Then, when I was finally about to finish the project and start submitting to film festivals, the pandemic hit. So I ended up spending the rest of 2020 just nitpicking and improving the film here and there, as one of my quarantine hobbies. It was frustrating, but made the film a lot better, and ultimately paid off when I finally got to start seeing it in theaters with audiences at film festivals in 2021.
But my work wasn’t done yet, because for small independent projects, running the film festival campaign can be as demanding as making the film itself. Festivals are an interesting situation where certainly the quality of your film matters a lot, but also, the amount of effort you put into your campaign can have a huge impact on how much festival success you get as well. If you take the time to carefully research festivals, maintain an appealing social media presence, and personally reach out to decision-makers, you can achieve a lot more success than an equally good film that is simply dropped onto the internet with no additional efforts. So I made sure to go that extra mile, and thankfully it paid off with 20 official selections and 6 awards for the film’s cinematography, screenplay, and visual effects.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My next project as a director is a music video with comedian Big Time Maca, for his hilarious R&B parody song “Bed By Nine”. It will be released this summer and you can follow his Instagram @bigtimemaca for updates.
All that being said, directing is not yet my primary source of income. For that, I work as a freelance motion graphics designer, VFX artist and video editor, and you can see my portfolio at http://christianmklein.com/reels-
Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
Filmmaking is a lot of hard grunt work, but every once in awhile you honestly do get those magical moments where a bunch of talented people are in a room together with creative synergy flowing and you can’t believe it’s what you get to do for a living. On Bed By Nine, we just had our first test shoot day, which was the first time the whole team got together, and it was exactly that. Everyone was pitching jokes and shots, and getting excited about what we were going to make together, and that made me very happy. In this business, you have to derive happiness from the process as well as the results, because the process takes up the vast majority of your time and energy.
All that being said, I am also a big advocate for work-life balance and disconnecting from screens as much as you can. Nature, music and meditation bring me a lot of happiness, and I’m grateful for the (mostly) perfect weather of Southern California.
Pricing
- Please feel free to reach out about graphic design, video editing, VFX, or directing opportunities. I negotiate my rate based on the needs/workload of each project.
Contact Information:
- Instagram: @christianmklein
- Website: www.christianmklein.com
- Email: christianklein12@gmail.com
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