Author: Matt Johnson

We Are The Adventure | Crazy Iceland Wedding

Most relationships are an adventure, but for Sam and Mel the word takes on a different meaning. They built their relationship hiking up mountains, watching sunrises and sunsets and meteor showers, and driving for days on end to get to National Parks. Their friends eventually started calling them “Smel,” a combination of their names in the same vein as “Kimye” or “Bennifer” (the second one).

Not content to leave it at a cute couple name, they came up with the phrase #doyouSMELadventure, and that hashtag is now on every photo and video they post from anywhere they go.

Bald man wearing sunglasses laughing inside a bus with yellow and teal seats, a woman smiling blurred behind him

A Country They Had Never Been To

With spirits like that, is it any surprise Smel decided to get married in one of the most unique and beautiful countries on Earth? A country they had never once set foot in before their own wedding?

Iceland. Glaciers, waterfalls, and volcanoes, all sitting there waiting to be explored. Their greatest adventure.

Snow-capped Icelandic mountain peak against a pale blue sky with scattered clouds

Three Days, One 5am Wakeup, And A Glacier Lagoon

In all we spent three incredible days with them. That included a 5am wakeup on the wedding day to catch the sunrise, followed by a three-hour bus ride out to the Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon, where they picked a spot on the ice and said their vows.

Bride and groom facing each other on a black-sand beach with icebergs floating in the water behind them

Groom in a navy suit and pink tie standing before the glacier lagoon, snow-covered mountains behind him

There was no aisle, no seating chart, and no room. There was a handful of people standing on volcanic sand with icebergs drifting past behind them, and that was the entire guest list.

Bride and groom walking away from camera after the ceremony, guests smiling and clapping on a stony shore

Filming Somewhere That Big

Iceland will happily run away with your film if you let it. The temptation is to shoot nothing but the landscape, because the landscape is genuinely staggering and every frame of it looks like a desktop wallpaper.

The way I handled it was to keep putting them in the wide shots rather than shooting the wides on their own. Two tiny figures against a glacier tells you something. A glacier by itself is just a glacier.

Aerial view of the bride and groom walking tiny across a black volcanic beach beside floating icebergs

Secret Caves And The Northern Lights

We explored with them the next day too, visiting secret caves, climbing mountains, and standing out in the cold watching the northern lights dance overhead.

Couple hugging with their backs to camera facing a massive waterfall, a rainbow arcing beside them

Aerial view of a couple standing on a ridge overlooking braided glacial rivers cutting through black sand

Silhouette of a couple watching green northern lights glow across a night sky

The Adventure Was Never The Places

For Smel it was clear that their adventure isn’t actually about all the places they’ve traveled to. What matters is that they’ve experienced them together, and that their love and their relationship is the adventure.

So while this film does represent the awe-inspiring beauty of Iceland’s landscape, we filmed it and cut it with a focus on who Sam and Mel are together. It may not be your typical Iceland wedding film. It’s something that’s completely Smel.

The Music In This Film

🎵 “Hey Love” by Foreign Figures, licensed from Marmoset
🎼 “SMLE” by Createk, licensed from the artist
🎹 “The Night” by Falling Up, licensed from Musicbed

The Gear I Carried To Iceland

📷 The full kit is here: my favorite wedding filmmaking gear, and my Sony a7S II wedding setup specifically.

My insanely good lowlight main camera, which is what got the northern lights
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
A prism for fancy in-camera effects
My fast video editing laptop
An indestructible camera case, which earns its money on a trip like this
A light and sturdy travel tripod
A portable LED lighting kit

Cut in Adobe Premiere Pro and color graded with my LUTs.

Getting Married In Iceland, Or Anywhere Else?

We would love to film it. 🎥 Please get in touch.

And if you’re the one filming: 🎬 my wedding film editing course covers how a film like this gets built, ►► my free guide to booking more wedding clients is a free download, ✌ the Learn Wedding Filmmaking Facebook Group is where the rest of us are, and I offer one-on-one filmmaker consulting if you want to talk any of it through.

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Today, We Embark On The Grandest Journey Yet | Intimate Backyard Wedding in Virginia

From a love kindled literally while picking kindling for a bonfire, to bonding over sweet tea, and adopting a dog named Maya, Clarissa and Andy have have their share of adventures. Soon after Andy proposed in the brief darkness of the 2017 Solar Eclipse, Clarissa emailed us about potentially flying up to Virginia to film their wedding.

Of course we agreed, and this May we found ourselves in Yorktown, waking up at 4:30am to drive to a Revolutionary War battlefield and film these two lovebirds at sunrise. This was of course followed by one of the most delicious meals of biscuits and gravy at a greasy spoon, a brief food coma, and eventually one of the sweetest intimate backyard wedding ceremonies.

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

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Best settings for the Tascam DR-10L Audio Recorder

My exact DR-10L menu, setting by setting, with the reasoning behind each one. Including the one setting that only appears after you update the firmware.

How to Edit & Export High Quality Instagram TV (IGTV) Videos using Premiere Pro

Vertical sequence setup, export settings and the bitrate that actually decides how your video looks. Written for IGTV in 2018; the Premiere half still applies.

Smiling, Rain or Shine | FUN wedding in the Texas Hill Country

One of the reasons Rachel and I love filming weddings is that we get to witness the collision of planning and reality, and whatever emotions come out of it.

Couples plan for months, sometimes years. Then the day arrives and the plan changes anyway, because of things nobody controls. That collision gives you a glimpse of who somebody actually is, and it produces some of the most real and raw moments we’ve ever captured.

Bride smiling with hair half-pinned as a stylist works on the back of her head

The Forecast Turned

Emily and Mike planned an outdoor ceremony. In the days leading up to the wedding, the forecast turned to clouds and rain.

Groom in a white dress shirt looking down and smiling as he gets ready

Bride smiling and looking off to the side, soft light through blinds behind her

Ten minutes before the ceremony, with a fine mist falling over the perfectly aligned chairs, Emily made the call: they were going ahead outdoors. Rainy reality and all. And with a smile on her face, she walked toward her groom.

Groom in silhouette adjusting his collar in front of a window with slatted blinds

Man carrying a closed umbrella walking beside a woman in a sequined dress across a covered brick patio

And Then The Vase

At the end of the aisle stood Mike, dealing with expectations of his own. There was banter going between him, the officiant, and his best man, including a whispered discussion about whether he was going to start crying the moment he saw Emily.

Mike’s expectation of having a tough time watching her walk down the aisle was, pun fully intended, shattered by the reality of Emily knocking over and very loudly breaking a large glass vase on her way toward him.

They both immediately started laughing. Because regardless of how any part of that day went, they were together.

Bride cheering with arm raised beside the groom during the recessional, groomsmen in dark suits looking on behind them

Smiling, Rain Or Shine

These weren’t isolated incidents, either. Plenty of things across that day didn’t go the way anybody drew them up. Emily and Mike’s response was the same every single time: a smile and a laugh.

Close-up silhouette of bride and groom smiling nose to nose with visible raindrops falling between them

Plans, even ones you’ve been building for over a year, rarely land the way you think they will. It’s in those moments that who you actually are shows up. If we all met reality the way Emily and Mike met theirs, we’d be alright.

A Note On Filming In The Rain

Rain is not a disaster for a wedding film. It’s a gift you didn’t ask for.

Overcast turns the entire sky into one enormous softbox, so faces are lit evenly and nobody is squinting into hard sun. Wet stone and wet grass hold color and reflect light. Umbrellas give you something to shoot through. And every single guest is more present, because weather makes people pay attention.

What it costs you is caution. Keep a cloth on you at all times, keep a bag over the body between setups, and get your wide establishing shots in early, because you won’t be able to leave the couple later.