Andrea and Jeff’s day took us on a tour of some of Toronto’s best wed­ding venues; from the Ritz-Carlton, to Knox Col­lege, and then to the Dis­tillery Dis­trict for an inti­mate din­ner at the Fer­ment­ing Cel­lar. But despite all of the beau­ti­ful imagery we were able to cre­ate at these loca­tions, a good set­ting means noth­ing with­out some great char­ac­ters — and Andrea and Jeff, are some pret­ty amaz­ing characters.

It wasn’t so much about “how do we shape and pace this sto­ry”, but which of all of the dif­fer­ent sto­ries to focus on.

Between their cards, per­son­al vows, and equal­ly per­son­al speech­es, we had a lot to work with. It wasn’t so much about “how do we shape and pace this sto­ry”, but which of all of the dif­fer­ent sto­ries to focus on. At the fore­front of this nar­ra­tive, is the cel­e­bra­tion of Andrea and Jeff’s love — one sim­ply shaped by laugh­ter and good sleep (usu­al­ly on Jeff’s armpit) — and the esca­lat­ing excite­ment to see each oth­er at the altar. We want to empha­size that inten­si­fy­ing excite­ment. Andrea actu­al­ly lost all feel­ing while putting on her dress and it didn’t return until after her and Jeff’s first look.

As Jeff hilar­i­ous­ly put it, he doesn’t under­stand why peo­ple get cold feet, his feet were on fire. And that rings so true for these two. Nine years in the mak­ing, they just couldn’t wait to say their I do’s.

With over 90% chances of heavy down­pour spread through­out the entire day, there was no escap­ing the fact that Alex­is and Eugenio’s wed­ding day was going to be a wet one. But no one was real­ly too dis­ap­point­ed; the cou­ple braved the rain and we got our best line­up of weather-sealed lens­es ready.

The con­stant show­ers could­n’t detract from the inti­mate cel­e­bra­tion these two shared with their clos­est friends and fam­i­ly, who all had fif­teen years worth of sto­ries to draw upon through­out the night. And although this wed­ding was a long time in the mak­ing (we men­tioned fif­teen years, right?!), almost every­one touched on how Alex­is and Euge­nio met. It may or may not have been in an Intro­duc­tion to Span­ish class at Queens Uni­ver­si­ty for which Euge­nio, being half-Argentinian, may or may not have been overqual­i­fied for — it all depends who you ask and which side of the room they were sit­ting on. But as Euge­nio so elo­quent­ly put it, it doesn’t mat­ter how they met, it just mat­ters that they met each oth­er. con­tin­ue read­ing »

Vineet and Dan met in New York, live in LA, and brought close to 95% of their guests out to Toron­to for an incred­i­ble week-long cel­e­bra­tion. Luck­i­ly, we got the chance to spend the bet­ter part of that week with them film­ing every sin­gle epic step of their adven­ture — which includ­ed a lot more run­ning, yoga-ing, danc­ing, horse-riding, and par­ty­ing than the typ­i­cal wedding.

We first met Vineet over Face­Time about a year and a half ago, but it wasn’t until her and Dan flew into Toron­to this past spring that we were final­ly able to grab a cof­fee and talk about what they had in store for their wed­ding day(s) and what they envi­sioned for their film. They had a lot of amaz­ing things hap­pen­ing — per­for­mances, chore­o­graphed dances, two cer­e­monies, two first looks, lawn games, a barat and tons of oth­er tra­di­tion­al Indi­an cel­e­bra­tions. We knew there’d be no short­age of ele­ments to draw upon for their film, but at the same time, we didn’t want the cou­ple and their sto­ry to be lost amongst all of these events.

The nar­ra­tive would have to be as strong and multi-faceted as their cel­e­bra­tions, with Vineet and Dan’s beau­ti­ful per­son­al­i­ties at the cen­ter of it all.

We want­ed the film to have a vibrant ener­gy and decid­ed ear­ly on that fast cuts, great move­ment, and mul­ti­ple speak­ers would help us cre­ate that atmos­phere. Rather than fol­low­ing a sin­gle sto­ry­line, their nar­ra­tive would revolve around how “daneet” met, who they are, the sig­nif­i­cance of their cel­e­bra­tion, the com­ing togeth­er of their fam­i­lies, and their promis­es to each oth­er going for­ward. In oth­er words, a lot of lit­tle pieces cre­at­ing one sin­gle com­plex nar­ra­tive — which in many ways echoes all of the dif­fer­ent events com­ing togeth­er into one big celebration.

The film opens with (very) ear­ly morn­ing shots of Toron­to to estab­lish where the sto­ry takes place; start­ing at the heart of the city and mov­ing away towards the out­skirts, where Vineet and Dan rent­ed a home for the week. When we first told the cou­ple that we want­ed to cap­ture who they real­ly were, their first sug­ges­tion was run­ning and yoga. So we did just that. Vineet showed us some of her fan­ci­est yoga posi­tions and Dan ran by the lake shore (and Ricar­do did his best to keep up with him on the Movi).

The Movi was our best friend on this project. For one, we were able to employ fast pans and tilts while con­sis­tent­ly fol­low­ing Dan and his fam­i­ly dur­ing the Barat. That por­tion of the film is puls­ing with ener­gy, and right­ful­ly so; the real-life ver­sion of that was full of ener­gy and laugh­ter. But the Movi also allowed us to slow down and sim­ply fol­low along with Vineet and Dan’s first dance, cap­tur­ing its ele­gance and those mon­u­men­tal spins that had us pick­ing up our jaws off of the dance floor. con­tin­ue read­ing »

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.

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This film is what we’ve always imag­ined the per­fect fall wed­ding would look like. Amy and Rob tied the knot on a par­tic­u­lar­ly cold and windy day this past Octo­ber amidst what we can only describe as the height of fal­l’s mag­ic — the trees were just that much more orange; the leaves were con­stant­ly falling and the sky was per­fect­ly cloudy. All of these dif­fer­ent things came togeth­er to help us cre­ate some pret­ty stun­ning visu­als to car­ry this very emo­tion­al, very beau­ti­ful sto­ry along.

We’ve said it before. Some­times, a place is so impor­tant that it becomes a cen­tral char­ac­ter with­in a sto­ry. In Annette and Peter’s beau­ti­ful nar­ra­tive, Prince Edward Coun­ty is that third char­ac­ter. And while this cou­ple are many things onto them­selves and to each oth­er — world trav­el­ers, food con­nois­seurs, and techies (that’ll be almost entire­ly Peter) — they are very proud PE Coun­ty residents.

And right­ful­ly so! Just over 2 hours away from Toron­to, Prince Edward Coun­ty is an amaz­ing lit­tle get­away with enough mouth-watering earth-to-table eater­ies to keep you busy. The cou­ple had us stay at their cot­tage for their wed­ding week­end, so amongst all the cel­e­brat­ing, we were able to do a bit of explor­ing in the coun­ty as well as our fair share of star-gazing/fire-building/marshmallow-roasting.

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Most wed­dings these days have an insta­gram hash­tag, but Jessie and Stephen’s had a bit more sig­nif­i­cance than oth­ers. #drayter­berg rep­re­sent­ed a lot more than a sim­ple way for the cou­ple to find and go through a col­lec­tion of insta­gram pho­tos. A blend­ing of both their last names, #drayter­berg rep­re­sent­ed the com­ing togeth­er of not only two incred­i­ble peo­ple, but two adorable families.

Jessie and Stephen are from San Diego, so their cel­e­bra­tion in Nia­gara on the Lake was a des­ti­na­tion wed­ding with their clos­est friends and rel­a­tives. They had us out for the entire week­end, allow­ing us to immerse our­selves in all their wed­ding fes­tiv­i­ties, includ­ing a very emo­tion­al rehearsal din­ner the night before the big day. con­tin­ue read­ing »

We’d like to think that if you met Melis­sa and Steve on any oth­er day in which they weren’t get­ting mar­ried, you would see exact­ly what you see in this film. That’s because their day was sim­ply ooz­ing with per­son­al­i­ty and every­thing just came togeth­er in a way that  allowed us to cre­ate a per­fect por­trait of who these two real­ly are.

We’ll start from the top. We first met Melis­sa and Steve this past win­ter. They’re wed­ding cin­e­matog­ra­phers them­selves and so we imme­di­ate­ly hit it off over cof­fee; talk­ing about our jobs, our indus­try, and our favourite films of the past year. We dis­cussed their day, and with every detail, we became more and more excit­ed about every­thing they had planned.

Now over the next few months, we could­n’t stop run­ning into them every time we were in Toron­to. We’d see them at Tiff Bell Light­box on our way to catch a movie, we’d see Steve on Queen St. West, then Melis­sa in Zara a cou­ple of hours lat­er. See­ing them walk about the city, we real­ized what an inte­gral part of them Toron­to has become, and all the walk­ing around and quick loca­tion changes on the wed­ding day took on a much deep­er mean­ing with­in their film. Along­side the cou­ple, Toron­to is a huge char­ac­ter in this sto­ry and one that is loom­ing over every mile­stone of their day.

One evening, a few weeks before the wed­ding, we met for drinks at the Thomp­son Hotel just before head­ing up to see the rooftop in which they were plan­ning to share their first look, and we heard for the first time about their love for cof­fee. Now we love our cof­fee, and we have friends who are cof­fee fanat­ics, but no one real­ly loves cof­fee as much as Melis­sa and Steve. They went on and on about the dif­fer­ent types of cof­fee they reg­u­lar­ly drink and the dif­fer­ent ways they make it. Steve men­tioned that him and his grooms­men would be head­ing to Ear­ly Bird in the morn­ing to have siphon cof­fee and explained what exact­ly that was. We were so hap­py that their love for cof­fee was nat­u­ral­ly worked into their day and decid­ed we’d def­i­nite­ly have to tag along for that adven­ture. con­tin­ue read­ing »