NOVA Music Festival
October 7th Attack at the NOVA Music Festival
https://marksteeleproductions.com/nova-music-festival-interviews
On September 25, 2025, I shot 5 interviews with survivors of the the October 7th 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel and focused on a music festival that was happening that day. They were in Boston to promote and take part in a display of artifacts taken from the festival site that included burned out cars, tents and clothing that were left behind. More than 400 people were killed that day at the festival and 50 were taken hostage. It was a terrible day that reverberates still today. I felt honored to be able to record and tell their stories. I ended up with a 35 minute film that I believe is a powerful document of that day.
I’d like to tell you about how the film came to be and about the production of it.
I have worked with my friend and fellow collaborator Steve Rosenberg of the Jewish Journal of Greater Boston before on projects. He used to work for the Boston Globe and is now the publisher/editor for the Jewish Journal of Greater Boston. Last week sometime Steve contacted me and said he knew that I wasn’t doing too much video work anymore but he had a job that he thought I might be interested in. I may have told him at one point that I was taking less work but that is in the rearview mirror today. I have a lot of work and the reason I hesitated to take him up on his offer was that I had too much on my plate at the moment. Plus he wanted to meet at 8 am to head into Boston and I am still drinking my coffee at that time of day. But, I never say no. (Well almost never) I told him I was on board to shoot it but didn’t have the time to edit it. He is a capable video editor himself so we made a date to do the job.
The job was to record 4 fifteen minute, or so, interviews with survivors to the Hamas attack on the NOVA Music Festival on October 7, 2023. They were speaking at an exhibition that was going to be presented in Boston and other cities around the world. Time was limited so I thought I’d pack a small production package of one camera, one light and a lavaliere microphone. I’d be shooting for and hour or a little more so I could run everything on batteries. I can power the light for 3 hours on 4 batteries so that should be more than enough. I have a new, to me, camera that I was thinking of selling but I kind of like it so this would be a good opportunity to use it in a real environment. It’s a SONY FS-5 that I bought from Facebook Marketplace. It’s a good camera with nice lenses and a Super 35 sensor. The reason I’m not so excited about it is that all my other cameras are Panasonic and their menus are very similar, the SONY has a different menu design and trips me up sometimes. Steve and I got to the venue on time and in a fairly heavy rain. After getting in by passing through security we located a place to shoot. It was a large room that was set up for speakers to address 100 or so people. We were the only ones there and we decided to shoot in a spot that gave us a nice background. I set up my gear. In the time between when we got there and when we got set up another person was added to the list of interviewees. She was unsure if she wanted to be interviewed but said we could record her telling her story.
There were four women and one man. They were in their late 20’s and early 30’s, young by my reckoning. Steve and I were introduced to them and they were all upbeat and seemed eager to be interviewed and recorded. So we started. Their stories ranged from being compelling to harrowing. One of them had lost her father at the festival and the other four were actually there and escaped death at the hands of Hamas. I won’t go into all the stories because they are told much better than I could do by themselves in the video. I was amazed at their resilience and optimistic approach to life after what they had been through and witnessed.
On the production side of things everything went well but there is always something. The interviews went on for approximately 30 mins each and by the time we got to the last interview I was worried about my battery on the light going dead and literally leaving us in the dark. But it held out and I breathed a sigh of relief. When I got the footage home and looked at it I was very happy with the look of the shallow depth of field and the black pro mist filter I use whenever possible. However I noticed a focus issue during one interview caused by my zooming in a little to reframe the image. I didn’t want Steve to have to deal with an out of focus video so I decided to edit the interviews myself. I have purchased a video sharpening tool that works very well. In the end you would never know it was shot out of focus.
After shooting on Thursday I captured all the footage into my editing software and set up each interview in their own timeline. The room was pretty noisy but there is a new ‘voice isolation” tool that works very well. That paired with the sharpening tool and I was all set. I was having a hard time getting started on telling the story and after a few attempts I stopped and emailed Steve to ask him what the story was that he wanted to tell. He got back to me and said it was the experience of the attack and the healing that was happening because of the efforts of the NOVA organization that had not left the traumatized people behind. After sleeping on it, I started putting it together on Saturday. Rather than telling each story individually I decided to make one longer story and have each person tell bits of it one after the other. Each person had a similar arc to the day but also they each had different experiences. Hearing five people tell about a bit of the day one after the other turned out to be very powerful. I added cellphone video footage from the day sparingly. Steve came over and we watched it together. He had a few suggestions that I implemented and the core of the film was done. Together we added the credits and an opening sequence and that was that.
I feel very fortunate to be in this business that allows me to be part of significant things such as the documenting of this tragic event. I get to meet interesting people, sometimes in passing and other times I get to work with them over the span of years. I love the technology and how sound and color and moving images create a mood and convey a story.
