Shot with a Canon 5D Mk II, most­ly using my new 70–200mm f/2.8 IS II. Be sure to watch in high def­i­n­i­tion, and let the video load com­plete­ly before play­ing because the pac­ing and momen­tum are cru­cial.

Editing took about 25 hours, and I’m super hap­py with the way it turned out. There were so many great moments, and the footage has a won­der­ful­ly vis­cer­al feel to it. The most chal­leng­ing part of post-pro­cess­ing was colour bal­anc­ing all the footage, which I had to do shot-by-shot. When you’re film­ing for an entire day, you tend to get a huge vari­ety of light sources and tem­per­a­tures.

A note about the tea cer­e­monies. The first one was the Chinese ver­sion, which allows rel­a­tives to hand red pock­ets or jew­el­ery (usu­al­ly gold and jade) to the new cou­ple. The sec­ond one was Korean, named Paebaek, and is much more elab­o­rate. Relatives line up for a for­mal bow, tea serv­ing, then throw a hand­ful of dates (rep­re­sent­ing girls) and chest­nuts (rep­re­sent­ing boys) to be caught by the bride and groom with a blan­ket. The num­ber of dates and chest­nuts caught sig­ni­fies how many chil­dren they’ll have. No sur­prise that grand­pa only grabbed chest­nuts.

Then the bride is giv­en one of the dates they caught, and the groom has to take a bite out of it from her mouth. The per­son who ends up with the big­ger piece is the one who will wear the pants (which is why you see the bride tena­cious­ly try­ing to keep the big­ger piece for her­self). At the end, the groom has to car­ry his moth­er and moth­er-in-law around the cer­e­mo­ny table, then car­ry his new bride out of the hall.

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