Still-Motion's first all Brevis35 Production

[Michael Y Wong]

Greetings everyone,

My name is Michael Y Wong & I am new to this forum. As this is my first post, let me start with a little about myself.

I am one of the cinematographers at a wedding photo/video company StillMotion.ca. We are a small company in Canada that has been fortunate enough in recent times to shoot weddings worldwide.

While we've used the Brevis35 extensively for all of our corporate work, we've never used it fully on a wedding due to the expected difficulty of having to do everything on fully manual for a live event such as a wedding. Nevertheless the team recently got back from Mexico from shooting our first all Brevis wedding, where we had 3 rigs in total, with one of them mounted on the Steadicam Flyer LE. Also used was Cinevate's upcoming slider, as well as the newly released follow focus and cage.

The full details and the clip as can be found on our blog here:
StillMotionBlog.com Dear 5D MK11: Start Your Engines // Training too? (http://www.stillmotionblog.com/?p=883)

Also under the post is a the behind the scenes clip that shows all the gear involved.

I welcome comments, constructive criticisms & questions about the piece. We are considering involving Dennis from Cinevate in a full fledged behind the scenes piece regarding this project if there is enough interest on our work approach.

Lastly I'm looking forward to chatting with you all about the artistic, technical & storytelling aspects of what we all do, i've seen some awesome work here.

Cheers!

- Michael.

ps. Dennis, as always THANK YOU for your help and support with EVERYTHING !

[Dennis Wood]

Michael, we checked out John's (he's a photographer..not a videographer!) little bts piece this morning: http://www.stillmotionblog.com/?p=879

We loved it :-)

[DM_rider]

I just got done watching your latest wedding piece on vimeo, it was very impressive. You guys have got something good going.

[Joseph Stunzi]

Michael, Patrick, and everyone at Stillmotion.

This is truly inspiring work you guys have put out there. In this new era of Scarlet, Epic, 5D2, and D90... this piece once again reminds us that it's not about the tools but how you use them. The wedding is beautiful, the BTS is sparking curiosity in Cinevates new products, and your body of work today speaks for both your talent, creativity, and passion for your art.

Keep it up! I expect to see the first ever 5 camera all-adapter wedding sometimes soon boys! 2 steadicams and all!

[Dennis Wood]

I might have to renew my wedding vows again just so I can hire these guys :-)

[Tomas Riuka]

we're silently coming after still motion :) next year :)

[Michael Y Wong]

Thanx DM for the kind words, & Tomas we'd definately be up for the challenge ;)

[Tomas Riuka]

There's always somebody after the best :) your works are really amazing guys.

[Michael Y Wong]

Hi Joseph,

You bring up some really great points. We are definately looking forward to *hopefully* getting our hands on the Epic and maybe a Red One sometime in 2009, and the team is pumped to take a 5D2 to Jamaica for a shoot next week.

In todays marketplace there are more awesome low cost tools out there then ever. But the tools will never teach you the fundamentals of film language; which we are striving to learn more upon shoot after shoot after shoot, and more-so during the countless hours we spend in the editing room.

I would love to throw an adapter on my Steadicam Pilot, but unlike Patrick's flyer LE I don't think my rig would support the weight (nor would my bad back hehe).

Tomas, I will make sure your warm words make it to the rest of the team.

Thanks for taking the time to watch and comment, & if there are those who would have done things differently (from either technical, artistic or storytelling standpoints) I'd love to hear it!

-M.

[Charles Lowthian]

I want to see/read more about this slider dennis. The word is out so spill :)

And lovely work Michael and all at stillmotion. Dennis recently showed us your corporate higher education piece, which was as impressive.

[Dennis Wood]

Charles, we have a new product launch kicking off on Monday. What I will say here is the following:

1. Part of the system is called "Pegasus". It has not been shown in any videos to date.
2. It's not what you think...actually a lot more than anyone could guess.
3. We're kicking off a contest for a shooter to entertain us with a 60 second commercial for "Pegasus". Keep in mind we won't tell you what "Pegasus" is until the contest is over :-) There are no requirements whatsoever for the piece other then the timeline and encoding requirements for upload.
4. The winning entry will be the owner of production unit #1.
5. We'll be teasing you with daily photo reveals starting Monday.

So this will be fun :-) A full thread entry will be forthcoming with details.

[Michael Y Wong]

And lovely work Michael and all at stillmotion. Dennis recently showed us your corporate higher education piece, which was as impressive.

Thank you Charles, are you referring to the IBM series? As I honest can't recall which corporate piece you are refering to.

Dennis, now you've got me intrigued!!

-MYW.

[dadoboy]

The best "wedding video" I've ever seen. Just shows you how having a small mobile camera, with the right supports can produce results that literally dance around traditional movie cameras. Wish I could do that with my ole 35 BL2! I mean I could try, but it would cost a whole lot more with a much bigger crew, a real slider and probably wouldn't be able to get the type of shots you guys did.

[Nektonic]

I'll chime in and say that I completely agree with the comments saying that this is most likely the best wedding video I've ever seen, or at the very least, in the top three. I've also seen some of your other work, so those other two of the top three could be ones you guys have done. Awesome and inspiring work.

I do wedding videos myself, and would love to produce work of this calibur, or hell, if I could produce something 1/6 as good as this I would blow away the quality level of all the competition in my area without a doubt. The problem is that everyone just wants a single videographer for as cheap as possible, especially in the current economy. They even ask sometimes if I can just not use a light at all. They want unobtrusiveness, which I totally understand, but at the same time it can be a ridiculous burden on actually getting the best footage. If I told people I was bringing two or three other videographers they'd have a fit. Plus the church restrictions are sometimes downright surreal.

I have to ask, how much do you guys usually charge? I can't imagine any of the type of clients I get even remotely considering paying what would be required for this level of brilliance. Did you guys have to do a few free ones to have something to show people or did you slowly work up to this by adding more and more elements to your videos?

And I checked out your blog about the 5D mkII. I totally agree. DSLR's that shoot video shouldn't and probably will not make videographers obsolete and vice versa. However, as I'm sure you guys have encountered this in the wedding industry... hype. I've worked with and know of a lot of photographers who will hype this up like you wouldn't believe and tell people, "no you don't need a videographer, we can shoot it all in the same camera. Just pay me double and it'll all be taken care of." Of course, they probably won't produce very good videos and won't be able to take too much business away from talented videographers.

I bet this would've looked great even without the 35mm adapters, but with them it looks even more amazing. Fabulous job. You guys are the real deal.

[Michael Y Wong]

Thanx for watching and the warm words =)

dadoboy - Believe it or not you'd be surpised what you can do with junk. I've actually done 'slider shots' by pushing a camera around on a flat table. Granted I had to do a million takes but the shots were totally useable and made it to the final product.

Nektonic - I share your pain, and each and every one of us on the team also have shared your pain at one point. Our approach was to incrementally incease our level of production value time after time (swallowing the costs ourselves) and putting forth the effort of educating our clients of how and why it took a slightly larger crew (at least 2 people) and hence additional costs to do what we do.

At the beginning everbody on the team shot alone, with one shoddy camera and edited in solitude pretty much out of the basement, doing videos for next to nothing.

Even with 90% of our wedding (and corporate) work, we shoot with a team of 2 cinematographers. Rarely do we shoot with 3.

We also take the time to explain to couples how we may need to bring in our lights @ the reception (for the first dance, intros, and speeches), we keep the lighting to an absolute minimum by strategizing our shots to maximize light, and we've yet to have a couple to disagree with it.

Regarding church restrictions, we've never once brought in any lighting, but we do let the couples know that we will be bringing wireless audio packs and that the groom (and officiant) will be mic'd.

Re costs, the last I've checked, our packages start at 4800$ CDN for 8 hours of coverage, our largest package is over double that price. We have also packages tailed to Los Angeles, as for some reason we keep on shooting weddings in California, and have adjusted to the travel/living costs in those areas when we shoot.

We do feel that these videos offer value from a production value/dollar perspective. When speaking to some of the ad agencies that have made inquiries to us, one of the first things they always say is that if they are to produce somehting that looks like what we do (picture/sound quality, overall production wise - not wedding content ) they say they command a much, much higher price then what we charge.

Of course, that could be of debate, since production value is dependent upon the industry and market they are subjected to.

Hope everyone had a Happy New Year!!