Kali + Edward — These rocks are grounding.

This film has been in-the-making for a few months now and it’s one that is dear to our hearts. We’ve been in love with this sto­ry from the first time we hit record on our cam­eras back in August to just over a week ago when Kali and Edward tied the knot at the Art Gallery of Ontario and we put the final pieces of this puz­zle togeth­er into a same-day edit for them. This is a film that we’re over-the-top excit­ed to share and one that per­fect­ly rep­re­sents our phi­los­o­phy when it comes to wed­ding cin­e­matog­ra­phy, so it would only make sense for us to back­track a bit and share a lit­tle bit about our process lead­ing up to the final piece.

We first met Kali in July over an iced cof­fee in Leslieville. It was­n’t long before we learned that both her and Edward live by some pret­ty busy sched­ules span­ning a cou­ple of con­ti­nents and a hand­ful of coun­tries and, because of that, Edward could­n’t make that first meet­ing. But it was­n’t lack of inter­est. Actu­al­ly, Kali told us that Edward was par­tic­u­lar­ly enthu­si­as­tic about videog­ra­phy — maybe a lit­tle more than she was — and that she con­nect­ed with our work main­ly because it was­n’t cheesy, or con­trived, or even very “wedding‑y” (we’re mak­ing that a word). The more we talked, the more we real­ized we were a per­fect fit. She real­ly just want­ed their sto­ry told and, from what we gath­ered, we would have some beau­ti­ful venues and set­tings to work in. Our only task was to make a film that would­n’t make Kali roll her eyes, but that would be easy enough.

We heard back from them a cou­ple of days lat­er and, as Kali had guessed, Edward want­ed a same-day edit with a por­trait shoot, which they decid­ed should be at her cot­tage in Musko­ka. We were imme­di­ate­ly excit­ed since we had already heard so much about the cot­tage by this point and knew it’d be the per­fect back­drop for their sto­ry. Not only was it their get­away from their hec­tic pro­fes­sion­al lives, but it was also the place where Edward pro­posed to Kali — the for­mer wear­ing a tuxe­do and wait­ing cool­ly for her at the docks, the lat­ter sport­ing sweat­pants and crash­ing a boat onto said dock.

We had to move fast to shoot in August just before Kali moved off to the UK, giv­ing us just under two weeks to get to know the two and put a plan togeth­er for their entire por­trait shoot. We all worked fast, Kali and Edward answer­ing our grow­ing list of ques­tions, and us iron­ing out a con­cept that made sense with the tid­bits we were get­ting from their sto­ry. In the end, we decid­ed to con­trast sequences of the shoot at the cot­tage with ele­ments from their wed­ding day, draw­ing a par­al­lel between the two while con­trast­ing the relaxed cot­tage atmos­phere with the busy­ness of the city (not too unlike Kali and Edward’s every­day lives).

The one image that real­ly stuck out in our heads when we first imag­ined the piece was a smooth shot of the cot­tage slow­ly com­ing into view from the lake as the cam­era approach­es it — it would not only estab­lish the entire set­ting but com­mu­ni­cate its impor­tance visu­al­ly. With the help of the Movi, we were able to get just that on the boat ride in. Once there, we real­ly just want­ed to cap­ture the essence of the cot­tage and what it is Kali and Edward love about it. This is one project where we prob­a­bly used every sin­gle piece of gear we own. We were so inspired by every­thing around us that we could­n’t stop rolling. We braved head-to-toe mos­qui­to bites as we trekked through the for­est, not to men­tion a pret­ty scary encounter with a rat­tlesnake, but we did­n’t care too much — it was all look­ing amaz­ing and, more impor­tant­ly, it was the kind of adven­ture Kali and Edward like to take on and we want­ed to cap­ture that.

Fast-forward four months to their wed­ding day and to an entire­ly dif­fer­ent set­ting. This was our last wed­ding of the 2014 sea­son and it was a beau­ti­ful note to end the year on. It was a day filled with laugh­ter, joy, plen­ty of jokes, and some pret­ty emo­tion­al moments here and there that would catch us all off-guard. We filmed the most jaw-dropping chore­o­graphed first dance we’ve ever wit­nessed and pre­sent­ed their same-day edit a few hours after that.

It feels like we always say how amaz­ing it is to show an same-day edit and see every­one’s reac­tions in-person as we show the film, but that was spe­cial­ly true this time around. We were hon­est­ly so excit­ed to show the film and were so incred­i­bly hum­bled to see the hall burst into laugh­ter at all the right points and to hear the roar­ing applause at the end. We love what we do and we put so much work into the tini­est details, obsess­ing over the per­fec­tion of every shot, every cut, every tran­si­tion. These moments make us real­ize why we do it, why it’s impor­tant to cap­ture these sto­ries, and why it’s impor­tant to keep striv­ing for per­fec­tion. It was sim­ply the per­fect way to close off an amaz­ing wed­ding season.