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We hope everybody had a great holiday! Our blogging has slowed down errr stopped for the past couple weeks BUT we have a great excuse: we got to spend Christmas and New Years in Jamaica!

You can expect a healthy dose of updates to the blog over the next couple weeks with some big changes coming at the end of the month. Only three weeks until our first evolution experience workshop; very exciting.

Milena + Sam had a wonderful winter wedding. Milena setup her bridesmaids with some very stylish winter boots for their march to the church, and everybody braved the cold all day with huge smiles. Their reception was at the Paramount, which is a great venue in its own right, but as a location to share an SDE it is something else. Two large screens drop down from the ceiling on both sides of the room and their sound system really helps convey the feeling of the SDE. With that, on to Milena + Sam’s SDE.

Sam + Milena’s Same-Day Edit from StillMotion on Vimeo.

We wanted to try something that we had never done before, and the wedding of Josh + Laura were the perfect fit. They were open to all of our ideas and we were able to shoot their wedding in a different way, something that was a first for our industry. The differences in how we shot it aren’t as important as the difference in impact the clip has because of our new approach. With that, we would like to share with you a behind the scenes trailer from Josh + Laura’s wedding that was shot entirely with 35mm adapters. This trailer was meant to be a little silly and generate some buzz about what we put together.

StillMotion 2.0 // the revolution // what’s this? from StillMotion on Vimeo.

Tec & Chelsea Petaja
June Seventh, Two-Thousand Eight

{This film was shot by our friend Mat on Super 8mm film.}

Laura + Josh // The All Brevis Wedding // Mexico from StillMotion on Vimeo.

So, what’s all this hype about?

With the newly released Canon 5D MK11 (a dSLR that shoots HD video) starting to get into the hands of consumers, samples of the quality of video this camera can shoot have started popping up all over the internet. In recent weeks this has sent waves of speculation throughout the industry. Some call this camera a ‘game changer’ with photographers now being able to shoot high quality video with the exact same camera body and lenses that they use to shoot photo. Many feel that this poses a serious threat to videographers, while some videographers are also looking at this as an opportunity to start adding on photography to remain competitive.
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Jess and Ryan really put the pressure on us to find a cool spot to shoot, and we couldn’t let this chance pass by.

After showing their SDE around 11PM, I headed back to the studio and got ready to fly out at 5am the next morning for another wedding that day. While I certainly wouldn’t recommend trying to shoot two weddings, in two days, in two countries - Anita and Sander were just so excited that we had to find a way to make it work. A special thanks to Casey from Mind|Castle Studios for flying down to Cali ahead of time with Michael just in case I didn’t make it in time. Not only is their work very tight, but Casey was a very cool guy to work with.

Here is the SDE from Jess and Ryan’s wedding. Thanks again for having us and a special thanks to Ryan for laying down your white Hugo Boss suit in the name of great imagery. For those who are curious, John got up at 5am the day of the wedding to shoot that sunrise.

 
Jessice + Ryan’s SDE - Hamilton Ontario from StillMotion on Vimeo.

Jake and Lisa had a really wonderful wedding. I love shooting weddings that revolve around a culture other than what I grew up in. It’s extremely interesting to learn new traditions and see different ceremonies. Jake and Lisa are both Korean and almost every aspect of their day was in their native tongue. None of us speak a word of Korean; as you can imagine this poses some very interesting and unique hurdles. However, in true StillMotion style, I think we crossed them with flying colours. We all worked extremely hard together as one entity to pool ideas and create one of our best SDEs yet. Patrick did an amazing job of editing it together in about 2 hours.

Enjoy.

Jake + Lisa’s SDE from StillMotion on Vimeo.

What a treat to travel down to Tupelo and be a part of Chase and Betsy’s wedding. Though Betsy denies doing any modeling in her past, we are pretty confident she is a British supermodel. Chase, not to be outdone by Betsy’s talents, had to show us just how well he could hang from a ladder upside-down; and what a cool shot we got.

The superhero of the day though was Chuck Sims, the father of the groom and best man, who found us the best photo-session location to date (an abandoned warehouse) and sent out a small research team to find out who owned it and how we could get in. Chuck also gets superhero points for taking us to a small Southern restaurant to get some yummy BBQ and the tastiest homemade cake we’ve ever tried, and generally just making us feel really at home for our entire trip.

We are still getting the hang of remote Same-Day Edits, but this one really pushed us. What a time crunch- we started at the salon at 6am and the SDE was to be shown at the end of the reception shortly before 4pm. By the time we arrived at the reception and started editing, we had about 90 minutes before we needed to prepare everything to be shown. Chuck also owns Chuck Sims Images (CSI) and is a professional photographer in Tupelo shooting mainly seniors, which just added to the pressure. With such a time crunch, Mike and I had to both edit during different parts of the day, and it certainly is a good thing we did or we likely wouldn’t have been done on time.
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We are so fortunate to be surrounded day in and day out with so much positive energy, so much anticipation and excitement, and so much love and caring. It is rather ironic, and gratifyingly so, to put together a demo with a song about no more happy endings.

Weddings can be somewhat of uncertain events with so many details to plan and not enough time to go around. As it all starts to come together and the big day approaches, the stress level often rises and we wonder if everything will come together the way it has been dreamed about for years (well at least for the brides…) I view this piece as being very inspirational- a celebration of so many happy endings.

When we set out to create this compilation of our work this past summer, we really weren’t sure what to expect. What we ended up with was much more than we could have imagined.

Welcome to StillMotion!

Welcome to StillMotion - the Demo from StillMotion on Vimeo.

A link to the HD version on Vimeo.

We first heard about Griffen over a year ago when Amy + Alex’s highlights were featured on Weddingbee. Our first exposure to her very affectionate personality was through one of her many blog comments:

“If you were anywhere in my time zone I would hire you for my wedding, my trash the dress, my milestone birthdays, my future children’s milestone birthdays, and I’d even have it in my will that you should film my funeral. Okay, so that was a little morbid and creepy. I’m just so head over heels in love with your work.”

I emailed her saying that while we were a little iffy about the funeral part, we would certainly love to fly out and be a part of her wedding.

Griffen and Curtis had a very intimate celebration at V. Sattui winery in St. Helena. Their ceremony was outside in a gorgeous stone courtyard while their reception was in a very rustic wine cellar. Their wedding was contemporary with a very unique vintage vibe in there (even down to the tunes at the reception).

Thanks to Augie Chang (their awesome photographer) who was a blast to work with, as well as Lisa from BVWeddings, for all of her help in coordinating the event (which is oh so important with an SDE).

Enjoy their SDE, and good luck making it through their vows.

Griffen + Curtis Same-Day Edit, St. Helena, CA from StillMotion on Vimeo.

It was quite the treat to be involved in Darshan and Raina’s day this past summer. I don’t think I have ever seen so much happen in what feels like an extremely short 15 hours. They celebrated many Indian traditions, all of which were both fascinating to view and inspiring to shoot. Traditions such as the Bharat in which Darshan rode in on a horse while his family danced around him, or the Vhadu Agamana in which Raina entered the ceremony site and was separated from Darshan by only a thin sheet held between them. When the sheet was dropped, they viewed each other for the first time and placed (or in their case, threw) rice on each other’s head signifying that they will stay together through thick and thin.

Here is a trailer to give you an idea of exactly what we were up to.

Darshan + Raina Columbus, OH Wedding Trailer from StillMotion on Vimeo.