MediaBall

They say that you can never meet the love of your life at the bar, which poses the question… are good people not allowed to hang out at bars? Who are these mysterious critics that make up these so-called facts? In this case, the critics have been silenced! Paolo and Carmen did in fact meet at a bar in Ottawa. Paolo’s smooth words and compliments on Carmen’s cowboy boots won her over and they have been together ever since.

One of the many things that Paolo and Carmen have in common is their insatiable love for pizza, so it was only natural that they grabbed a pie during some downtime on their wedding day. Those of you who follow us know that we love incorporating these types of moments as they represent our couples’ common interests and stories. With that being said, how could we not incorporate the very cowboy boots that brought them together? Using our cinevate atlas in the opening clip to track from Carmen’s treasured cowboy boots (YEEHAW!) to her wedding shoes is a small representation of their story.

So for all you ladies who think that you will never find your husband at the bar, this story may change how you feel. Guys, if you want to woo a girl, compliment her footwear (this is not a fact, but there’s no harm in trying!).

Enjoy.

There are many important moments to capture during a wedding. One very important task is to capture these moments as they happen naturally as if we are not even present.  Whether it is the kitchen staff at Sala San Marco preparing pasta dishes or the bride opening a gift, capturing natural movements, reactions and conversations make for a more realistic/cinematic product. Asking people to reenact a moment just isn’t the same.  Let’s face it… not everyone is an actor.

We strive to make our viewers feel connected to our short films. Remembering to include ambient/background sounds to our shorts help connect the viewer to what they are watching. For example, making sure to include the sounds of the plates clanking while the pasta dishes are being prepared somewhat puts the viewer in the kitchen. Not including these sounds slightly disconnects the viewer.

During a wedding it is very easy to lose site of the importance of sound. A lot of attention goes towards getting great footage, but what is great footage if you don’t have the sound to match?  It is important not to fall in to this habit. It is crucial to capture speeches, vows, background noises and conversation to the best of your ability. This can be achieved with multiple cameras using products like Rode microphones and other recording devices like the Tascam DR-100 or a Zoom recorder. You would be surprised at how many viewers are more annoyed with poor sound quality than poor cinematography and it is amazing how many viewers will recognize clear/crisp audio before they recognize a great shot.

Over the course of this wedding season we’ve worked with many different couples who all share different stories and special moments that are pretty interesting to learn about. One of the Engagement Films (E-Films) that we recently showed, Lazers & Mullets, is a short piece about a typical Saturday morning/afternoon for Lacey and Zeyad during the Summer.

Lacey’s classic style Baseball uniform and Zeyad’s “New Euro” Mullet brought back visions of our childhood and screamed out “the good old 80′s”.. This trip down memory lane was what inspired the colour & tone used to grade this piece in post production. When editing Lazers & Mullets, I was constantly reminded of the look and feel of many tv shows growing up and really felt that giving it some old school lovin while colour grading would help translate that feel into this piece.

Using various colours and tones really add an extra dimension to film and help communicate the feel/emotion we are looking to convey. A great deal of time was spent on achieving this look in post production as each individual clip was colour graded to add to the story we wanted to tell….

We choose to grade each project with programs like Apple Color, a platform that allows total creativity, enabling us to reflect a specific feel for each individual project. Although it does have a handful of presets, we refrain from taking the short cut and using them (and other software packages that offer preset colour schemes) as we feel it can too easily generalize your work and realistically takes away from the entire creativity process. Colour grading our work is pretty much the icing on the cake. It’s one of the final touches that goes into creating a short film and should be used with the intent of evoking certain emotions rather than cutting and pasting numerous preset colour templates to make a project look cool. So we hope you enjoy it and get that 80′s feel too!

We’d also like to give a shout out to Fawzi O’tell from Tutti Fruitti and Eli, Bruce and Laila from Silver Scissors Salon for allowing us to bring our cameras into their establishments. They were all super accommodating which made things so much more fun! Thanks again, you guys rock.

Yours Truly

Many of you may remember Pietro proposing to his Girlfriend Lara as she arrived home from vacation a couple of years back. Well we were proud to be a part of Pietro’s proposal and were thrilled to also be a part of their wedding day.

This trailer was inspired by the story of how Lara and Pietro met on the playground many years ago at their Junior High School. On the morning of their wedding day, we took Pietro and his entourage to the very same basketball court where Lara first met him.

Throughout the years Lara and Pietro’s friendship grew stronger and blossomed into something very special. Their wedding cake inspired the final shot of this trailer, as there is quite a history behind the figurines sitting on top of it. So needless to say tying these figurines into their first Dance just made so much sense.

Congratulations to Lara and Pietro on a life long story! All the best in the years to come.

We hear time and time again that there is only so much one can do with a wedding video, due to the similarities and routines of the day. In our opinion we feel that there’s so much that goes unnoticed during a wedding and therefore we couldn’t disagree more. All it takes is a little thinking outside of the box to turn a generic wedding video into a truly unique wedding film. It all starts when we first meet the couple we are working with and really ask ourselves who they are? We want to know everything they love doing together, what they love about each other and how they came to be a couple (the list goes on and on). When all is said and done, it’s our job to piece together everything we’ve learned about them and bring these attributes out when filming.

Lets rewind a little more than a decade when Sabrina got her first job at Dairy Queen and met Stevan for the very first time. At 14 years old she called it, saying that one day she’d marry Stevan. Now if I were to tell you the entire story, we’d probably have to spend an entire evening talking about it. So take a minute, sit back and enjoy Sabrina and Stevan’s trailer and you’ll get a glimpse of what a great couple we have come to know.

Filmed with the Canon 5d & 7d, using a Cinevate Linear Tracking System and DSLR Shoulder Rig (cinevate.com)

We are always trying to come up with new and creative ideas to weave our couples stories in and out. Having an escalator right outside the salon gave us a different way of establishing Shannon’s preparation sequence from a shoppers perspective. FYI Don’t ever attempt to film in a Starbucks. Lattes might start flying and the manager will chase you out with a broom (that may be a little over exaggerated… just a little). Ya Ya we know all the rules and regulations but we love the little details so it was worth a shot.

We got to work with some really great people, Kim Ing from Kim Ing Photography and Nancy from Wedecor.

All and all it was a great day and we wish Shannon and Michael all the best.

This message has been approved by:

Adriano

p.s. Big shout out to El Dodgerato Raise the uncoordinated roof!

Music: The Rock and the Tide – Joshua Radin