Archive for May, 2010

Exciting times with old friends.

Well Randy and Ashley were actually new friends but we felt like old friends for the weekend.  Randy and Ashley are friends with some former customers of ours, Scott and Wendy

Veldboom (and the new baby Lilly) so we also got to hang out with some previous customers that have become friends as well.   Randy and Ashley had seen a same day edit we did for Scott and Wendy so of course that was an integral part of the day and what an edit it was….more about that later. 

Randy and Ashley got married at Queen of Apostles Catholic Church in Pewaukee and their reception was at Western Lakes Country Club.  At the reception Muzik in Motion rocked the house all night long.  The dance floor was packed and these guests knew how to party!  What a fun day and night was had by all.  

We had a few firsts for the day as well.  For one it was our first Same Day Edit of the year so that is always and exciting time of getting back in that flow of rocking the house by re-living the day.  They are high pressure for sure but so much fun at the same time.  Another first for us was we had a new helper along for the day.  Kristin Pape is our new intern for the year and it was her first wedding day at work.  She had attended a videographer educational summit with us earlier in the week but this was the first wedding action for her and she was pumped.  She did a great job and was a big help to us…..and I think she learned a little too.  We are looking forward to some great things from Kristin down the road.  Yet another first for us was our first significant shooting, especially for a same day edit, with our newest camera, the Canon 7D.  I know that doesn’t mean much to non-techies but the 7D is an amazing new tool available for wedding film makers.  It is basically a pro level still camera that shoots amazing HD video.  The coolest part about it is the look of the video is like what photographers achieve in stills but we can now add motion to that look.  The footage is gorgeous.   The camera is great for cutaway and close up shots that really add a new dimension to our productions.  The images shown in this post are all frame grabs right off the footage from the new camera and many of the closeups in the edit are from it as well.  Ok enough technical stuff….hope I didn’t bore you. 

Randy and Ashley were so fun and yet so emotional as well.  Check the vows at the end of the same day edit.  Does it get any better than that. Check out a few of the fun things in the edit.  Everyone was so much fun yet the emotion was the real star of the day and the edit.

Randy and Ashley, thank you for making us part of your day.  Ok, so you’ve read this far.  You are wondering where’s the same day edit.  Well grab some popcorn, sit back and enjoy.  Just click below.

   Get the Flash Player to see this player.

 

A Cultural Experience

On Saturday May 8th we got a chance to shoot our first wedding in Chicago.  The couple Viju and Asha also gave us our first opportunity to film an Indian wedding.  It was quite an experience of cultural traditions.  The wedding was at the Queen of All Saints Basillica and the reception was held at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare.  What a day.  It was really interesting learning about all the traditions from a blessing before the wedding to many presentations and cultural elements of the reception. 

It did get me thinking afterwards about how we in America celebrate our weddings.  America is such a diverse mix of cultures yet our weddings have few symbolic traditions that reinforce unity between families and the special thing marriage really is as it unites two people into one family.  I’ve been to Jewish weddings, Hispanic weddings and now and Indian wedding and those cultures seem to have tradtions that make the wedding day even more special than we Americans do.  It seems to me we have a ceremony and go party.  Is that all the tradition we can come up with?  Maybe we as Americans could take some lessons from other cultures and begin some symbolic gestures to reinforce the specialness of marriage……ok…enough of those thoughts. It was just something I was thinking about.

We did work hard Saturday but we had a fun and educational time as well.  There was a live feed from one of our cameras so all of the 600+ guests could more easily see all the traditions taking place.  It was quite a day.

Well we had something else interesting to roll out on Saturday for this wedding season as well.  Let me talk video industry technology here.  We have a new camera in our arsenal.  It’s a Canon 7D DSLR camera.  A DSLR is the still camera that has swappable lenses.  Every photographer has multiples.  Well we have one now too except ours is a little different than many.  It shoots amazing HD video.  It’s one of the first generation of hybrid camera that shoots video as well as it shoots photos.  The real lure to this camera for us is what the footage looks like compare to our other cameras.  Photographers are able to get those great shots with the blurred backgrounds and foregrounds.  Well to do that with our videocameras is lots of work and difficult to do.  The new 7D makes it much easier to create the look of a photo but with movement.  It is a very filmic look and adds a whole new dimension to what our final videos can look like.

I have added a few different kinds of lenses for the camera for different scenarios but I haven’t gone the route most photographers and even videographers are going.  I have learned recently about older retro lenses from years ago that work on the camera via an inexpensive adaptor.  The lenses are less expensive cause no one is using the old generation of film cameras.  What makes these lenses so cool is some of the optics from the old lenses have a distinctive and different look than todays ultra crisp digital lenses.  My favorite new lens is actually and old lens from Russia with a brand name of Helios.  It is a pretty amazing little lens.  The blurs in the background just have a different look.  I am adding a few more of these retro lenses to my collection as well hoping to give our footage a little more of a distinctive look that others using these same cameras.  Here are some frame grabs right from the video we shot on Saturday.  These are not photos but just stills pulled from the video.  You can see the difference between standard video and these shots.  Imagine these kinds of shots mixed in throughout your video.   We hope it gives your wedding movie more of the feeling of a real movie.  

I know I talked technology in this post but I wanted to show you some new looks that will be coming to our wedding movies this year.  As the year progresses we will be including more and more of the footage into our products.  We have a Same Day Edit in a few weeks that just may include lots of footage from the prep and for the first time ceremony footage.  More excitement to come.