Firm cut above rest in film editing

SCENE KID: Peter Bredemeier founded Bunkr Video Productions in 2004 while splitting his time between Los Angeles and Tampa. In 2009, he decided to move his company to New England to be closer to his family. / PBN PHOTO/FRANK MULLIN
SCENE KID: Peter Bredemeier founded Bunkr Video Productions in 2004 while splitting his time between Los Angeles and Tampa. In 2009, he decided to move his company to New England to be closer to his family. / PBN PHOTO/FRANK MULLIN

Successful networking and the perfection of a specific skill set are two business essentials that are commonly celebrated as keys to success.
Peter Bredemeier, owner of Bunkr Video Productions Inc., can feel free to raise a glass and toast himself.
“I thought initially that if I want to make movies, I’ll be a director – and that’s what everyone thinks. Then I realized that there’s so many facets to making video and films,” Bredemeier said. “Now that I am working for myself, I really do enjoy it and try to take a lot of pride in the work that I do for people.”
That work, achieved after turning hopes of filmmaking into a video-editing business, recently earned the 37-year-old Rehoboth native an Emmy for his producer contributions on Jack Hanna’s “Into the Wild.” The latter is a nationally syndicated children’s show that centers on a young boy and his family’s adventures searching for wildlife destinations.
The show was named Outstanding Children’s Series at the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences 39th annual Daytime Entertainment Creative Arts Emmy Awards, held on June 17 in Los Angeles.
Though Bredemeier was actually out of the country that day – on vacation with his wife visiting her relatives in Sweden – it was a rarity in a career that has been filled with impeccable timing.
After graduating from St. Raphael Academy in Pawtucket in the mid-1990s, Bredemeier more or less humored his parents by enrolling in Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., with plans to study engineering.
It was a quick stay and he soon transferred to McGill University in Montreal. He earned a bachelor’s degree in cultural studies – the subject equivalent, he said, of film and communications – from there in 1998.
He then moved to Los Angeles to pursue his Hollywood dreams.
“[Film work] is a chance to do a job that’s the ultimate creative, modern art form,” he said. “It was what I wanted to do for years. You maybe think [in that field] you won’t be able to get a job but I felt strongly enough that it was worth it for me.”
He set his sights to making what became the film “Local Talent,” for which he returned to Massachusetts to shoot in 2000, while doing some temp and managerial work at Sony Pictures Entertainment. The film ended up showing at a couple of small festivals and nothing much else, but it was the work he did editing it that made things come together.
“It took a lot of work to get it in good shape. I really got good at the software,” Bredemeier said. He started volunteering to help a senior editor at Sony Pictures who directed and edited hip-hop music videos for artists including Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. After a few months, he was offered a junior editor position.
“I decided that editing was what I was going to do,” he said. “I realized my talent [lied] there and ended up thinking it was good to have a specialized technical skill.”
He rose to a senior editor at Sony Pictures, mostly editing music videos and commercials in Los Angeles and then editing original content the company was developing for an online venture that ended up closing down during the dotcom bust in the early 2000s.
He started doing freelancing and had his demo reel in circulation when The Travel Channel, which is based in Chevy Chase, Md., asked him to work on a show for them in Tampa, Fla.
He spent the next couple years dividing his time between Tampa and Los Angeles, then moved to Tampa in 2005 and went to work full time for Spectrum Productions.
He began work as an editor there on the “Jack Hanna” show in 2007, eventually being offered a chance to write for it as well.
By 2009, when he and his wife welcomed the birth of their second daughter, the couple made a decision to move back to New England to be closer to his family.
He set up shop on North Main Street in Providence with relative ease, he said, with Spectrum allowing him to continue work there remotely on Jack Hanna and other projects.
He’s also been doing work in corporate videos and 30-second commercials and promos, including one this summer for a Home Shopping Network cross-promotion with the HBO series “True Blood.”
“[Owning my own business] was not something I initially aimed for but as I was working over the years, I thought it was something I would really love,” Bredemeier said. “The more places I worked, I realized maybe I could do this. … It’s worked out well.” •

COMPANY PROFILE
Bunkr Video Productions Inc.
OWNER: Peter Bredemeier
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Video production
LOCATION: 118 North Main St., Providence
EMPLOYEES: Varies by production
schedule
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 2004; incorporated in Rhode Island in 2009
ANNUAL SALES: WND

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