Weddingbee PRO

I’ve admired the work of Naomi Raiselle for quite a while now.  Naomi's studio, Generations Cinemastories, produces documentary wedding films in the Boston area.

She has the amazing ability to capture the true spirit of the event and the true essence of the characters involved.  Their work is intimate, unpretentious, real and moving. I asked her to show us an example and tell us a little about the couple and the event.

Lindsey and Nate

Lindsey and Nate came to see us well over a year before their wedding. It was an immediate “click” with these two. They loved our work, and we loved them but they couldn't afford us.  Although we were willing to adjust our rate downward a bit (they were so lovely and SO in love!) there was still just too big of a gap between their budget and our rates.

Throughout the year we heard from Lindsey – and Lindsey heard from us. As we came up with a few new packages, I would contact Lindsey, and Lindsey would tell me that she and Nate were trying to save up.

Not surprisingly (since these things DO tend to work out!) the date remained unbooked, and just a month or so before the wedding, Lindsey's mom called to tell me that she and her husband had decided to give the couple our services as their wedding gift. We were thrilled, and needless to say, when I called Lindsey to tell her we were filming her wedding, she was over the top excited.

After we checked out the Old North Church where the ceremony was to be held, we had some concerns about positions and lighting. All the pews were in high-walled family boxes; the old wood floor creaked loudly with every footstep. We decided to film with 5 cameras: two in the forward most pew boxes on either side of the altar; two in the back of the church and one in the organist's balcony. Most of the time we were all on tripod, but there were few normal angles to film from. When the MOH stepped between my camera and the couple, I had to film the rest of the ceremony with my camera and tripod leaning out of the pew and resting on my forearm.

We loved the lighting in the church and particularly the way Lindsey and her dad looked stepping out of the diffused light of the outdoors and down the aisle where Lindsey was lit from the high windows above her.

Lindsey had told us she loved the retro look of B&W so we chose to shoot a lot of the outside shots in B&W. The thin, rainy mist that covered the city streets gave some great visual textures to these scenes. We also chose to film these shots with a lot of dramatic angles. During the photoshoot, we shot from quite a distance much of the time so as to show the couple in the scene and the scene around the couple.

The reception in the State Room was gorgeous. From the Tiffany blue tables to the cobalt blue scrim with their initialed gobo, the space was made for perfect filming. The scrim formed an amazing background for the dancing – and with the right exposure adjustments and lighting, we could have people in the light or silhouetted against the scrim.

Probably one of my favorite moments in the film is the first dance. This couple danced suspended in their mutual adoration, and it was clear from our shots that they were unaware of anything but one another. I was utterly blown away by the quality of intimacy in that first dance. It is truly one of my favorite wedding scenes.

While making this film, we used a lot of visual effects and differences in tone and texture to highlight the differences in the moods of each sequence. We knew the couple had hired us for our ability to express what we felt, and we all agreed that this highlights clip captured the day.