Remember Who You Are | Iceland Cinematic Drone and Timelapse Travel Film

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.

Sound Effect Credits – Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License

Aspen Tree In Strong Wind by juskiddink on Freesound

Riviere-river by Glaneur de songs on Freesound

Seagulls by inchadney on Freesound

Waves Crashing On Stone Jetty by juskiddink on Freesound

Pink Lakes Wind From Inside A She Oak by kangaroovindaloo on Freesound

Horse Nicker 2 by GoodListener on Freesound

Svalbard_recherche_glacier_20060904 by jeo on Freesound

My Favorite Picture Profile for the DJI Mavic Pro

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.

My favorite drone video gear: https://kit.co/whoismatt/drone-gear-for-wedding-filmmakers

And if you want to keep up with my Iceland photos, videos, and other behind-the-scenes stuff, please follow me on Instagram.

I also post a ton of video related things to my Facebook Page

As always, if you have any questions or comments about this review, please feel free to leave one below, or get in touch.

I am also now offering one-on-one personal filmmaker consulting! Wanna talk about cameras, lighting, or booking clients? Let’s do it!

After 9 years, I still fall more in love with you every day | Hill Country Wedding in Spicewood, Texas

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

How to Film A Wedding | Behind The Scenes of Not just in Love, in Joy with each other

Before you do anything else, watch the wedding trailer I created this BTS for: “Not just in Love, in Joy with each other“.

Now that you’ve done that, have you ever wanted to know how I film a wedding? I am so HUGELY EXCITED to share this video with you and it has been so hard to keep this a secret! I had a behind-the-scenes filmed of a real wedding that I filmed! This video will show you:

  • The gear I use to film a wedding.
  • Gobs of drone flying action!
  • My thought process behind creative shots.
  • How I handle things when a wedding reception nearly ends in disaster!
  • The exact lenses and camera settings I use in different situations.

I’ve been wanting to make this video for about a year and a half (ever since my first wedding filmmaker vlog!), so when my friend Noah told me he was getting married and asked me to film, I jumped at the chance to bring along my friend Paul Bailey and have him film a behind-the-scenes of Rachel and I as we filmed this wedding.

And just so we are clear, this is ONLY a behind the scenes of the wedding trailer, I have a much longer behind-the-scenes coming out soon, walking you through the ENTIRE wedding day from beginning to end. 🙂

And if you want to keep up with my Iceland photos, videos, and other behind-the-scenes stuff, follow me on Instagram. I also post a ton of video related things to my Facebook Page.

Shoutout to Grant Daniels Photography too for photographing this wedding and giving some great commentary in this video!

You can check out the rest of the gear I use for filmmaking at my Gear Page or my Kit Page.

I am also now offering one-on-one personal filmmaker consulting! Wanna talk about cameras, lighting, or booking clients? Let’s do it!

Not just in Love, in Joy with each other | Texas countryside wedding trailer

If you talk to Noah and Mallorie about their journey, they will start with a story of middle-school friendship. A relationship that grew into their parents driving them to dates in the 8th grade, and a handholding session on an airplane that sealed their fates together from that moment on.

I guess you could say that everyone knew this wedding was coming. I knew, Rachel knew, and everyone else kinda expected it. There was very little question of if, only when. The “when” for me turned out to be April of last year when Noah was helping me film a wedding (oh yeah, he’s a videographer too!). He was helping me unload some gear from my car when he casually stated, “When Mal and I get married next year, I want you to film it.” Cue my doubletake followed by a “Yes!”

Smiles for days!

So there we all were: Noah, Mallorie, friends, and family, all squeezed under an oak tree south of Dallas, watching an event unfold that we all saw coming. And contrary to what you may think, our knowing this was coming didn’t make it any less special, no, it was even better because this wedding was something we all wanted to happen.

Are you about to get married to your middle-school sweetheart? Rachel and I would love to film it. Please get in touch!

How to EASILY remove dust spots from your videos in Premiere Pro & After Effects

Most of my ideas for tutorials come from struggles that I have experienced while learning how to edit videos. I’ll be needing to know how to do something, there’s no video or tutorial readily available, and I’ll eventually end up figuring it out on my own.

Take this tutorial for example: back in 2013 I was really getting into timelapses, shooting them all over Texas and around the country. In the process of shooting these though, I realized that my camera sensor had a lot of dust spots on it that I hadn’t noticed while filming 1080p video, but were definitely obvious in a 4K timelapse. Unlike Photoshop or Lightroom though, editing video involves moving pictures, so you can’t just clone or healing brush some dust away, because it will be immediately obvious when you hit play.

Thankfully after a lot of research, I found a tutorial on the Magic Timelapses Blog written by a guy (I think his name is Michael) back in 2010. In it, he detailed how he used After Effects to quickly and easily remove dust and sensor spots from any video. I was completely mindblown and proceeded to use this technique for years.

More recently, as I’ve been creating more video tutorials, reviews, and other helpful videos for filmmakers, I realized that this method of removing dust and sensor spots from videos is now even more necessary. With 4K video and mirrorless cameras, it is no longer a question of if you will get a dust spot, but when. My goal with this tutorial is to save you a ton of time, headache, and stress, and to show you how to quickly and easily remove dust and sensor spots using Premiere Pro. And if you have a lot of dust spots, I show you how to do it even quicker in After Effects.

As always, if you have any questions or comments about this tutorial, wedding filmmaking, or creating videos in general, please feel free to get in touch.