Three easy techniques for mixing songs together in a video edit: match the key, match the BPM, and stop cutting your fades short. Most of the work happens before you ever open your editing software.
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An elopement in the second largest canyon in the United States, and as far as I know the first wedding film ever shot on the Sony a7 IV.
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Three wedding filmmakers who have been inspiring me lately: Sara Canducci in Italy, Hello Tomorrow Films in Canada, and Shawn Yang here in Texas.
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Chris and Rachel got married in downtown Dallas on a cold, rainy day, 501 days after a first date that both of them knew about by the end of the night.
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Lily and Sergio met in geometry class in 2005. Eleven years, thousands of miles, and a lot of long distance later, they got married in Austin.
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When I was young, I didn’t like trying new things. I wore the same clothes, ate the same food, read a lot of books, and didn’t get out much. Thankfully this all changed around the time that I left for college, when I made a conscious decision to break out of my shell and attempt to be cool. Whether I was successful at being cool is debatable, but I did manage to make some friends and find a wife, so I consider that a win.
These days, I try to put myself in the position to try new things as often as possible. For example, when we go out on a date, my wife and I have a rule that we can’t go to the same restaurant twice. Another example: I create tutorial and review videos to help random strangers on the Internet. I still do enjoy wearing the same clothes and reading though, so I guess everything hasn’t changed.
Now why am I telling you all about my awkward younger years? What does me trying new things have to do with Suneera and Amos’ wedding? Quick answer: Because their wedding was something new that I haven’t done before.
Longer answer: This wedding was a major step outside of my comfort zone. Instead of one wedding ceremony, I would be filming two. The first of which would be a traditional Indian ceremony, with all the outfits, music, and flower petals (so many flower petals!), that I had never experienced before. But due to my desire to try new things – and especially film new weddings – I was glad to do it.
Thankfully, Suneera and Amos were patient with me, as I learned all about Saris, Sherwanis, Garlands, and Talis. There was so much to keep track of, but throughout it all I was grateful for the chance to experience another culture’s traditions and ceremonies. Suneera and Amos, as you can see from the video, are such a sweet couple and I am glad I was able to film their wedding.
The whole thing happened in a downtown Dallas hotel, which turned out to be the only reason the day was physically possible, because two full ceremonies plus a reception means you are running on somebody else’s clock all day long and you cannot afford to lose forty minutes to a drive across town.
And here’s the thing I want to say to any filmmaker looking at a two-ceremony day and feeling their stomach drop, because mine did too. You are not filming two weddings. You are filming one day that happens to contain two ceremonies, and the couple is the same couple in both of them. Once I stopped treating it as double the work and started treating it as one story told twice, the whole day got a lot easier to hold in my head.
Suneera’s morning was the longest getting-ready I have ever filmed, and it was also the most interesting, because there was constantly something happening with somebody’s hands. Braiding. Pinning. Jewelry going on. Family members moving in and out of frame the entire time.
Whenever you’re used to a getting-ready room that’s quiet for long stretches, this is a genuinely different experience, and I loved it. There is no waiting around for a moment. You just point the camera at whatever is going on and something is going on.
This is the part I had never filmed before, and I did a lot of asking beforehand so I would know roughly what was coming and where I needed to be standing when it did. That is the entire trick, by the way. Whenever you’re filming a tradition you don’t know, ask somebody in the family to walk you through the order of it in advance, because the moments are just as important as the ones you already know how to anticipate, and you only get one pass at them.
The color in that room was unbelievable. Reds and golds everywhere, in the clothes, in the flowers, in the drapes behind them, all of it saturated in a way that a typical wedding simply is not. And the flower petals. So many flower petals.
And then everybody changed, and the same two people got married again in a white dress and a black tux, and the room went from red and gold to soft window light and cream.
What I did not expect is how much I would like cutting between them in the edit. Two completely different palettes, two sets of clothes, two sets of traditions, and the same couple looking at each other the exact same way in both. You don’t have to say anything about it in the film. The images do it.
By the time the dancing started, everyone in that ballroom had been together for the better part of a day, which does something to the energy of a reception that you cannot manufacture. They were not strangers politely finding the dance floor. They were a couple hundred people who had already been through two ceremonies together and were ready.
I learned a lot that day, and I’m looking forward to learning more in the future. So if you are planning a wedding and it looks like something that I haven’t filmed before, please get in touch. I would love to try something new.
Check out Suneera and Amos wedding highlight below:
The dance floor footage from this wedding also ended up as one of my examples in how to film incredible dancing footage in your wedding films, if you want to see how I lit and shot it.
People ask constantly what I shoot weddings with, so here’s the current list. This film is from 2016 and the bag has turned over a few times since, so treat this as what I reach for now rather than a shot list of what was on my shoulder that day.
The full list lives on my favorite wedding filmmaking gear page, and everything is color graded with my own WhoisMatt LUTs.
If you’re trying to book more weddings, I have a free quick tips guide on how to book more wedding film clients, and my wedding film editing course covers the edit start to finish. There’s also a free Learn Wedding Filmmaking Facebook group, and whenever I need help with an edit I use Archaius Creative, who’ll take 10% off your first project through that link.