Posts in category "Video"

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. [↩]

the path of least resistance

on the path of least resis­tance, you dis­cov­er:

  • it is impos­si­ble to explain the appeal of dub­step to some­one who’s nev­er heard it
  • every­thing works out in the end
  • moon­walk­ing is eas­i­er to do with­out pants on
  • just hugs are com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent from hugs after kiss­es
  • no one is ever too old to eat Pocky
  • say­ing we can still be friends is like your mom telling you your dog died and say­ing you can still keep it
  • there is nev­er enough time
  • Dolly will do any­thing for food

the greatest chaps

It was total­ly unfair that Shane was only in town for a sin­gle night, and then off to the next show in Kingston with Krista and Jesse and Audra the next morn­ing. I was look­ing for­ward to a week­end with him at least, but his tour com­mit­ments as bassist, back­up vocals, sound tech­ni­cian, and dri­ver kept us apart.

Lederhosen Lucil

 

This was the first time I’ve seen Krista per­form as Lederhosen Lucil (and the fifth time I’ve been to her shows). It was an LL album that I first fell in love with, so this meant a lot. I total­ly had this awk­ward kiss? hug? kiss? moment with her when she got up to greet me while man­ning the cov­er box; I’ve nev­er been very good at that. In the Fall she asked if she could have the Ottawa stop of her tour in my liv­ing room for an inti­mate House Show the Third, but that plan got derailed when I adopt­ed Leonard, as two cats was too much for her aller­gies. Things worked out for the best. The Raw Sugar Cafe is such a great venue, with dry cider and mul­ti­ple escape routes.

These are the only peo­ple who could con­vince me to have break­fast with them at a din­er on the oth­er side of the city on three hours of sleep. At a table full of musi­cians it’s impos­si­ble not to abuse the theremin set­ting on the Bebot app, Mentok the Mind-Taker style. I was going to tell Shane to save me a seat next to him, but then real­ized I’m not in grade 2 any­more.

Silk and Steel and Steve

I’ve always been after a more mel­low sound than what I can cur­rent­ly get out my gui­tar. Madeleine sug­gest­ed I try D’Addario Silk and Steel strings, so I bought a pack a few days ago and have been play­ing them since. I asked Steve to demo the strings, as well as my love­ly gui­tar Larissa, cause my abil­i­ties aren’t good enough to real­ly show her off.

Sometimes I love them cause they’re so bright and clear, oth­er times I hate them cause the tone comes off as thin and frail; it real­ly depends on what kind of music I’m play­ing. When Steve plays them they’re shock­ing­ly bright and pierc­ing com­pared to the sound I get; I’m not sure if it’s the dif­fer­ence in our nails or tech­nique (or both).

They’re def­i­nite­ly meant for fin­ger­pick­ing cause they’re so light1 that even mod­er­ate strum­ming will make them buzz, which severe­ly lim­its my pos­si­ble reper­toire. On the bright side, it’s much eas­i­er to fret barre chords, and cer­tain pas­sages that were a strug­gle to play clean­ly only require a light touch now.

Another advan­tage is that the tone makes me feel like I’m play­ing a dif­fer­ent gui­tar. Even though it’s not quite the dry and mel­low sound of a clas­si­cal nylon, it’s some­what staving off my desire to buy the Taylor I’ve been eying2, but who knows how long that’ll last.

Steve’s the only per­son I know who lives by the gui­tar, both lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly. I’ve seen such bril­liant things come out of his fin­gers. Sometimes in the mid­dle of a song I’m show­ing him, he’ll pick up the melody and go some­where com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent with it that’s more beau­ti­ful than the orig­i­nal. And even though he’s main­ly a jazz guy (after Wes Montgomery), he can play any style from clas­si­cal to fla­men­co.

I’ve tak­en up his belief in not using a pick and stick­ing with my fin­ger­nails. “Just anoth­er thing between you and the gui­tar”, he said to me once. And when I explain how I’m stuck on some­thing he’ll say, “Have you done it three-and-a-half mil­lion times?” to remind me that any­thing’s pos­si­ble with enough prac­tice. He’s filled with all these tiny yet cru­cial bits of infor­ma­tion that have influ­enced how I approach the instru­ment.

  1. 0.11–0.47, but they feel like 0.10. [↩]
  2. It just so hap­pens that Steve’s main gui­tar is the exact nylon-string Taylor hybrid I’ve been drool­ing over for months now. [↩]

Sarah and Michael — Wedding Day

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I’ve been bleed­ing for a big project, some­thing to real­ly throw myself into. Luckily, wed­dings are as big as they come, and at 70.43 GB of footage tak­en, this wed­ding was the biggest by far.

It was also the first Italian wed­ding I’ve expe­ri­enced, and there was noth­ing more inter­est­ing than observ­ing the cus­toms. It’s a very phys­i­cal cul­ture, with lots of hug­ging, kiss­ing, and firm pats on shoul­ders. And some­how every­one is a nat­ur­al dancer. How did every­one know to hold hands in equal­ly sized cir­cles and start mov­ing in the same direc­tion? How did every­one know when to stop hold­ing hands and start clap­ping1? How did you every­one known to step in to touch the groom and moth­er at the same time?

This is a per­fect exam­ple of how video takes over the lim­i­ta­tions of still pho­tog­ra­phy. A lot of cama­raderie and inti­ma­cy and con­fi­dence only come out when motion is involved, because it’s all in how peo­ple move and inter­act. Trying to cap­ture a bride eat­ing cake out of her cleav­age just isn’t pos­si­ble with a sin­gle frame.

This was a very spe­cial project for me, and I put so much love into this film, from the cam­era-work to the edit­ing to the grad­ing to the music. Over three hours of footage was care­ful­ly stripped away to cre­ate this five minute sto­ry. Every moment mat­ters, every frame counts.

Sarah and Mike are so hap­py with the final prod­uct that they’ve now decid­ed to send a DVD of this video out to all the guests in lieu of thank-you cards. For a wed­ding of 450 peo­ple, this is no small con­sid­er­a­tion. When I first met them, I knew they were going to be a fan­tas­tic cou­ple to work with because they were super nice and made me feel very com­fort­able. They also gave me full cre­ative con­trol, which is always the most impor­tant thing for me as an artist.

Production notes beneath the cut

  1. It remind­ed me of this time I saw an opera in Budapest. When the cur­tain came down and the audi­ence start­ed applaud­ing, every­one even­tu­al­ly clapped in uni­son and did­n’t speed up. North Americans all clap in an amor­phous din, but over in Hungary it’s like they were all clap­ping to the tim­ing of a con­duc­tor. [↩]