Behind the Scenes....RAW Footage

Ever wonder what the "raw" footage looks and sounds like in a wedding film ? 

Most people are fairly familiar with what Wedding Photography is all about, and often know what to look for in their photographer. At the same time, Wedding Video or Cinematography is still a bit of a black art. A big part of great wedding cinematography is crafting a cohesive story to go along with beautiful images of your wedding day. Anyone can go through the raw footage, cut in the "pretty" pictures, throw a sappy piece of music on it, post it to the web as a trailer, and call it a day. Our process is a bit more complicated. The first thing we do when we get back to the office, is review the raw footage, and start to put together "sequences" or "scenes". The footage above is an example of a sequence of shots that will most likely end up in the final film, in a more edited form. On the day, we may film each set-up multiple times....pan right...pan left....tilt up....tilt down.....camera moving.....camera steady....etc, as many ways as we can get the images in the allotted time. We then take the similar shots and put them together as kind of a virtual notebook. What we are looking for are what shots we really like, and what ones can be edited, or "cut", next to each other, to properly tell a story. (More importunely, we find the audio we need to drive the story, but thats a post for another day). The above footage would internally be known as something like "Kissing in the Orchards", anything that helps us identify short sections of the final film. We will generally put an opening shot, like the pan of the park, to set the location for the viewer, known as an "establishing" shot in the film world. We then end it with a nice shot of the couple walking out, kissing, etc. Then, fill in the blanks. While the final film or trailer will certainly not have 7 or 8 similar shots of the couple kissing in the Orchard trees, like the footage above, we do edit them together, and watch it over...and over....and over, to see what shots we really like, and what works together. We then end up with multiple scenes, that we can then put into the right order for the final film.

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The footage above was filmed April 24, 2015, for the Wedding of Sofia and Paulo. It was a beautiful, albeit cold day in Somerset, NJ. The other voice you hear off camera is Lisa Rhinehart from Rhinehart Photography. You can find out more about her on her website at http://www.rhinehartphotography.com

New toys for the new season

While we have been using the Steadicam for years, this wedding season, we have swapped our steady-cam set-ups for the new 3-axis gimbals. These tools have become much more affordable, give us better results, and are much easier to use in the fast paced, hectic environment of a wedding day. In case you are not familiar with a Stedicam, it is a piece of equipment that we can mount our cameras on, which gives us the ability to walk and "Fly" with the camera in a very smooth motion. While there will always be case uses for a full steady cam, these gimbals are much smaller, and quicker to setup, which will help us use them more often during the shoot day. Below is an example of the types of shots that can be accomplished. While this is an extreme case, in that you normally do not do these extended length shots, you can get an idea of the creative ways that we can use these new tools in the future.

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Now coming to you in 4K Ultra High-Definition

One of the benefits of being a smaller company is that we get to make quicker decisions on major changes to the way that we work. Rather than keeping up with the technology, we actually like to stay ahead. Back in the day, we were one of the first Event Video companies offering DVDs (Yes, we have been around that long), then we also made the move to High-Definition films 2 full years before it was somewhat commonplace in the Wedding Video arena. Now in 2015, we are doing it again......as we are now offering the ability to have your wedding filmed AND delivered in 4K Ultra High-Definition !!!

What is 4K, and what does it mean to you ? 4K is simply some technical jargon to describe the new upgraded version of the High Definition your current TV displays. The are approximately 4 times the amount of "pixels" in a UHD (Ultra High Def, or 4K) than your current TV, which means the picture is 4X as sharp. Here is a diagram that  may help you picture it a bit better :

Believe it or not, there were UHD TVs available at Costco and Best Buy this holiday season, for under $1000. This is not up and coming tech, it is here already. By Christmas 2015, it is going to be almost commonplace, as the odds are your next TV will be UHD, whether you know it or not. Hollywood Films in your local movie theater are brought to you in UHD, and now our films can be also.

Because of the extra costs currently involved in capturing, editing, storing, and delivering 4K content is still slightly high, there is an upcharge if you want your wedding to be filmed and delivered in 4K. As always, we like to keep our prices as low as possible, so we are working to a point where all packages are automatically 4K, but we are not there yet. In the meantime, we are going to keep the costs as low as humanly possible, so you can future proof your wedding film, and get the best quality that technology currently allows.