Day: June 17, 2017

My wife Rachel had three roommates in college, and as of this wedding I have now filmed two of their weddings. Still holding out hope for number three, Mattie-Ruth.

Normally whenever we film a wedding, we sit down with the couple over dinner and hear the whole story of how they met, how they fell in love, and how they decided to get married. For Lauren and Matt things were a little different, because we were already there for the entire relationship. We watched the whole thing happen. And we absolutely saw it coming, by the way.

To sum it up: they wrote and performed songs together, which basically requires you to fall in love. I have citations. See Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, Sonny and Cher, Jay Z and Beyonce, and, unfortunately, Avril Lavigne and Chad Kroeger.

Getting to witness two of our good friends join their lives together, in a moment all of us had been hoping and waiting for, made their wedding day that much more special for us to film.

Johnson City, Texas

Johnson City sits right in the middle of the Hill Country, about an hour west of Austin, and in the fall it does this thing where everything goes gold and the light gets low and soft about two hours before it has any business doing that. Tall dry grass, live oaks, a windmill turning against a completely empty blue sky. It is a gift to a wedding filmmaker, and honestly you just try not to get in its way.

The whole day lived outside, which meant the ceremony had the hills behind it and the reception ran right into the dark, and it gave the film a natural arc without me having to build one.

Getting Ready

Getting ready is my favorite part of a wedding day to film, and it’s the part couples most often assume isn’t worth covering. It is. It’s the only stretch of the day where nobody is performing yet. Somebody’s mom is buttoning the back of a dress she has been thinking about for a year, and her hands are doing something she will not remember doing, and that’s the shot.

Lauren and Matt also wrote letters to each other and read them before the ceremony, which is one of the best decisions a couple can make for their film. You get their actual voices saying their actual words, and it gives the whole thing a spine to hang on instead of just pretty pictures set to music.

The Ceremony

Their pastor knew them, which changes everything. He opened by telling the story of their first date in Austin, a round of putt-putt at Peter Pan Mini Golf, where Matt parked in the wrong lot and got his car towed while they were somewhere around the 18th hole. Most expensive first date ever. Worth it, clearly.

Whenever the person officiating actually knows the couple, the audio you get is better than anything you could have planned for, and a room full of people who love them laughs in the right places. You can hear it in the film.

“You Are The Joni Mitchell To My James Taylor”

That line is from the toasts, and the second I heard it in the edit I knew it was the title of the film. It’s the whole relationship in one sentence: two people who make music together, who are better at it because the other one is in the room.

This is the argument for recording speeches properly, by the way. Put a recorder on the officiant, put one near the toasts, and get the audio clean. The single best line in almost every wedding film I’ve ever made was something somebody said out loud that day, not something I found in the footage.

The Gear I Filmed This With

📷 The full list of what I carry to a wedding lives here: my wedding filmmaking kit. A few of the pieces that did the most work on this day:

• My insanely good lowlight main camera
• My favorite wide angle lens with autofocus
• The ultra-versatile medium lens with autofocus
• The best drone ever and the filters for it
• The beefy electronic gimbal
• A fantastic video monopod
• The ridiculously tiny audio recorder and mic that gets me the vows and the toasts
• A prism for fancy in-camera effects
• My fast video editing laptop
• An indestructible camera case
• A light and sturdy travel tripod
• A portable LED lighting kit

Cut in Adobe Premiere Pro and graded with my LUTs.

Are You Marrying Your Best Friend?

Even if the two of you don’t make beautiful music together, we would love to film your wedding. 🎥 Get in touch with us at FilmStrong.

And if you’re the one holding the camera: 🎬 my wedding film editing course is where I teach how a film like this gets built, ►► my free guide to booking more wedding clients is yours to download, and ✌ the Learn Wedding Filmmaking Facebook Group is where the rest of us hang out.

Five years ago, at a small Catholic college in St. Louis, Missouri, Kathleen met Michael. A chance meeting at a sorority party their senior year led to dates, competitive Catan game nights, and an eventual move for Michael from St. Louis to Texas so they could be together. It was this move across state lines that made them both realize they were ready to spend the rest of their lives together.

This May, they made it official, with an unmistakably Texas wedding, set in the heart of Austin. For another one near Austin, this fairytale wedding was in a pine forest at sunset. They said their vows barely a stone’s throw away from the Capitol, and proceeded to dance the night away with both a Texas Country band and a DJ flown in from Los Angeles.

Getting married in Austin or anywhere else? We would love to film it! Please get in touch.

Our friends Sarah and Chris are what Rachel and I like to call “undercover awesome”.  I first experienced this phenomenon when I met Sarah my sophomore year of college. She’s one of those people that once you meet them, they keep popping up in conversations until it reaches the point that you wonder if they know everyone on the planet. True story: there were times on campus that I would name-drop Sarah when I met someone new, thus instantly befriending them. Undercover awesome.

Years after college, Sarah met Chris, and then Rachel and I had the pleasure of meeting him too. Put a saxophone, guitar, piano, accordion, or Microsoft Excel in front of him and he will quickly prove he can make music (or spreadsheets) with all of them. Undercover awesome.

If you’re at a party with them, you won’t see them as the center of attention, dancing on tables, or causing any sort of scene. But if you mention their names to anyone, there will immediately be a glow of recognition, a story about them, and lots of laughter. Their laid-back vibes, insurance sales, and accounting lifestyle belie two of the coolest people in the room, and two of the coolest people Rachel and I have had the pleasure of filming. I guess this film means their awesomeness isn’t quite so undercover anymore.

If you’re getting married (and especially if you are undercover awesome), we would love to film it, please get in touch.