So The Saints won the Super Bowl. Good for them.

Have not been posting lately, just so busy working on multiple projects at once. Also trying to figure out how to incorporate Twitter into everything. Everyone says it’s a good marketing tool, but I do not think a couple really wants to see someone they hire to be posting texts when they are supposed to be working.

Anyway, stay tuned.

I just found out today that I won a Bride’s Choice award from Wedding Wire, which signifies that I am in the top 5% of wedding vendors overall in the NY Metro area. Not just top 5 in video, but in the entire wedding industry. Here is what they said…

“Congratulations! We are excited to announce that you have been chosen to receive the Bride’s Choice Awards™ 2010. This award recognizes the top 5 percent of local wedding professionals from the WeddingWire Network who demonstrate excellence in quality, service and professionalism.

The Bride’s Choice Awards™ are determined exclusively by recent newlyweds (brides and grooms) through extensive surveys and reviews, which means your past clients have spoken on our behalf and selected you to receive this honor.”

This is a continuation of Kim getting ready at the hotel prior to arriving at the hall. And this particular clip is of the photographer taking photos of her on the balcony. Again, this is slow and deliberate because I think the footage came out really well. The sky is kind of overblown and washed out, but I like hard lights like that so I think it adds a nice effect to everything.

I do not like getting all fancy with everything when I edit photo sessions because for most people, posing for photos on their wedding day is probably the only chance they’ll get to act like a model, so I like to show off all the different poses that brides take and the photographer giving directions. I think that’s better than putting some silly Celine Dion song over a bunch of black and white effects.

Wedding videos are like Hollywood. You have all these blockbusters that despite being poorly written, produced, directed and full of nothing but special effects, make a ton of money. Everyone says they are horrible and get terrible reviews, but they make millions of dollars. Then you have the independent films in which the people who make them labor over every shot and spend years trying to get everything right, then when they are released get rave reviews, but make no money because no one bothers to go see it because they don’t have any effects in them.

That’s what wedding videos are like.

Everyone says that they hate cheesy videos with loud music and wall to wall effects that are poorly shot, but yet the videographers who make those kind of videos and the ones who most people book. People say they want a high quality and tasteful video, but then when they see the work of people who do videos like that are like, “where are all the effects? There’s not enough music.” Just like Hollywood.

That being said I think Iron Man 2 looks really awesome!

Shooting this was actually kind of hard because I do not like heights or getting close to windows that are really high up, so I kind of tried to stay against the back wall most of the time. When I did get close to the side, I just made it a point to not look over it. Shooting weddings is scary stuff!

Received an e-mail from Dara about her wedding video which she received yesterday…

“My parents and I just watched the video and we wanted to let you know that it was absolutely breathtaking!!! From start to finish we were so pleased and amazed of the quality of the video as to the awesome editing you did! The entire thing was perfect and more than we could ask for! … You rock!”

I was thinking about this the other day- I think one of the things that makes me good is the fact that I am realistic with people. When I speak to someone about their wedding I don’t just tell them how great and perfect everything always is. “I know that place- BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!” You know how people just say whatever it takes to get you to work with them? It drives me crazy. People sometimes just ask for just a copy of raw footage and I tell them “no, there is no chance you will be happy with it, so why would you want it?”.

I say it all the time because it’s true- it’s not what someone likes, it’s what works best. I love Guns N’ Roses, they are my favorite band ever and I waited 17 years for Chinese Democracy to be released, but my first dance song was not “Sweet Child O’ Mine”. (Did you know that if they all stayed together they would be going into the Rock N’ Roll Hall Of Fame in 2 years? Actually, they never really broke up, everyone just left one at a time, only leaving Axl by himself. But that’s a story for another time…)

Just today’s random thought of the day.

Anyway, time for the next project. This is Kim and Herb’s wedding. I really enjoyed doing this wedding because it was such a laid back day and you can really tell that both bride and groom were genuinely happy to be getting married. They were so easy to work with. And the photographer was great too.

This clip is from Kim getting ready at the hotel. It was an afternoon wedding, so shooting at the hotel started at 7 AM. I actually got a lot of nice stuff in the room. When I went back and started to edit it I was really happy with all the footage here. I got so much good stuff that the bridal preps will wind up being longer than usual. There were not a lot of people in the room, which helped a lot. Normally there are so many people around when the bride gets ready that as soon as you set up a shot someone walks in front of it, so as a result everything here came out really well.

I am taking it really slow here. Like I said, it was a laid back day so I want the video to reflect that. If you go back and look at the bridal prep clip from Allison’s wedding a couple of months ago, this is the total opposite style because I don’t just cut and paste every wedding. Heavy documentary feel. The footage is really good, so I am just going to let the images speak for themselves rather than do anything fancy here.

No music either. The same way I am over feeling as though I need to fade between shots and add transitions between everything, I am over feeling as though I need to have music under things. I have come to appreciate and understand the power of silence. Just hearing a few camera clicks says a lot. Not that there is no need to ever use music, but the same way effects are used to cover people’s mistakes, music is used the same way too. Just over it.

I really like it when her mother says how beautiful she thinks Kim looks. Very nice quite moment.

I met with the bride and groom prior to the wedding, during which I got the feeling that putting on the dress for the first time was a big moment for her, so I really made it a point to show off the dress when I shot, then edited the hotel preps. I really don’t always make a big deal about the dress because I take a more low key approach to things and try to nail down the little things as the day goes along, but since I knew what’s what she wanted that’s what I made it a point to do here.