Archive for May, 2009

Allow me to brag a little.

No I don’t want to brag about myself but about my wonderful wife, Sherry.  You see about 5-6 years ago she decided she wanted to establish a healthier lifestyle and I was more than happy to join her.  Fast forward to now and between the 2 of us we have lost more weight than either of us weigh right now.  That is pretty cool.

One of Sherry’s goals when she started working out was to walk in the Syttende Mai walk that takes place on Saturday of the Syttende Mai festival here in Stoughton.  The walk is a 17.5 mile walk from Madison to Stoughton through the countryside.  Lots of hills and pretty views.   The pretty views are a treat.  The hills….well let’s just say they do add to the scenic views when you are walking. 

We awoke this morning and the temps were in the 40’s with strong gusty winds.  Not the best setup for a 17+ mile walk.  As we rode to the starting line we realized the wind would be at our back for most of the way. Sure enough there was only one small stretch where we walked into the wind.  Thank goodness.  It would not have been much fun walking straight into a brisk wind all morning.  I am sure the cool temps and the tailwind really helped the runners record great personal times.  Not the best conditions be we made it in pretty good time. 

I can’t tell you how proud I was of Sherry when it was over.  She has worked so hard to be healthy and it shows.  She looks great as you can see in the picture and she absolutely loves working out.  She has become a fitness nut in a good kind of way.  I’m not quite as crazy about working out but know I need to do it to remain healthy and to keep up with her.  I enjoy working out just not quite as much as Sherry.   Her new goal….run (not walk) the 5K Crazy Legs run in Madison next year.  I’m up for that.  Part of my training was some light running and I was up to 2 miles so I’m in for the run.  When it comes to being healthy my wife is my idol. 

I had a little cheap $100 video camera laying around so I hauled it along and created the following little video showing some of the fun we had on the walk.  We were lucky enough to walk with some friends from church, George and Cindi and some of their friends, the Wilsons.

Here’s the little video I made up.  Nothing fancy but fun.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

How we get inspired.

Have you ever wondered how we get inspiration for edits, how we come up with fresh ideas?  Well there is nothing we as editors will ever do that hasn’t already been done somewhere in a movie somewhere.  Lots of my ideas get inspired by things I have seen in other wedding videos and often times from a movie I have seen. 

I was recently editing Jason and Marla Kolbeck’s wedding video and had a movie inspiration for their highlights.  You see, Jason used to be a golf pro so I knew he was a huge golf fan.  Just turns out Sherry and I have recently fell in love with a great movie that was recently released telling about a great historical figure from the golf world.  It is set in the early 1900s.  When you put first play the movie there is a small video preview that plays leading up to the main menus for the DVD.  As I watched portions of the movie for some ideas to work into Jason and Marla’s highlights I realized this introduction to the DVD menus was perfect.  I set out to use that feel and look to start their highlights.  It starts with some sepia toned footage and slowly starts getting more color.  When Marla walks in the church we are at full color resolution.  It subtly builds from sepia to full color at the peak of the video.  There are some graphical elements in the beginning that could have been done much more “movie like” but would have taken extensive amounts of time to create.  I used more simple techniques to give the same feel. 

I thought you may be interested in seeing the result of a recent inspiration reflected in our work.  It’s up to you to figure out the name of the movie.  Here’s their highlights.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.