Crystal + Jae-In Wedding Day

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.

Also, this:

dad at wedding

 

13 comments

  1. Wow, it’s gor­geous! I felt like I could put my head in the screen and I’d be there. I haven’t seen your wed­ding pho­tos, but as a video­g­ra­ph­er I’m already sold! Are you avail­able for a wed­ding in sum­mer 2012? Or maybe 2013 since I’m already get­ting ahead of myself.

    • I gen­er­al­ly don’t do wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy unless it’s a spe­cial favour, because I find that peo­ple have cer­tain expec­ta­tions of wed­ding pho­tos.

      On the oth­er hand, peo­ple don’t have any expec­ta­tions with video (it’s a much more dif­fi­cult medi­um, and has only recent­ly become afford­able to pro­duce, so few peo­ple can do it). That means they usu­al­ly give me com­plete cre­ative con­trol, which is very impor­tant to me as an artist.

      No wed­dings booked in 2012 or 2013, so we’ll talk!

      • See!

        If it were a more lucra­tive thing, I’d say you’d found your real call­ing.… but .… up to how you feel since there are many things you do well. (But I real­ly like THIS!)

  2. I would pick­up a Canon 5D MkII in half a hear­beat if that meant I could shoot stuff I was sat­is­fied with. It’s not the cam­era, it’s the skill. I’m teach­ing myself with a pock­et Canon sx110 until I feel i’ve plateaued my skill with it.

    It’s sur­pris­ing how a life­time of expe­ri­ence can be an equal match for raw tal­ent. (no pun intend­ed)

    But I digress. Nice work!

    • The first thing most peo­ple say to me after watch­ing one of my videos is, “You must have an expen­sive cam­era”, and I always laugh to myself at how they think the cam­era does most of the work.

      There’s absolute­ly no prob­lem with using a com­pact cam­era until you’ve got­ten bet­ter with it. I stuck with my pre­vi­ous cam­era for four years (an eter­ni­ty when it comes to elec­tron­ics nowa­days) before I felt like I could real­ly ben­e­fit from an upgrade.

  3. Remarkable video. Feels like I’m right in the mid­dle of it. Crystal is Uncle Dave’s daugh­ter ? How come I don’t see Darren ? The Korean dec­o­ra­tions and gowns are beau­ti­ful.

    • Yep, you got it right. Darren is in the video (four times) as a grooms­man, almost always danc­ing. You may not rec­og­nize him because he’s been work­ing out a lot, so he’s a lot big­ger now.

  4. Great video. Thanks for shar­ing :)

  5. Beautiful video Jeff, very well done!

  6. (Late com­ment, but eh.) You should be very hap­py with the way this came out, this is super amazing/impressive/any great adjec­tives I can think of ever! Great job!

    • Thanks…I’m very pleased with it indeed.

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