Geneviève + James — Wedding Day

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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. [↩]

9 comments
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  1. It’s real­ly great. I sad­ly could­n’t make it to the wed­ding so I’m glad to see the video. It’s real­ly excel­lent.

  2. What a won­der­ful film — I love it! You real­ly cap­tured the day and I know that Genevieve and James will trea­sure this for years. You were absolute­ly won­der­ful to work with and I hope we get to work togeth­er many more times! I will be rec­om­mend­ing you to any­one who is inquir­ing about a video­g­ra­ph­er. :D

  3. Your abil­i­ty to cap­ture the inti­mate details and emo­tion of the day is tru­ly an amaz­ing tal­ent Jeff!
    Hollywood bound? You should be!

  4. I actu­al­ly stum­bled in here by acci­dent. But curi­ous as I am, I start­ed to read what you’ve writ­ten. It sound­ed inter­est­ing so I watched the video you’ve made of the wed­ding. And I must say it real­ly got to me, the whole video con­tained noth­ing but very, very good cam­era angles, cam­era move­ments and great col­ors. I loved all the close ups and extreme close ups, real­ly good. I also liked the way you filmed the sur­round­ings, It gave a big­ger pic­ture of what real­ly hap­pened, small details such as the shoes when they got dressed and the lit­tle girl play­ing on the ground. Thank you, this was real­ly great inspi­ra­tion!

    And yeah, one more ques­tion.. What type of cam­era do you use? I’m look­ing for a new one myself so I just had to ask.. Thank you.

  5. There was a place in the mid­dle (per­haps around her com­ing up the aisle) where I wished for anoth­er song, but then it fell back into prop­er pace with the visu­als at the recep­tion real­ly well. Another very unique gem for your col­lec­tion.

    Oh! and have to say to the bride: COOLEST. SHOES. EVER.!! Oh yes!

  6. Very spe­cial video Jeff! What a fun time! Very arty and whole­some and real! Loved it!

  7. Hi guy. I love it. Can u say me the band‘s name? Search a band called “Louise attaque”. Fantastic band too.

    Tks

    Pietro

    • The band is called Beirut, and the song is “Postcard from Italy”. Thanks for the music rec­om­men­da­tion!

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