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.