To help the story be told as clearly as possible, I try to film establishing shots of all the locations on a wedding day.
Continue readingESTABLISHING SHOTS: Why they are important and how to film them!
From the deer blind to the wedding aisle: a west Texas country wedding
If there’s one thing I’m thankful for Amalee and Todd reminding me of, its that weddings are not only a joining of two people, but of two families. And in their case, they are some of the nicest families I’ve ever met.
Continue readingHow to use LUTS to color grade Sony A7Sii, FS5, and a6300 footage in Premiere Pro CC
In the simplest terms, a LUT is a preset file that contains color, contrast, brightness, and saturation information in the .cube format. LUTs are used for a lot of reasons, including simulating film stock looks, emulating camera colors, or even color calibration. Today I’ll be showing you how to use them.
Continue readingThis wedding is all about Jesus, Joy, and Hashtags. So many Hashtags.
Some people have a glow about them. A spark. A sense of Joy that is bubbling right under the surface of their personality. It’s not just joy though, its happiness, laughter, smiling, and love all at once. Nicole and Estevan have that.
Continue readingHow to EASILY color grade Sony A7Sii, FS5, and a6300 footage using Premiere Pro CC
Color grading has always been one of my favorite facets of cinematography. Think about the warm reds and oranges of Mad Max, or the darker hues of The Revenant. The ability of a colorist to alter the mood and feel of a film through hues and saturation is incredibly powerful. I’ve been wanting to make a color grading tutorial for years, but it wasn’t about a year ago that I felt that I had learned enough to even consider doing that. I knew that the time was right when I finished creating my video about my favorite picture profile for the A7Sii.
That does not mean that this tutorial only applies to wedding films shot with the A7Sii or any other camera for that matter. The philosophy, curves, and color wheels, should apply to any video you are color grading, regardless of its content. You will need a copy of Adobe Premiere Pro CC to follow along with this tutorial. Adobe currently offers a free 30 day trial of Creative Cloud with all their apps, including Premiere Pro.
I do have a couple recommendations before you start color grading. First, I would watch my first video about my favorite A7Sii picture profile. Spoiler Alert: my favorite picture profile is PP8, with the CINE4 Gamut and sgamut3.cine color space. By filming footage with that picture profile, it makes it easier to follow along with this tutorial. Second, I would invest in a good color calibration tool like a Spyder 5 Pro. If your monitor isn’t calibrated you will have no way of knowing if your color grade will look good on all screens, or only yours.
If you are interested in learning more about color grading, check out the Tao Colorist Newsletter by Patrick Inhofer. Every week, he covers the latest news, tutorials, and technology in the world of color grading. It is incredibly insightful and a joy to read every Sunday. I am also a huge fan of Denver Riddle’s Color Grading Central. He offers training, LUTs, and plugins for aspiring colorists around the world. Now if he would only make some plugins for Premier Pro. 🙂
I hope this tutorial was helpful for you. I’ll be coming out with another tutorial for color grading with LUTs very soon!
Want to watch more? Check out my reviews of the A7Sii and FS5, as well as a tip for how wedding cinematographers and photographers can get along. If you have any questions or comments about this picture profile or anything else relating to wedding cinematography, please get in touch.
A Tuscan Wedding From Deep In The Heart of Texas
I met my wife at a smoothie and movie party. Of course I didn't know she would be my wife in that moment, but I did feel an immediate connection. It ended up taking a year of friendship and two years of dating before we made our marriage official. I still remember that first moment our eyes met, and our first conversation.
When I hear Gabriel speak about how he first saw Kaydrian, he speaks with the same fondness I do when I speak about how I met my wife. He was sitting in speech class at college (no smoothies or movies in sight), when Kaydrian walked up to present her speech. To hear him describe it, you would think an angel floated in through a window while harps played and a childrens choir sang. It may not have been that dramatic, but it still left an impression on his heart and mind.
Kaydrian's story of how they met takes a less heavenly tone. She talks about public speaking in the same way that vegans talk about burger joints. Her quieter demeanor didn't lend itself well to speeches, and she said she didn't actually notice Gabriel at all while stumbling through her presentation. That evening though, once the speeches were finished and she could relax, she happened to run into him at a bar. From then on they were inseparable, seeing each other every day, and not just in speech class.
Soon after they started dating, a major curveball hit their relationship. Gabriel's company moved to Dallas and wanted him to move too. It was then that he asked Kaydrian to uproot herself, from all her close friends and family and move with him.
She said yes.
This was probably the second moment that Gabriel saw an angel and heard harps playing. It is also the second moment that I saw a similarity between Kaydrian and Gabriel's story and my own. Around the same time Kaydrian was pulling up roots and moving to Dallas for Gabriel, I was doing the same for my soon to be wife, Rachel. I couldn't envision life without her.
When filming weddings, it is so easy to get caught up in the day of the event, but it is important to consider everything leading up to it. The small decisions to come up and speak with someone, that lead to bigger decisions to date them, followed by life-changing decisions to move cities and get married. I'm glad that I get to be a part of one of these moments.
You can also watch Kaydrian and Gabriel's wedding highlight film below:
Shot with the Sony FS100, Canon 7D, and Canon 5DMK2. Edited in Premiere Pro CC. Colored with Magic Bullet Looks.
Interested in having me film your wedding? Get in touch!