I don’t usually record an intro for my wedding films, but this one is a bit different, because alongside this film I shot the biggest behind the scenes I have ever made. More on that below the film.
Lacy & Scott
I met Lacy years ago when she was photographing the same wedding I was filming. I was relatively new and shooting video on a fancy full frame camera for the first time, and she was the expert with a pile of lenses she was happy to let me borrow.
That was the first hint I got of how generous she is. We would only cross paths every year or two when we worked a wedding together, but she was always a text or a Facebook message away whenever I needed business advice or a recommendation. She was an open book and held no secrets about this industry, and I am genuinely convinced my business would not be where it is without her encouragement.
I should mention her photography too, because it feeds straight into her own wedding story. Lacy has the rare ability to make any bride look and feel like a princess. And to be clear, I do not mean cheesy, over-airbrushed princess. I mean you are going to look the best you ever have, your photos are going to look like a fairytale, and that is entirely down to how good she is.
One blisteringly hot day in Sugar Land, Lacy and I filmed a wedding together and I met her new second shooter and boyfriend, Scott. Some guys just exude cool, and he fits the description completely. The list of people whose resume includes military, police and photography is not a long one, but he is on it. More than the Liam Neeson skill set though, it was the way he looked at Lacy and talked about her. There was a tenderness under the surface that was impossible to miss. A wedding for these two was inevitable.
Across her career Lacy has documented thousands of weddings for thousands of couples, but you could tell that her own was something completely new. She has spent her life making brides look like princesses, and it was finally her turn to live the fairytale. It brought me a lot of joy to get to capture that for them.
Music in the film, all licensed from Musicbed: “Whole” by Blake Ewing, “Cliffs” by Voyageur, and “Obvious” by CHPTRS.
The Biggest BTS I Have Ever Filmed
This is not the end of Lacy and Scott’s wedding, because I also filmed a full behind the scenes course around this day with my friends at Story & Heart’s Academy of Storytellers. We have known each other a long time and had been talking for ages about making something together, and I had the idea of flying them down to Texas to document a wedding with me.
Now, I know some of you are already thinking: hang on, Matt has uploaded wedding BTS videos to YouTube for free before. Oh no, Matt’s sold out, no more free BTS.
Nothing could be further from the truth. I fully intend to keep making free wedding behind the scenes videos and putting them up on the channel.
Which does raise the obvious question. If I give BTS away for free, how do I make a paid one worth your money?
The answer was to go far deeper than I have ever gone in a BTS video before.
- Interviews before the wedding. Story & Heart flew down early and interviewed us before the day even started, about the couple and about how we film.
- Why, not just how. My normal BTS is here we go, follow along, hope you can keep up. This one answers not just how we shoot something but why we shoot it that way.
- A running commentary on the day. They kept asking questions as we filmed, and had us talking to ourselves, so you get a constant play by play of what we were thinking in the moment.
- The fast parts, explained afterward. This is my favorite piece. During a ceremony I never get to explain anything, because everything is happening at once. So the night after the wedding, once things had calmed down, I sat down and got interviewed and walked through all of those fast moments properly.
These are all things I have wanted to do with my behind the scenes videos for years, and it took Story & Heart coming down and really digging in for me to actually pull it off.
If you want in, you can sign up to be notified when the ON SET behind the scenes course goes live.
And if you want help with the edit side of things in the meantime, that is what my wedding film editing course is for.