I blogged earlier about Dalia & Mitchell’s wedding which we filmed in West Palm Beach in March. Well just a few days after getting home from there, a colleague in the LA area asked me (Laura) to come do a Same Day Edit for a corporate event. That was fun and involved quite a few retired NBA stars. But I wasn’t prepared to see snow in the foothills and froze my patootie off! LOL!! I did manage to get a great shot of the palm trees with snow in the background…certainly not something I’m used to seeing!

After that short adventure, we had another ‘short notice trip’ down to San Diego to film some Pearl Harbor vets. Those men really are one-of-a-kind heroes and it was an honor to capture their stories in High Definition. One of the gentlemen, John Finn is the last living Medal of Honor recipient from the attack on Pearl Harbor. He is such an engaging and fascinating man! A special thanks to our buddy Randy Stubbs for letting us borrow his lighting kit so we didn’t have to ship ours down there!

The week after that, a corporate client needed us to go to Jacksonville, Florida and Waukegan, Illinois to create some client testimonials for an upcoming meeting. That happened in the midst of the American Airlines MD80 debacle and we saw a lot of people who were stranded at Chicago O’Hare. The trip was filled with flight delays and lots of cold rain (even in Florida!) so we were actually happy to get back home to the 50-degree weather! LOL!! Thankfully the following week found us in Honolulu for an on-site editing session with a client and we were able to warm up quite a bit! So basically at the beginning of March when I looked at my calendar we had one trip coming up. By the end of April we had FOUR more added in! Crazy!

All this traveling has us very thankful to be home, although I wouldn’t have minded if we just staying in Hawaii forever. We are a little bit suntanned, exhausted, and behind on our editing but we are soooo grateful for our children having been away too many nights from them over the last two months. I swear they grew at least an inch while we were coming and going! Mega kudos to Andrew (our oldest son and editor extraordinaire!) for holding down the fort and keeping his little brothers in check! Now it’s time for some serious editing all-nighters!

A few days after Matthew’s birthday, Chris and I did an interview and video shoot for a photographer named Christopher Watkins. He is a cancer survivor himself and now he runs a website called The REAL Survivors. So we met Marin and her mom on Sunday and did a shoot at the Bellevue Club’s pool. Let me tell you, this girl is amazing! She was on the fast track to be an Olympic swimmer when her last surgery for a brain tumor left her partially paralyzed. But rather than give up, it made her more determined! She still beats the majority of ‘normal’ swimmers in her high school and is now training for the Paralympic trails. Talking to her mom brought back so many memories of our time at Children’s Hospital several years ago. She’s a strong woman and a great mom. I feel so honored to have met them both.

Then of course Thanksgiving…you know, after celebrating Matthew’s birthday and meeting another family going through what we did a few years back…how can you even put in to words what you are thankful for? I guess the biggest things to me are that I’m thankful I can hug my children every day and tell them how much I love them. That all my family members (including parents and siblings) are healthy. I’m thankful for having our own business and all the challenges that come with it. I’m thankful for clients who really appreciate what we do and all the work that goes in to each project. I’m thankful to be an American on so many levels. I’m thankful for emotions which sometimes seem to run my life, and yet without it life would be so boring!

What are you thankful for?

family

Click here to watch the video Jason Presley

I pray for peace and strength for everyone affected. Such a sad loss of life.

Prayers

prayers

We did spend 1/2 a day at the hotel pool in Orlando before flying back home. That was a small slice of heaven and I have a slight sunburn to prove it! But now we are back home and editing away on all the projects we have!

We are in the process of creating a new videography package that will help those who are looking for a more affordable product while still keeping the Edit 1 Media quality and emotion that we are well-known for. So keep your eyes peeled for that info coming soon!

corporate video

The past two weeks have been crazy…filled with last minute travels and a sad story too.

One of our recent groom’s found out that his father is dying. Their wedding wasn’t quite on our radar to be completed yet, but his dad has less than two months to live. So naturally they are now top priority and are working feverishly to get a great movie out for them as soon as possible. I really want the bride and groom to experience sharing their video with his dad before he passes away. This is so close to our hearts because his dad is dying from cancer and we knew the groom back when our own son was battling cancer. It’s just so sad. I hate cancer.

One the positive side to this story, all of our other clients who are so patiently waiting for their videos have been wonderful about this. They’ve said “Of course you have to do their’s first…no problem!”. We are so grateful to have such wonderful clients!

Then in the midst of all that, we get a call to travel to several cities to record some testimonial videos for a coporate client. Chris and I spent 5 nights in 5 different hotels! We visited San Francisco, San Jose, Vacaville, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and Dayton. My brain was so fried when we got back home two days ago! And now in just a few more days we will head out to Tampa, Florida for another shoot.

I can’t complain because business is good and we seem to have some high demand. But it does put a crimp on my editing! I wish I could clone myself! But this does lead me to realize that we will probably need to bring on another editor in the near future. Or fast-forward that human cloning thing!

Thanks for stopping by to read our blog and I hope you take a few minutes to watch some of the videos we have and leave some comments too. It’s really cool for us to see who is visiting! And just for incentive, here is another video we are working on. It’s the opening to this couple’s wedding movie. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I have enjoyed putting it together!

wedding + corporate video

As with many things in life, there are times when you should definitely hire a pro. Chris and I have been learning that this week while trying to do some DIY projects around our home-studio. Replacing the front door, trim and base moulding in the front entrance certainly seemed like an easy thing to do. Boy were we wrong!

Apparently walls are never completey square and painting always takes longer than expected…especially if you are a perfectionist like me. It’s been three days and with the amount of editing I’ve got to do I can’t afford that sort of time away from my computer!!! The worst part is now have a raspberry pink front door with cat prints on it. I wanted a deep, dark “Edit 1 Media” red with NO cat prints.

Oh, and I have two cats with pink paws now too.

Fortunately this is something that can be fixed. In the long run it’s taken up a lot of time and will cost us quite a bit more money than if we had just hired a pro. However, unlike some things in life, at least we have an opportunity to fix it.

There are still too many couples that underestimate how much experience and skill goes in to shooting and editing a wedding video. Unfortunately some brides skimp on videography or skip it all together, only to later regret it. The worst part is all the memories that are lost can never be regained. The parts of the day that the bride and groom missed are gone forever. And as time goes on, this regret only gets worse.

So take it from me, whether you are replacing the trim in your house or looking at a wedding video, I highly recommend hiring a pro!!! You’ll be glad you did later on!

wedding video

OK, so I’ve been planning on creating a blog for several months now and have been secretly typing entries. But today is the day to unveil it! There are a lot of fun stories so I hope you take the time to look at them all by clicking the links to the right. And enjoy the videos too!!!

We did an amazing Greek wedding yesterday. About a month ago we got a phone call from a bride who was unhappy with the videographer they were going to use. She found our website and fell in love with our work. When she called and said they were getting married at St. Demetrio’s Greek Orthodox Church, I mentioned Camp Agape which is an awesome camp in Gig Harbor for families who have children with cancer. We were lucky enough to have been there for two years and it was an amazing break to have when going through such a hard time.

Anyway, she said yes she knew about Camp Agape and that in fact her fiancee is a counselor there. She said his name is Steve and I just about hit the floor! I quickly emailed her a picture, and sure enough…it’s the same Steve who was my kid’s counselor at camp! The bride said she definitely believes in fate and I think she decided on the spot that we were the ones who needed to film her wedding.