Untitled - Portfolio | Atharv Gopaluni

Role: Director, Cinematographer, Editor
Year: 2025
Duration: 6 minutes
Genre: Music/Casual

Logline: A group of friends walk around NYC.

Overview

There was no real planning when it came to untitled.mp4. It came out of nowhere. I had found a Sony HandyCam camcorder in my house, and had this rough idea of making a vlog. I wanted it to have some level of emotion, and so the idea started to come to fruition.

Pre-Production

Most of pre-production was focused on creative vision. I had a clear idea of how I wanted this to LOOK. I found an old camcorder in my house, something my parents used to use in the late 90s and early 2000s. It used Sony Hi8 tapes, and I immediately understood I wanted to use it for a video.

Production

I filmed the project over the course of two weekends, each session being a short outing of about 4-5 hours on a Saturday night.

Locations

I tried to keep the video almost random. Initially, the goal wasn't to make this music video-esque project. I was just recording fun videos with my friends. The first weekend, we went to the Williamsburg Bridge. The next, we went to Wall Street.

Post-Production

Editing was interesting, because this is where the video kind of came into its intention. It's when I decided what I wanted to do, and where I really put it together.

Digitizing footage

I recorded all the footage directly to Hi8. Therefore, as part of post-production, I had to digitize the analog tapes to a digital format for editing. I used an aux to AV to USB converter to capture the footage on my computer, using it as a camera input and recording the entire video in realtime. I ended up capturing 45-60 total minutes of footage.

Editing and Sound

By this point, I had already decided the music I wanted to use, this being "The Adults are Talking," by The Strokes. It had been playing in my ear for days by the point I had gotten to editing, and it felt perfect. It conveys this idea of growing up and not WANTING to grow up. And that is something I felt I wanted to portray. So I started cutting up 60 minutes worth of footage, trying to bring it to about 6, using a slightly shortened version of the song.

Key Moments

Showcase

Reflection

Reflecting on this project, I learned a great deal about the using different technologies as well as editing for music. I also learned how powerful it can be sometimes to shoot without a very hardset plan. I freestyled it, and I came back to the editing process with a vision. Everything was guided purely from my vision, and I think I was able to execute that vision quite well. I recieved a lot of positive feedback after releasing it, which was very rewarding.

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