Media Ball Blog

Boots, Bars and Pizza

Adriano — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 02:27:06 +0000

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.

The Adventures of G&R..

Mark — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 01:07:20 +0000

Gloria and Robnell have quite a unique history with one another. This Film was heavily influenced by their struggles and team effort to make their relationship work over the last 5 years.

As Rob spoke about the first time he met Gloria and gave us his account of their story, we started to understand that this was not your everyday relationship. Although they share many similarities in their cultural upbringings, Gloria and Rob came from two very different parts of the world and were constantly faced with the challenges of keeping a long distant relationship healthy through many up’s and downs. Rob shared his thoughts on adapting to the weather, a foreign language and lifestyle here in Canada but this is one of the elements that we felt brought Gloria and Rob closer together.

The theme behind Gloria and Robnell’s film was the back and forth team work displayed for one another which seemed to be reciprocated by both of their families. To play on this, their story was built up not only focusing on Rob and Gloria’s joint effort to deliver Rob’s speech, in both Spanish and English, but tying in the similarities of each of their morning preparations as they prepared to tie the knot and live life together. This also influenced the music selection which seemed to fit quite nicely with Robnell’s speech.. If you listen carefully enough, you’ll hear how the song compliments both Rob’s speech about Canada’s cold weather, and the visuals of him putting his shoes on etc.. Hopefully you can pick out other subtle messages worked into the mix

Yours Truly

ps. a big thanks to both the Miv Photography and Marry Me Productions crew for their support on this day.

Sounds Good!

Adriano — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 19:03:37 +0000

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.

The Amsted Advantage

Mark — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 08:17:33 +0000

We worked alongside the team at Amsted Construction for the better part of 2 weeks to talk about the Amsted Advantage and really dig deep to find out what it meant. We produced a few pieces with the material we put together, one of which will be shown on the Jumbo Screen during an Ottawa Senators Home Game this year.

After several meetings with Amsted President, Steve Barkhouse, I found myself back at the office with a massive stack of reading material to get myself familiarized with the history and present day of Amsted Construction. As I read through a pretty thick stack of magazine articles and newspaper clippings, I began to piece together certain commonalities between them. I started to realize how much this tight nit team cared about their clients and how they truly took pride in each project they worked on.

Filming on the various job sites gave us a chance to get to know some of the Amsted team a little better and confirmed everything I had read after those first few meetings. Before long I really got a sense of what it meant to be an Amsted Construction Employee… and client. Just spending a few hours with each of the clients showcased in this promo piece really allowed me to see things from their perspective. It was pretty clear that the foundation of this company has been built around the customers needs. In every case the team at Amsted went over and beyond expectations, which often enough is something that can be quite hard to find in the industry these days.

After a pretty hectic two weeks of research, filming and editing, this is one of the few pieces we produced.

Yours Truly

A little BHS with the CanvasPop Team

Mark — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 16:56:34 +0000

We’ve worked on quite a few projects with the team at CanvasPop over the last two years and have had the chance to see how cool it is to work with this company. While we were producing other projects for them, we thought it would be fun to put this Behind the Scenes look together.

We didn’t get a chance to incorporate my footage spinning tracks on their the DJ Booth (might I add which is suspended in mid air). You do catch a split second glimpse of it at about 45 seconds into the piece while I’m whip panning from one side of the room to the other from the stair case. Maybe that footage will pop up somewhere else in the near future

Yours Truly

Philadelphia Flyer’s Claude Giroux

Mark — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 08:15:56 +0000

What does it take to be one of the NHL’s top point leaders? If you ask Claude Giroux of the Philadelphia Flyers, he’ll probably tell you, hours of intense workout sessions, a disciplined diet, focus on setting new goals and a little R&R before the end of the day.

We spent time filming Claude to piece together a story about his off ice summer routine. As Claude’s day started off we followed him to his workout session, “Train Like a Freak” designed by fitness Expert Tony Greco. It was important for us to jump in the mix during this workout session which gave us the opportunity to get up close and really give you the feeling of how intense each exercise is. Shooting with Canon DSLR’s really gave us an advantage to get as close to the action as possible. In between exercises Claude actually told me he was afraid I was going to get hit by his skipping rope because I was so close to him.. if you look close enough, you can catch his rope just skimming my lens at 1:24….Glad I didn’t get hit!

On this project we teamed up with Miv and Melissa from Miv Photography who played a key part in the storyboard process while also shooting both stills and cinema mediums for us.

This piece can also being seen on claudegiroux28.com

Music licensed through withetiquette.com

Yours Truly

Baby Tristan

Mark — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 05:09:08 +0000

This was one of our Short Films that we produced earlier in 2011. Generally we don’t film baptisms… but c’mon, look at that smile and arms in the air.. how could we refuse! So we hung out with Tristan and his family for a while prior to his baptism to add a build up to the story. We filmed on two separate days to blend in the story of the bibles as center pieces, including the rosaries and candles which were all given out to each guest at the baptism. The interesting thing about tristan’s baptism was that the speeches that took place at the reception just seemed to compliment our story line perfectly.

Yours Truly

Train Like A Freak

Adriano — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 05:12:53 +0000

Behind the scenes photographs from an recent project with Philadelphia Flyers Player,Claude Giroux, working with Tony Greco and his successful Off-Ice Hockey Training And Conditioning program. A Collaborative Production with Miv Photography. Big thanks to photographer, Melissa Menzies from MIV Photography, who was on location documenting the production that day. And to Tony’s public relations liaison, Maggie Cordina from Design Wiz. Stay tuned for the film.

Lazers & Mullets ??

Mark — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 16:37:53 +0000

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

Some “Things” just make sense..

Mark — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 22:50:38 +0000

Creating short films that are relevant to the individuals and entities we work with has to be one of the most intriguing aspects of what we do. Engagement films (EFilms) are always a lot of fun to be a part of, not just because they give us the chance to spend quality “pre-wedding” time with our couple, but the fact that preparing for a project like this gives us the perfect opportunity to figure out who our couple really is.

We are interested in learning about what brought these two individuals to the next level, where it all started and how they came to be. Genuinely being curious about what makes their relationship work (and sometimes what doesn’t… haha) allows us to create compelling stories that adequately reflect each couple.

Our first meeting with Maninder and Gurprit was a real treat. After grabbing a bite to eat and discussing their wedding details, we could really get a feel for the dynamic between them and knew their EFilm should reflect their upbeat nature. So on to the drawing board and away we went…

As several months passed and their big day finally arrived, we find our selves sitting infront of a big screen at Maninder and Gurprit’s reception, experiencing their EFilm with 500 friends and family members. It’s at this point in the evening when it really becomes worth it. Its not just about having a creative piece that reflects who you are as a couple (although essential).. but we believe the real treat is being able to experience this with the people in your life that are closest to you. If you think about it, when else are all these people going to be together in one room celebrating you! So its during those few minutes where everyone’s attention is drawn to our couples story being played out on the big screen, that we take in the moment and our couples reactions that makes it all worth while.

Yours Truly

Song Licensed through With Etiquette