As I was writing this post, I came across this quote on Pinterest: “The couples that are ‘meant to be’ are the ones who go through everything that is meant to tear them apart and come out even stronger than they were before.” For Lindsey and Jorge, for a part of their relationship, that hurdle, that obstacle, was distance. They met at work, fell in love, and then things got tricky, with Jorge having to return for Mexico and Lindsey staying here. But their love was strong, and, with the support of their family, they eventually managed to get everything sorted out and tie the knot. And I was lucky enough to cover their beautiful and sunny wedding day with Bowen. Lindsey and Jorge are people you can’t not like: joyful and caring, they welcomed us as if we were family, right from the beginning. And so when I sent Lindsey the video and she admitted it made her tear up, we felt good, like we’d actually successfully captured, in some little, simple way, a bit of what their love is about. I really hope you guys have a beautiful life as husband and wife… and we look forward to sending you anniversary gifts now and then!
One of the really fun things about doing what we do in this day and age is that it’s become so easy to share ideas and images. Not only our own stuff, but other people’s as well! And so a few months back, Paul and myself joined Pinterest and started pinning away, and getting inspired. There really is so much beautiful stuff on there!
When I started really getting into it, I thought: wow, this is neat for me to keep track of what I like, but it would also be a great way to share resources, tips, tricks, and other things, with our couples. And so for the past little while, I’ve been telling everyone about those awesome boards of ours. We hope you enjoy them, and that, who knows, maybe some of the things you see on there make it into your wedding!
Warning: Pinterest is seriously addictive! It can consume you, and you may find yourself pinning in the middle of the night to try and combat insomnia. But don’t be fooled: you can never pin enough, it’s like a bottomless pit… of awesomeness!
I’ve put links to some of our boards below. Just click and enjoy. And send us a link to your boards if you also pin!
We’ve been excited about posting this one on the blog for a while because, quite honestly, we think these are some of the nicest wedding video images we’ve made since launching One² Film a few months back. Marsha and John were such an amazing couple and, when their edit turned out even better than we expected, we thought ‘wow, this needs to be shared’. A few emails later, when our friend over at The Wedding Co. proposed to feature the edit on their blog the following day, we were totally stoked!
All in all, I guess all I wanted to do with this blog post is communicate our level of excitement about Marsha and John’s wedding highlights film; they’re amazing people, we wish them all the best, and hope that these images of their classy, green, and contemporary wedding will wow you as much they wow-ed us. Enjoy!
We featured Ewa and Alex’s engagement photos on the blog on June 5th, but as you can imagine, video sometimes takes a little bit more time, so it wasn’t quite ready right there and then. But a month after, it’s ready and approved by Ewa (and Alex, I imagine… hehe!) and I can share it with you! This is a no-dialogue/interview edit. To me, the neatest thing about it is Ewa’s slightly off-key choice of music (‘The Only One’ by The Black Keys)… at first I thought it may be too dramatic, but after cutting images to it, and giving the piece a slightly vintage-y look, I actually really like the effect!
Well, I won’t keep you any longer… just wanted to share. Maybe it’ll give some of you ideas (i.e. if you really like your dogs, why not bring them along?). If you like it, leave a comment or share it. Or ask questions if you want? In any case, that’s it for now. Take care! – Christian
As you may have noticed if you visited our Vimeo page lately, we have a new wedding demo reel. Well, as I was making this, I thought it would be nice to share a little bit of ’how the magic happens’ with our readers. Sure, I’m not going to reveal any life-changing secrets, but I will share some insight as to how I work and think when it comes to video editing.
For starters, some of you might want to know that we shoot all our video on Canon DSLR cameras (5D Mark IIs and 7Ds) and edit in the good old Final Cut Pro 7 (no, I don’t use FCP X… it has its uses, but I find it doesn’t work well for professional use).
So, how does the process work? First of all, for something like the demo reel, it starts with a little bit of digging around our gazillion hard drives to find all of the final exports of the weddings I want to feature. Once I have found all that, I simply import into Final Cut. The next step is the most time consuming: I look at every single edit again and again and try to find the moments that are reel-worthy, then cut them up from that clip and paste them on a new sequence. By the end of this, I have a twenty minute clip that no one would ever want to watch because it would be repetitive and incoherent, so now I have to start making decisions.
I guess the first question a good businessperson would ask himself would be ‘what do people want to see in this reel?’ Well, that is a valid question, but I prefer to think of it in terms of ‘What story do I want to tell?’ and ‘How do I want to tell it?’ This is what will determine the content and style of my edit. In a sense, this is what will gives us an artistic, or at least narrative edge. Now don’t get me wrong, I work a lot on the business end so that we actually have clients, and to ensure they are happy, but when it comes to editing, it’s all creativity, and my first instinct is based on a no-compromise mindset.
In the case of this demo reel, the concept that drove everything was the following: to take all of the weddings and make something that would intertwine these different stories into a single narrative. Basically, I wanted to express the universality of the feelings and moments that one goes through on a wedding day by creating a single piece that would intercut between different couples and still feel like ‘one’ story.
For example, the ‘groom putting on the watch’ segment (from 1:36 to 1:50) is a total ‘cheat’ and an example of the montage technique. Thus, I create an illusion of continuity, one that works because, as viewers, we create links between the things we see even if they have no actual link (I didn’t invent this, Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein and Lev Kuleshov did). For example, if you saw a shot of a child, and then a hoard of coyotes, you feel concern, be worried about the child.
In the case of the demo reel I am editing, the illusion is not completely seamless – mostly because the lighting was very different in each case. Yet, there is a sense that all these guys are together in time and space : to the viewer, it kind of looks as if Allan was getting a new watch, and Patrick’s dad was happy for him. Conceptually, they are going through the same thing…
These are the types of thing I do with editing, and the whole demo reel is full of moments when I tried to cut things together so that they would read as continuous story elements as opposed to a series of beautiful images with nothing tying them together.
A quick note about sound: we usually mix some ambient sound into the edit, but here I chose to go with music only in order to get a ‘cleaner’ result. I used a track by Norwegian Recycling called ’8 Become 1′. The reason why I went with this song is because it has a very upbeat mood, while having enough variations to allow for a dynamic cut.
Once I have all of the ‘parts’ working, I’m done and all that’s left to do let the video export, convert it to a web-friendly version (using Compressor on Mac), and upload to our favourite sharing site, Vimeo.
So that’s kind of the basic idea of how I edit a demo reel! Now to conclude, I want to highlight that is actually kind of fun. Sure, it’s a lot of work, and it’s a lot of hours spent staring at footage I’ve seen millions of times, but then I always reach a point in my edit when I catch myself smiling while editing. When I think about it, I realize it’s because I’m reliving the day with the couples, smiling at the beautiful candid moments on screen, and sometimes laughing when I know there was a funny joke made by some silly best man… So I guess I must thank you to all our couples for making this process easier. At the end of the day, there is no editing magic per se, but I do feel like what makes the edits good is the care one puts into it – and both Paul and myself really do feel blessed to be doing what we do. And everybody knows that’s when good things happen!
I hope this has been a fun post to read. I rarely write behind-the-scenes stuff, so I would love to get your feedback, as well as any questions or comments you may have. I love hearing from you and would love to turn this into a discussion rather than an exposé.
In any case, enjoy the new demo reel and remember: sharing is caring!
