Vineet + Dan — On a subway in New York.

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.

Oth­er than that, we sim­ply kept two to three steps ahead of all the action — which is a lot eas­i­er said than done — and focused on our fram­ing and motion on the monopods as usual.

Vineet and Dan con­fid­ed in us ear­ly on that one of their favourite things to do when they have some time off togeth­er is to go out and enjoy craft beer. We knew we had to some­how fit this into their film, so we booked a pri­vate patio for them at the Ams­ter­dam Brew­ery on the last day of their cel­e­bra­tions. When that day arrived, things were run­ning a tad behind sched­ule (as they usu­al­ly do). It was a very close-call, but we were still able to squeeze the shoot in, and were hap­py to give the cou­ple a moment to sit down and relax amongst all the hec­tic­ness while cap­tur­ing some can­did moments that reflect­ed who they are.

This is a film we’re incred­i­bly proud of and one that took a hand­ful of amaz­ing peo­ple in order to ful­ly real­ize. It didn’t feel like ven­dors were just show­ing up to do their thing, but instead, we all found our­selves work­ing with each oth­er every day to cre­ate the best, and most visu­al­ly stun­ning expe­ri­ence pos­si­ble. Rich­ha from Aro­ra Events was amaz­ing to work with; plan­ning every­thing to a t, answer­ing all our crazy ques­tions and allow­ing every­thing to flow smooth­ly (even through­out the most jam-packed por­tions of the days). We were hap­py to shoot along­side ikon­i­ca images, work­ing seam­less­ly around one anoth­er and bounc­ing cre­ative ideas off of each oth­er all week­end long. Sara Baig Designs turned the Eaton Chelsea and Gray­don Hall into the most beau­ti­ful and ele­gant recep­tion spaces we’ve ever seen. Mean­while, the endlessly-talented Rachel Clin­gen blew us away as she usu­al­ly does, trans­form­ing the Lib­er­ty Grand into an enchant­ed forest.

Enjoy!