Posts tagged with "projects"

Jenny + Dave — Wedding Day

A spe­cial film for a spe­cial cou­ple.

I was giv­en the chance to film the wed­ding of Jenny and Dave on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Everything about the day was gor­geous, from the trop­i­cal weath­er to the bur­geoun­ing cen­tre­pieces1 to the torch­lit recep­tion. It all came togeth­er to cre­ate an atmos­phere of sub­lime charm, and I had so much fun cap­tur­ing it all.

I make each wed­ding film as acces­si­ble as pos­si­ble, so any­one can get a sense of the day even if they weren’t there. But I also include cer­tain things that would be under­stood by only the peo­ple involved. In this film it was shots such as an uncle doing an hilar­i­ous bump-and-grind on the dance floor, or the bride tear­ing up while writ­ing her speech, or the father-in-law say­ing a few words while firm­ly hold­ing the groom’s hand dur­ing the tea cer­e­mo­ny. Details such as the lat­ter may not seem like much to an out­sider, but fam­i­ly and friends at the wed­ding would under­stand how such a small phys­i­cal dis­play of affec­tion can mean so much.

This was by far my most chal­leng­ing wed­ding film to make, but it was well worth it. For a while, it became my rea­son for liv­ing, the one I want­ed to be remem­bered for, and my goal was to deliv­er this film before I died. There’s a piece of my soul in it, so I can’t say how lucky I am to have been giv­en this oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate this for Dave and Jenny, and how I hap­py I am to know they deserve it.

(A big thank-you to wed­ding pho­tog­ra­ph­er Mike Adrian, who was a delight to work with, and taught me a thing or two about how to pack for des­ti­na­tion wed­dings.)

  1. The Four Season’s now has a rule that lim­its the size of the cen­tre­pieces, because they would some­times catch the wind and fall over. This was the last wed­ding at the Four Seasons to have such mas­sive ones, the rule being grand­fa­thered in, as Jenny and Dave planned the wed­ding right before it came into effect. [↩]

Vikki & Dan — Wedding Day

Filmed anoth­er love­ly wed­ding in the Fall. The cer­e­mo­ny was small and inti­mate with only a hand­ful of peo­ple invit­ed, tak­ing place at the tiny look­out on Rockcliffe Parkway, while the recep­tion was a great big par­ty at the RA Centre. One of the most unique things about this wed­ding were the paper lanterns giv­en to all the guests. By the end of night the sky was full of them, drift­ing away beau­ti­ful­ly above us.

It was anoth­er chance to work with the won­der­ful Liz, who is always on the top of my list of pho­tog­ra­phers I rec­om­mend for wed­dings. Not only do her pho­tos end up look­ing amaz­ing, she always works with me when cap­tur­ing all the impor­tant details, instead of against me, as I’ve noticed with some pho­tograpehrs. Check out the pho­tos in her sneak peak.

candy sushi

Also of note were the wed­ding favours, each box con­tain­ing a pair of can­dy sushi. The maki was made by rolling a flat sheet of Rice Krispie squares over a fill­ing of Gummy Worms, wrapped with Fruit Roll-Up. The nigiri had gum­my sharks as the fish, also tied togeth­er with a strip of Fruit By The Foot. Small, bite-sized packs of cute and deli­cious.

Wu Wei 2

Wu Wei, my free WordPress theme, is cur­rent­ly the 5th most pop­u­lar theme on WordPress.com, with over 550,000 blogs using it at the moment (not includ­ing ones being self-host­ed), and it’s become so suc­cess­ful that the admin­is­tra­tors have made it one of the default themes for new sign-ups. By far the most com­mon sup­port ques­tion I get is why the WordPress.com ver­sion isn’t avail­able for WordPress.org users (some have even offered to pay for an update), so I’m very pleased to announce the release of ver­sion 2 for self-host­ed blogs.

The theme has been updat­ed to take advan­tage of new fea­tures that came with WordPress 3.x, such as cus­tom head­er and cus­tom back­ground APIs, cus­tom menu man­age­ment, as well as var­i­ous under-the-hood fix­es and improve­ments. Tags and com­ments have also been includ­ed on the front page, to bring bet­ter stan­dard­iza­tion across WordPress.com and WordPress.org ver­sions.

People have asked me why I don’t charge for such a theme, see­ing as how I’ve poured a tremen­dous amount of time and ener­gy into some­thing used by so many peo­ple. I can only say that Wu Wei has brought me much luck since its release, and thanks to it’s pop­u­lar­i­ty, I’ve met many great peo­ple1, received new design work, and even had a chance to vis­it Britain — things I don’t think would have been pos­si­ble if Wu Wei was a paid theme.

  1. There was even a case of an old ex-girl­friend find­ing me when she decid­ed use Wu Wei before she dis­cov­ered who made it. [↩]

Geneviève + James — Wedding Day

Interested in hir­ing me? Check out my port­fo­lio.

Earlier this month, I had the plea­sure of film­ing Geneviève and Jamie on their wed­ding day. It was a beau­ti­ful out­door cer­e­mo­ny in the coun­try with only about 50 peo­ple, and a veg­an din­ner for the recep­tion.

One of the inter­est­ing things I got to see was the sock dance, an old French-Canadian tra­di­tion where the eldest unmar­ried sib­ling has to don a pair of ugly socks (sym­bol­iz­ing their cold feet) and do a sil­ly dance. People throw mon­ey at him or her, which is then col­lect­ed for the new­ly mar­ried cou­ple.

I decid­ed to keep the grad­ing nat­ur­al cause there are so many vibrant colours in each scene — from tat­toos, hair dye, clothes, foliage, and dec­o­ra­tions — that I want­ed to bring out for a light­heart­ed, play­ful mood. Goddammit I love grad­ing; it’s become my favourite part of the process. You can set so many kinds of tones with colour alone.

The colours also led me to decide on using Beirut’s “Postcards from Italy” for the song, as the ukulele and horns empha­size that fes­tive feel­ing won­der­ful­ly.

I also got to work with Liz, a pho­tog­ra­ph­er who’s as fan­tas­tic1 as she is con­sid­er­ate. So far, she’s been the only one to say to me, “Tell me if I get in your way”, before I could say it to her. Guess who I’m refer­ring if any­one asks me for a wed­ding pho­tog­ra­ph­er rec­om­men­da­tion.

Sometimes I study the films of video­g­ra­phers I admire, and I’m inspired by their style but it nev­er feels right when I try to achieve the same for my films. They rely on edit­ing to make their films inter­est­ing, and the films end up look­ing posed or unnat­ur­al. I’ve real­ized that I have to fol­low my own style — telling a sto­ry by cap­tur­ing the beau­ty in the sim­plic­i­ty — because that’s what I’ve been try­ing to do in words and pho­tos my whole life.

  1. She has a pre­view on her blog. [↩]

Spanish Romance

To be hon­est, I’d nev­er heard of Spanish Romance until this year. Once I found out it was a clas­si­cal stan­dard, I start­ed see­ing it on all these CDs by respect­ed gui­tarists and com­pi­la­tion albums of “clas­si­cal greats”. It seems like any­one learn­ing clas­si­cal gui­tar will try to tack­le it at some point, seduced by such an ele­gant melody. I have no clas­si­cal aspi­ra­tions, and even I fell for it.

I fig­ure I’d record this before I cut off my nails cause I’ve been grow­ing them for about two months1 and I’m com­plete­ly sick of them. They clack on my key­board and iPad, and I always have to be annoy­ing­ly care­ful about not break­ing them. Unfortunately, this song also sounds way bet­ter with some bright­ness to it when it’s not played with actu­al nylon strings; I’m still using a set of Silk and Steel, and there’s a cer­tain fat­ness to the sound when you real­ly dig into them.

I’ve only had Larissa for six months now, but it feels more like six years. There’s so much famil­iar­i­ty in the wood and glossy curves. Even when I’m try­ing out a gui­tar sev­er­al times the price of what she would cost, it nev­er feels as nice.

  1. Although halfway through I cut them down to 1/4 length and lost a lot of growth cause I thought they were inter­fer­ing with my rest-stroke. Turns out the prob­lem was actu­al­ly in my tech­nique. Oops. [↩]