Posts Tagged ‘Colorado’

Wedding Film – Preview

Some early still frames from a video I’m putting together for Mark and Janella, an impossibly nice, sweet couple who were just married on Sunday. The day was absolutely beautiful, and I’m really looking forward to editing something special for them over the next few weeks.

Speed Shooting/Editing!

Sometimes, you just gotta’ roll with it. Put everything else out of your mind, focus on the moment at hand, and get it done.

Such was the case this Friday.

I can’t say much about the promo video I just finished working on, as the featured product hasn’t been released yet, but this weekend lead to a wonderfully  unexpected opportunity, a great experience, and a HUGE challenge. And I mean BIG.

Originally, I thought I would be attending a fairly simple, straight-forward concept meeting on Friday afternoon, to work out a few details and start discussing ideas for a promotional video to pitch an upcoming technology product.
As always, I was excited to meet a new client, and just a *little* nervous about making a good impression — nothing too worrisome.

An hour before I was supposed to arrive at the meeting, I got a phone-call; “Bring your equipment. The client is only in town for a few hours, and then he’s on a plane to the pacific rim for a month-long sales tour. We have to shoot NOW. TODAY.”

I took a deep breath, “Okay.”

I formatted a handful of memory cards, grabbed my gear, threw it in the car, and sped off to Boulder. When I walked in the door,  I had a five-minute chat with the project manager, and was taken to the conference room where we’d be filming.

They handed me a script that was still warm from the printer, and within 15 minutes, I was shooting the opening sequence.

All under that watchful gaze of a famous English billionaire investor who’s spearheading the product development. Think Charles Whitmore from the TV show “LOST”.

Just a *tiny* bit intimidating.

We went on to film for about five hours, running through the script, shot-by-shot. During breaks, I tried to sneak in a lot of b-roll and pick-up shots, just in case I needed them. (I did.)

As the afternoon went on, I felt like everyone had developed a report, and we were all having a blast. We had to stop takes periodically to get people to quit laughing. Despite the surprise and panic at the beginning, we were making great progress, and I was really happy with the images I was getting in-camera.

Apparently, the client was pleased as well, as they asked me on the spot if I would be interested in editing the piece as well. “Sure, I’d love to! I generally need two weeks or so to edit a project like this. … When do you need it?”

“Monday. … Three days from now.”

Needless to say, I haven’t gotten a whole lot of sleep.
I started working the minute I got home on Friday, and have been going pretty much non-stop since.

I culled five-hours of footage, made my selects and began color-correction and stabilization Friday night. By Saturday morning, I’d prepped and graded 125 shots, and rendered them all out.  I also needed to do some minor visual effects work, as the script called for a number of shots to appear as though they were filmed from a closed-circuit security camera. I doctored up some fake time-code, a little techno-babble, and added some wave distortion to make it look like it was being played back on a failing VHS machine.

With all that out of the way, I began editing Saturday afternoon, and kept going well into Sunday morning. I took a quick 4-hour nap and went right back at it. On Sunday evening, I left for an hour to meet with a wedding client — who were GREAT — and ran home to handcuff myself to the computer again.

I edited for sixteen hours straight, before finally wrapping everything up for my final render. I uploaded the review clip to Vimeo, ran to the store, bought a hard-drive, and will be FedEx-ing the footage overnight to New York to the client.
(The time-crunch is *that* insane — FedEx is faster than transferring all 83 GBs of footage over the Internet.)

Absolutely NUTS. But I got it done! And am really happy with how it turned out.

Unfortunately, I can only share a few still frames, but hopefully this product will make it to market, and I can post my work when it’s become a giant success.

Working at this pace is something I don’t think I’ll make a habit of, and of course, I still prefer to carefully plan and prepare, but I was really proud that I was able to get so much accomplished, so quickly. With really decent results.

For now … I’m going to bed. I have three other projects to work on this week. 

Summer Specials – Portraits & Wedding Films

With spring upon us, and summer quickly following, for a limited time, I’ll be offering special seasonal pricing for wedding film production and portrait photography.

If you book me anytime between now, and June 30th, I’ll extend a 20% discount on all my portrait sessions and wedding video packages! Send me a message via the contact page to receive all the details!

Vampire 5k Event Video

Having gone through miles of footage from six cameras — including an aerial helicopter drone and an ultra-slow-motion rig — I’ve culled, stabilized and graded all the shots that will be going into the final edit for the Vampire 5K event video.

Once again, I cannot thank the following people enough for all their help; Tage Plantell, Brent Murray, Dusty Powell, Tim Gates, Kris Farruggia, Scott Murphy and Lauren and Scott Jones.

I’m *really* excited to wrap up the finished film and share it with those guys! Can’t wait!

Still-frame credits: Douglas Koke, Tage Plantell, and Dusty Powell.