My wife Rachel had three roommates in college, and now as of this wedding, I have filmed two of their weddings (still holding out hope for number 3, Mattie-Ruth!). Normally when we film weddings, we sit down with the couple over dinner and hear the entire story of how they met, fell in love, and decided to get married. For Lauren and Matt though, things were a bit different because we have been there to witness their entire relationship (which we totally saw coming by the way).
To sum it up, they wrote and performed songs together, which basically requires them to fall in love*. Witnessing two of our good friends joining their lives together in a moment that we were all hoping and waiting for made their wedding day all the more special for us to film.
Are you marrying your best friend/duet singer? Even if you don’t make beautiful music together, we would love to film your wedding. Please get in touch!
*Citation, 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.
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. 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.
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.
Iceland is a country that even after visiting, I still have difficulty believing exists. Snow-capped volcanoes piercing the skies, centuries-old glaciers covering the landscape like a quilt, dark water the color of ash folding up onto a black sand beach, and don’t even get me started on the sunsets that last for hours.
While incredibly harsh, this land is also graceful, full of quiet moments where all you hear is the tiny whisper as snowflakes fall on your face and melt, all you feel is the gentle spring of the moss that covers everything beneath your feet, and all you see is the Aurora Borealis dancing overhead. These and hundreds of other experiences are what I attempted to capture in this film of one of my favorite countries on Earth.
For me, Iceland is a reminder that God created a jaw-droppingly beautiful world, full of moments that are constantly reminding us of himself. When I traveled across this country I remembered who I was, his child. I hope you get to travel there as well one day and share the same experiences.
I’m also very excited to announce that I filmed a behind-the-scenes of this film, showing exactly how I captured the shots that you see in it. So if you’ve ever wanted to film a travel video yourself, I hope you will find it helpful! I’ll be posting the behind-the-scenes soon.
Many of the sound effects used in this film were either used with permission from Freesound.org (credits below), or from the amazing Archetype Sound Effects package from Lens Distortions.
The narration was handled expertly by Holly Lindin. She’s an amazingly talented voice-over artist from Canada, that I would highly recommend for any of your video projects.
I would also like to thank my wife Rachel for traveling to Iceland with me, putting up with my needs for “one more drone shot!”, and feeding me snacks throughout this trip.
As promised in my Mavic Pro Review video, I’m excited to share with you my favorite picture profile for the Mavic Pro. This is the exact picture profile that I use for filming weddings, travel videos, and any other professional shoots. With a bit of color grading, I find that it can result in some beautiful footage shot with this tiny drone.
In the future, I plan on bringing you a video dedicated to exactly how I use Adobe Premiere Pro to color grade the footage shot with this exact picture profile, and how I use LUTs with it as well.
For now though, here are my exact picture profile settings:
My favorite Mavic Pro picture profile: D-Log 0, -1,-1 (unless I’m filming in a high-dynamic-range scenario, then I want my sharpness set to +1.
Other settings that I use in the DJI Go App:
Record in Manual
Record in the MP4 Video Format
Record in 4K at 30fps, conformed in post to 24fps.
Record at 1/60th shutter speed by using Polar Pro’s Cinema Series Vivid Collection of ND Filters with Polarizers.
Turn the Over Exposure Warning (aka Zebras) ON, and make sure no parts of my video are overexposed.
Monitor the EV Meter and try to ALWAYS keep my exposure at 0.0 or slightly above at .3 or .7, never under 0.0 (note that this is bugged in my current version of the firmware and the EV does not work, so I monitor my zebras instead and film with my footage just below where the zebras start to appear, almost over-exposed.)
Manually set my White Balance using the “Custom” option and dialing in the exact Kelvin value. In most daylight/partly cloudy situations this is at 7,000K.
Keep my ISO at 100 if possible.
If you are wondering why I use these settings, please watch the video, because two-thirds of it is dedicated to explaining why I use them.
You may remember Kelsey and Jacob from their highlight film, “High school sweethearts in the Hill Country.” Today, Rachel and I want to share with you their full wedding film: a story that shares even more about who they are, how their relationship grew from campfires and two-step dances to a wedding next to a pig barn, and of course, how they ended up with a petting zoo at their wedding reception.
On their family ranch, which I described in my previous blog post as “their connecting point for all their key moments growing up together,” we had the opportunity to capture not only their wedding ceremony, but a glimpse of who they are as people. From shotguns in the morning, to Aaron Watson in the evening, this wedding was the perfect culmination of Kelsey and Jacob’s relationship, and one that we were so incredibly overjoyed to film.
If you’re getting married (no shotguns or pig barn required), we would love to film it, please get in touch! – Matt
