Typically, we’d save the video for the end of the post, but since we’re about to get all behind-the-scenes-y on you, check out this promo video we made for our friends, Blaine and Kelsey, of Wright Photographs for their senior sessions!
Feelin’ the love? Here’s how we made it happen.
Blaine and Kelsey are a husband and wife photographer duo based out of Champaign, IL. Besides taking awesome photos, they are just super cool people–they are coffee drinking, ice cream eating, record loving, instagram posting, passionate people who want you to slow down and savor the current place in your life.
They contacted us about creating a film for their senior portrait sessions. We drove out to their family friend’s farm where they had some really fun things planned out for the girls on the shoot–including, but not limited to a bonfire, s’mores, paint, and a dog named Gunther.
The look of this film is decidedly vintage. We wanted it to have an old, processed look–something that matched the look and feel of a super 8mm film and at the same time gave a sense of Blaine and Kelsey’s style as well.
To get a more handheld look and feel, we decided to leave our monopods behind and bust out some old rigs. If you look at the images above, you’ll see that we’re shooting with our Cinevate Uno rig and a Cinevate shoulder rig. We paired these rigs with our 7D’s, Zacuto view finders, and limited ourselves to a few lenses.
You may have also noticed the models are using a funky looking camera. I brought along the Nizo 801 super 8mm camera for its debut run! While none of the actual super 8 footage made it into the film {we’ve still got some rolls to shoot on before we send out to the lab}, it is a fully operational camera and the girls were actually recording with it. Don’t be surprised if you see us bringing around the Nizo with us to future shoots. We’ve got some cool stuff a comin’!
To give it that old film look, we experimented with creating some vintage looks. Check out these early tests we did with color and grain:
The final component was all Oliver–as our resident After Effects wizard, Oliver created custom film strip borders and animated them on top of our footage. The final result, with everything combined, is the film you see at the top of this post!
We had a really awesome time on this shoot. Oliver got to bust out his Bear Grylls skills {he helped start the bonfire}, I got to bust out my new camera {super 8mm fun!}, and Gunther got to bust out his marshmallow stealing ability.
And with that, here’s one last golden BTS nugget–Gunther lets you know what he thought of the shoot:
Cheers,
Chris
Back in November, when our friend 
Shooting a wedding and cutting together an SDE the night before Ruth and Kenny’s wedding required us to do some post-wedding work. Clearing cards, transferring and backing up footage, clearing out hard drive space—a lot of small, time-consuming, yet necessary things.
Their day was so richly textured and layered with meaning that we had a some tough choices on what stories would make it into their film. From writing their own vows, to the inclusion of their favorite wine in their ceremony, and even including their dog, Suzy, in their bridal party–there was certainly no shortage of meaning in their day.
Above: Grace’s Father, Young Hwan Lee, back in the day.
Above (from left): Joel, Anna, and Timothy Park