Putting story first. (part one)

You’ll hear us talk about it again and again — sto­ry, sto­ry, sto­ry. We gave a lit­tle bit of insight into how sto­ry guides our thought process in the blog post we did for Tianne and Yam Ki’s film, but today we thought it’d be fun to lay out our story-driven approach and give our read­ers a lit­tle insight into just how big of a dif­fer­ence it makes in the final product.

The truth is: any­one can pick up a cam­era and shoot some pret­ty sweet-looking stuff. It’s a fact. Tech­nol­o­gy is advanc­ing, and as a result, a num­ber of amaz­ing cam­eras have entered the con­sumer and pro­sumer mar­kets, mak­ing high-quality pro­fes­sion­al images attain­able to just about any­one. Not to say we don’t pride our­selves in our gear (we always get the highest-end cin­e­ma equip­ment that’ll keep us ahead of the curve) or our cin­e­matog­ra­phy (we think it’s the bees’ knees), but that’s not enough to stand out anymore.

When we first start­ed mak­ing wed­ding films, we were pret­ty hap­py with work­ing with­in the con­ven­tions of typ­i­cal wed­ding videog­ra­phy — a shot of the wed­ding dress, a shot of the rings on the table, tons of kiss­ing through­out, etc. We loved what we were doing, and did­n’t think any­thing of it. But by the fourth or fifth wed­ding, we real­ized we just kept aim­ing to get the same shots and we were no longer hap­py with the work we were cre­at­ing. It comes down to choos­ing inno­va­tion over con­ven­tion. We active­ly decid­ed to forego con­ven­tion­al shots in favour of those that sig­nif­i­cant­ly advance a sto­ry in an inno­v­a­tive way. This does­n’t mean we nev­er get a detail shot of the wed­ding dress, if it works into the sto­ry or works with­in a theme we’re explor­ing (such as in Adam and Chrisi­a’s wed­ding film, where it drapes down in front of her dad’s paint­ings, and fore­shad­ows that sto­ry­line), we cap­ture it.

SO, when we approach a wed­ding, we choose to focus in on the cou­ple and their sto­ry, find­ing ways for their per­son­al­i­ty to char­ac­ter­ize their day and not the oth­er way around. Treat­ing every wed­ding as its own unique project with its own unique treat­ment allows each film we make to look and feel dif­fer­ent, because every cou­ple has their own unique back­ground, sto­ry, and set of quirks.

The One Thing

We find that there’s always at least one thing that makes a wed­ding spe­cial — it could be be a part of the cou­ple’s per­son­al­i­ty, it could be some­thing that is hap­pen­ing on the wed­ding day, and occa­sion­al­ly, it could be some­thing we don’t know about until it hap­pens on the actu­al day.

For Chrisia and Adam, we were inspired by Chrisi­a’s Dad’s paint­ings which lined the walls of the cou­ple’s house (he was also work­ing on a spe­cial paint­ing for their wed­ding day), and also by their love for board games (their col­lec­tion is jaw-dropping). In their film, the one thing(s) is inspired by the cou­ple’s per­son­al­i­ty and background.

While film­ing Jen­nifer and Andrew’s, we were large­ly inspired by their cer­e­mo­ny and their unique loca­tion — a birch tree for­est in the heart of Nia­gara Falls. Their read­ings and vows were impor­tant aspects of their day, so we worked the nar­ra­tive around them and focused on cap­tur­ing details of the scenery and their cer­e­mo­ny. Their one thing is large­ly influ­enced by some­thing hap­pen­ing on the wed­ding day.

Krista and David’s film is an exam­ple of all three things in one film. The hock­ey ele­ment is per­son­al, David’s sur­prise is part of the wed­ding day, and then there was one thing we could­n’t have known before the day itself — how emo­tion­al their first look would be.

More often than not, dif­fer­ent things will span across two or all three of the cat­e­gories. But by being able to iden­ti­fy a hand­ful of these and work­ing a nar­ra­tive around them, we are able to to work towards mak­ing a unique, focused film with a clear, con­cise story.

The beau­ti­ful starts hap­pen­ing when all these one things relate to one anoth­er and inter­weave in such a way that results in a com­plex, multi-layered nar­ra­tive. Do the gifts say some­thing about the cou­ple’s per­son­al­i­ty? Do they fore­shad­ow some­thing that will hap­pen lat­er in the day? Do the bride’s vows men­tion the gift and give it fur­ther significance?

Plan, Plan, Plan…

It all boils down to plan­ning every sin­gle detail, while still being open to fol­low new devel­op­ments. If you talked to any of our cou­ples, they’ll let you know that we love to ask ques­tions. It starts very loose­ly with, “What do you guys do for fun?”, but by the time we’re a few weeks from the wed­ding day, it’s a lot more focused. We want to know every detail — we ask for vows ahead of time, we want to know about gifts,  we scout out the dif­fer­ent loca­tions to make sure we’re in place and have a plan of action.

There’s only one shot to tell this sto­ry, and we don’t take that respon­si­bil­i­ty light­ly. Plan­ning every sin­gle aspect of a cou­ple’s wed­ding allows us to go into the day with a clear goal about the sto­ries we’re look­ing to tell, and it also allows us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to devi­ate from the plan and fol­low those that we did­n’t know would unfold.

So, what does this approach look like?  Next week, we’ll be post­ing the sec­ond part of this entry, in which we’ll dis­sect one of our films and show the dif­fer­ent ways sto­ry shaped our process.

Stay tuned!