Mike & Ashley’s wedding landed right in the middle of a long production schedule for a 16mm narrative short Steve and I were shooting, so heading south for a weekend to some warm weather and good cooking was a welcome escape! While we’ve had experience shooting narrative films, commercial spots, corporate promos and other types of production, I hadn’t personally undertaken the entire process of crafting a wedding film before, so it was a challenge to say the least. Traveling from Ann Arbor to Detroit to Atlanta to Albany, and arriving right as the rehearsal dinner was starting, Steve and I jumped right into shooting. And…we couldn’t have asked for a more welcoming family to share those 2 special days with.
I had some early conversations with Ashley about what she was looking for in a film, and we agreed that it should speak volumes about the couple, beyond showing the glamour of the weekend’s events. We talked about a possible vintage style for the look that translated into a soft, warm aesthetic in the color grade – I fell in love with the look shortly after I finished grading the first shots of the “getting ready” sequence. And, based on her and Mike’s personalities and interactions, there was no denying that the music choice for the trailer, posted here, was going to be something upbeat, fun, and full of positive energy. I mentioned the importance of sound in telling a story, and was thrilled to be able to work something about the Georgia-Florida rivalry into the film, as this shined through a number of times in the toasts.
Coming from a world of controlled environments where “take 2” is a common occurrence, it was a challenge working in a position where we had little to no control of what was happening around us. I loved how the light played in the interiors, and exposed to let the windows blow out naturally. I actually ended up bringing up the highlights in many of the scenes where the over-exposure was not so prevalent. Difficult scenes included the first look since the shade under the tree vs. the direct sunlight just outside really tested the range of the 60D’s sensor, and the evening/night scenes, where we really struggled. Traveling with no additional lighting equipment, the 60D – even with f1.4 glass – just didn’t hold up in these situations, especially when pushing beyond ISO 1000.
On the tech end, we traveled with 4 Canon DSLR’s and as much support gear as we could carry on our backs – and I didn’t regret it one bit! My biggest worry was mic-ing the vows appropriately, for which we used a wireless lav setup on Mike and a Zoom H4N. MVP in the camera department goes to the Canon 70-200 f2.8 II, which was absolutely essential and delivered some of the most beautiful images of the weekend.
The tools:
4x Canon 60D
Canon 24mm f2.8
Canon 35mm f1.4L
Canon 50mm f1.8
Canon 85mm f1.8
Tamron 17-50 f2.8 VC
Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS II
Cinevate Atlas 30 LTS
Glidecam HD 2000
2x Manfrotto 504B-HDV Monopods
Zoom H4N
2x Rode Videomic Pro
Can’t thank Mike & Ashley enough, the entire family for their hospitality, and Steve for coming along to make all the images we shot possible. Hope it to be the first of many stories of this kind that we tell…
Roddy

The University of Michigan Department of Screen Arts and Cultures Presents A Filmic Production:

"SIMON SAYS"

Philip Maxwell
Kira Sanscrainte
Rachel Gubow
Joe Carroll
Chris Harrison
Jackson Knight Pierce
Matt Socha
Kyle Traicoff
Mike Traicoff
Jim Toy

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS Ann Zalucki Robert Rayher
ORIGINAL MUSIC BY Nicolas Ureño
SOUND RECORDIST Logan White
SPECIAL EFFECTS COORDINATOR Chris Michalowski
CAMERA ASSISTANTS Marco Mora Michael Peters
PRODUCTION DESIGN BY Christina Bender
WRITTEN BY Emily Lyon
CINEMATOGRAPHY BY Rodney Hyduk Chris Duncan Steve Coffey
PRODUCED BY Joe Kasper
DIRECTED BY Josh Buoy

filmicproductions.com

We had the opportunity to give the talk of our lives at the 2012 TEDx UM conference entitled "Inform:Transform".

This is the demo reel that played at the top of our talk on the power of creative collaboration. Enjoy!

This first collaboration between 3P and Filmic comes in the form of a series of spots for EatBlue.com.

The :30 spot of "Fire" is the first in the series featuring the antics of Devin Rossinsky and Skyler Fulton. Do they have Pizza House on there...?

Special thanks to Brett Pere, Nick Burghdoff, Cameron Falsetti chanes.bandcamp.com/, DJ Bug Eyes bugeyes.bandcamp.com/, and everyone else involved.

More on the production of the spots at our blog:
filmicproductions.blogspot.com/2012/01/when-real-thing-doesnt-cut-it.html
filmicproductions.blogspot.com/2012/01/post-no3.html
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CLIENT
College Advertising Solutions: EatBlue.com

The University's marketing department has been in the middle of overhauling their branding, and we were lucky enough to be involved in the process. A unified picture of these 3 divisions was commissioned by the University's Director of Marketing, Matt Schlentz, in the form of a short film. We had 3 days of production to construct an up-beat, hight energy piece that positively represented the personalities, process, and work of these creatives. Needless to say, working in an environment that is creatively-minded by default made this one of our most enjoyable shoots to date.

Keep an eye out for the film to be displayed on Michigan Creative's stylish new website - set to launch in the very near future!

A special thanks to Matt, Kelly Fuligni, and Chris McElroy for this fantastic opportunity and their help in realizing our vision.

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CLIENT
The University of Michigan Marketing Enterprise

MUSIC
"You Have It (Instrumental)" by The Ravishers, licensed through withetiquette.com

If you aren't familiar with the company, all it takes is a quick online search to find out that the boats Tiara Yachts builds out of its factory in Holland, Michigan, are absolutely gorgeous. When we got word of the possibility of working on a piece for them, we were instantly fired up. Any opportunity to work with new people in a new shooting environment is a tough one to pass up, and this was no exception.

We first got an understanding of the goals of the piece after talking with Steve Busch, our HR contact over at Tiara, and then proceeded to structure the messaging to best communicate those goals. We had some freedom in developing the approach to take for the piece which was awesome. We agreed that one of the strongest ways for the company to say "Thank You" to the employees - the overall goal of the project - was to make the employees the stars. By giving glimpses into their personalities we really wanted the pride these individuals have in their work to shine through.

We shot the entire piece in one day in a little under 6 hours, and basically rolled cameras non-stop. After lighting our interview basecamp, we were constantly moving between interviews and shooting on the factory floor, juggling 3 separate camera rigs to be as versatile and efficient as possible. One camera setup was locked down capturing timelapses and used for interviews, the Manfrotto 561-BHDV monopod setup was relied upon heavily to capture the action on the factory floor, and a camera on the Cinevate Atlas 30 was used to get some of the more dramatic tracking shots of the boats and workers. We used 3 Canon 60D's with a set of Canon primes, with the go-to glass being the 35mm f1.4L.

From the very beginning we knew we wanted to shoot the majority of the piece in 60p and pull it out to 24 to give it a very surreal feel. We also had a pretty specific idea of what audio track we wanted to use for this before we even went into the shoot.

Ironically, we can't thank the folks over at Tiara enough for giving us the opportunity to create this piece.

Enjoy!

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CLIENT
Tiara Yachts

MUSIC
"Intimidated by Silence" by Cars & Trains, licensed through withetiquette.com