The All Brevis Wedding // What an experience
 

We just got back from Mexico where we shot, what we believe to be, the first all brevis wedding. We had one rig on a steadicam and two hand held rigs. We brought along some top secret gear soon to be released and shot the ceremony with a couple 70-200s.

You can see a full write-up on our blog here as well as the highlights clip:

StillMotionBlog.com Dear 5D MK11: Start Your Engines // Training too?

We are considering flying Dennis from Cinevate down to Toronto and doing a round table discussion about the impetus for the shoot, the challenges we came across, how this will change our work moving forward, and how other can implement these techniques. We would then cut this in with some behind the scenes footage and make more of an educational piece out of it. I would love to know who would be interested in seeing something like this as it would be quite of time invested, but if we get enough interest we will certainly put it together.

Comments, questions, critique about the shoot are certainly welcome as well.

P.

Hi Patrick,

I religiously follow your work and Jmags you guys are both outstanding but in my humble opinion, I would not rank this among your best SDEs, could it be the learning curve attached with shooting Brevis all the way, could be. Somehow I feel that something is holding you back in the shoot.

Im no expert heck I don't even know how to shoot with Brevis, great work as usual but I still find your Japan trailer to be top notch among your work.

Wow some fantastic images from Stillmotion again. Again, Cinema production coming to the wedding video business.

Having shot a few weddings many years back, I can appreciate the work that goes into shooting a wedding. And now being involve in some narative filming, I can appreciate what that takes. Mixing the two successfully is quite an undertaking.

So with that said, question begged is when all is said and done, are the clients, in 10 years going to be happy with their investment. Would they be happier to have had the common shots of Aunt Jane, and ring bearer nephew Scott, rather than the cinematic shot of a rake in the sand, or the gluing in place of an eyelash ? Without giving away trade secrets, I am curious whether Stillmotion ever gets back that kind of negative reaction or does Stillmotion provide both, perhaps in the form of a long form edit ?

Noel,

Thanks for your feedback. This wasn't an SDE, it was a highlights we produced after. We also wanted it to look different from anything else we had done and we wanted it to be more filmic. That meant more real moments, less sizzling shots just because (you'll notice no detail shots) and the vision of pulling you more into the story and giving it a more filmic feel throughout.

The look of the footage on our theatre in the studio is definitely something else. But your right, this was a learning experience for us and there are certain things we couldn't or didn't want to do, one of them being the crazy steadicam shots. Thanks again for the comments.

P.

The thing that really impresses me about the clip is the use of sound as much as the visuals. The images are beautiful but the waves from the water, or the footsteps at :57 make it feel like a feature film to me, as much as the Brevis does. The audio certainly emphasizes the story aspect that you write about and is a fresh change from cutting to the music, which most of us tend to do and winds up feeling like a music video.

The piece is put together superbly and the editing is top notch. Anyone with the time and gear could recreate the look through trial and error but it takes real skill to put the footage together in a way that tells a story as strongly as you have here. I also certainly appreciate the "less sizzling shots" as you put it. The location seemed to require a more subdued edit.

Great work as always.

Awesome question Chris. We haven't gotten anything but positive feedback from our couples, but we certainly aren't right for everybody, and we make sure to tell all of our couples that to ensure that they know what we offer and that they feel it is right for them. Our main features, which we don't put online, are 25 minutes in length and show much more of the common details your mentioning. Now, in doing so we still try to shoot those creatively, but I don't think that was your point as much.

We are hoping to cover our approach and how we fit everything together and market it in great detail for our workshop.

P.

Thanks for your response and the insight. A 25 minute cut sounds ideal, in my limited experience.

Matthew,

Thanks so much for pointing that out. We were thinking the same thing and that was part of the design, but I didn't want to say anything and see if anybody picked up on that and felt a real difference from our old work.

P.

I couldn't disagree more! After watching everything Patrick puts out and something's Patrick doesn't put out I think that this is vintage Moreau. If you haven't known Patrick since the vx2100 and no steadicam days you won't know what I mean but this is pure storytelling at it's finest. He has gone back to his roots and tapped the inner emotion that he uses to craft a beautiful story in a matter of minutes without the need of sizzle shots or crazy steadicam shots, it is all about the feel and story. I take my hat off to you as I think this is your best work thus far. I even put a phone call in today to confirm I was right on who edited the piece. Kudos P I will see you in January.

JB

Will you be moving towards this style now? Also, how will this new style effect the upcoming workshop?

Awesome video but I'm just curious as to what impact this will have on what will be taught in Jan. I've always been curious to see a whole wedding shot in 35mm adapters so

Thanks

Hey Patrick, loved it... the subtle touches with the sound worked well. I noticed all Ex1's for this one, has that become the norm for you or are you still using A1's also? Out of curiosity what kind of 70-200's were you shooting with? Thanks

With movies this good, who needs still photos? Seriously, this is beautiful and touching work that goes beyond the music-video highlight genre. It all flows together without the need for extraneous effects; which is the hallmark of a well-produced piece (IMHO).
Kudos!
Now, about that light used during toasts/dancing...was it battery operated or did you have access to AC power?

You guys are now shooting with the Sony EX-1, correct? Why the switch from Canon?

Hi Randy,

We are covering a ton of things in Jan, and 35mm adapters was always part of that. Our goal was never to teach you how to shoot in our style, as we want each person to find their own style, but we will be covering a lot of the philosophy on how we got to where we were before this shoot, and why we took this on as well. The techniques and concepts we are going over are also very malleable so you can take them back and make them work for you. With three of us there leading the workshop (Konrad, Michael, and myself) your looking at a 4-1 ratio, so your going to have lots of access for any questions or concepts you want to specifically work on or talk about.

P.

The gear was provided by one of our sponsors, Cinevate, and he set us up with 3 EX1s. The only cam I brought was an A1. Dennis set us up with A1s mainly because of the record review feature, so we could stay on top of where we are at, and it was much easier to back things up on site.

We still love our A1s and I absolutely believe they are the best value bar none.

We had the Canon 70-200s.

P.