About Natasha

I am a media producer, artist, and musician in the Boston area.

My first professional training was in music: performing (piano is my instrument), composing music, recording and editing. I have a degree in Film Scoring from Berklee College of Music, where I was taught not only a lot about music skills but also about music technology, and digital arts creation in general. The skills I gained at Berklee have been lifelong useful, and I have found multiple ways to apply my skills in other areas of art, digital media, graphic design, video, motion graphics, and more (I make awesome excel spreadsheets because I’m meticulous and detail oriented too 🙂 )

Learning music-oriented software taught me computer chops in general, good file management, how to navigate multiple different software platforms, how to set up a studio and workspace, and really brought out my innate detail-oriented thinking process. Knowing musicality, understanding the structure of a piece of music, really helps in editing music, and as I discovered, editing video as well. I know how to cut down or loop a piece of music with undetectable edits. I know how to match music and dialogue to picture cuts, how to balance the various track volumes. Feeling in terms of music can really guide creative processes, giving shape, pacing, mood, and structure to video and motion graphics. I’m extremely good at matching recorded audio to video, because I’m very good at reading the audio waves and finding matching video frames. I have had several projects where this exact skill was necessary, lining up and cutting multiple asynchronous audio dialogue tracks to picture.

I taught myself video editing years after finishing Berklee – first with Final Cut Pro, then switching over to the Adobe Suite (Premiere) about when Apple acquired FCP. I discovered motion graphics during a program I took at Emerson College, and this ignited a new passion for me. I found in motion graphics, first trying out Apple Motion (which I found was very limiting), then in After Effects, a great opportunity to combine video, audio/ music editing, graphic design, and my attention to detail. There’s some element of my brain that thinks like a programmer, and After Effects really gives one the chance to get some very interesting ways to manipulate images and design elements. I have enjoyed each freelance project I’ve had, particularly when I have to do some deep dives to solve a new kind of problem.

Education:

  • Berklee College of Music – BM, Film Scoring 
  • Emerson College – certificate program, Digital Media Production
  • Boston University – Music Composition 
  • Media instruction at Interlock Media (Cambridge, MA), Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Emerson College
  • RYT 500 – Registered Yoga Teacher, Yoga of Energy Flow
  • Souluna Life Coach

Media Expertise:  

  • Adobe Creative Suite – specialized in After Effects, proficient in Premiere, Photoshop, Illustrator, Audition
  • motion graphics – proficient in After Effects, experience in Motion
  • capture, log, edit digital video in nonlinear editing platforms including Premiere, Final Cut Pro 7, Final Cut X
  • shooting video, conducting and transcribing interviews
  • original musical soundtracks and sound effects for film and video, using Digital Performer, Soundtrack, ProTools
  • authoring for edx.org and other instructional platforms
  • basic web design skills – working knowledge of CSS, HTML, WordPress
  • preparing media assets for web or DVD formats
  • design of packaging and promotional materials, for web and print