Weddingbee PRO

When it comes to wedding coverage, whether it is photo or cinema, why is it just one day? Wor obvious reasons, the wedding day itself has tremendous value, but why do we limit ourselves to just that?

We often cover the bride and groom preparing things, such as presents or their vows, the morning of the wedding. Something has always irked with the timing of it all. Let’s say Chrystalle decides to write her vows to Michael the morning of the wedding. That is something that we would certainly focus on and would potentially be a big part of their SDE or main feature (assuming it meant something to them). But what if Chrystalle decides to put together her vows the day before the wedding // does it not have just as much meaning? Does it not contribute to the story just as much?

There are so many details that go into every wedding, but we often only see them when they come together. Before the bride can put on the dress, she had to go shopping, choose the right one, and go for several dress fittings. Each and every detail has a similar story. As story tellers, we started feeling like we were only capturing the tip of the iceberg and leaving so much behind.

With that the idea of Michael + Chrystalle’s film was born. We always ask ourselves // what do we not see at every single wedding we shoot? As we look at our own paradigms, one of the biggest things we never considered was why we weren’t looking beyond the wedding day itself.

Over a tasty east Asian inspired Indian lunch, we started plotting with Michael and Chrystalle. The idea for their film was rather simple. The execution of it, as is often the case, wasn’t nearly as straightforward as we had originally thought.

The plan was to have five of us travel to New York for the week before their wedding. For the entire week we would cover anything and everything related to their wedding that would add to their story. That meant the flowers being made, trips to pick up the tux, finishing off the wedding presents at home, picking up the jewelry, the final dress fitting, the rehearsal, and so much more.

When we contacted some of our industry friends and told them about the film, we got some lovely reinforcements sent to our hotel.

Canon sent us a 14mm rectilinear lens for some amazing wide shots, as well as a 300 f2.8 to get super tight while staying at the back of the church (that’s 480mm on the 7d cropped sensor). Cinevate sent us their prototype jib (which Mark practically cuddled with the entire trip as he couldn’t get enough of it). And Tiffen/Steadicam sent us some lighting for all of our interviews with the key wedding friends (such as the coordinator, priest, florist).

Any questions about the project, just leave them in the comments and we will be sure to answer them in a follow up post with some behind the scenes.

michael + chrystalle // a wedding is more than one day from stillmotion on Vimeo.