May 5th, 2008 by edit1media

Holy cow…has it really been THAT long since I posted a blog entry?! Things have been even crazier than usual around here!

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!

Corporate, Crazy Schedule, Destination Weddings, Hawaii, Networking, News, Same Day Edit, Travel

March 8th, 2008 by edit1media

Chris and I are in Fort Lauderdale this weekend to shoot Dalia & Mitchell’s wedding tomorrow in West Palm Beach. The weather has been amazing and yes, it’s Spring Break too! So the beaches are crowded with college kids but we haven’t seen too much crazy stuff yet! Dalia booked an incredible room for us overlooking the beach. So cool!

Today we filmed Dalia & Mitchell’s blessing from the Rabbi and tomorrow is the big day! We are working with Craig Larsen Jr who is a photographer also from Washington. It’s great for Dalia & Mitchell to be able to meet with us back home in Washington both before and after the wedding and have us here for the events.

Since June marks our 15th wedding anniversary, Chris and I decided to add on a few days to this trip and take a short cruise to the Bahamas. I’ve never been on a cruise nor to the Caribbean before so I was really excited! Now the day after the cruise is over I have to say I was NOT disappointed! We snorkeled, jet-skiied, and did something really cool called snuba and got pretty sunburned! A videographer who previously purchased our training DVD picked us up in Nassau and we went to his studio to check out his work and give him some tips. Now he is hoping to come to Seattle for some one-on-one training which will be fun! While on the island he gave us a personal tour and turned us on to conch fritters and Kalik beer! Yum! Thanks, Rodger!

I’ll post some photos when we get back home since I can’t figure out how to do that from my phone! In the meantime, I hope everyone joins me in wishing Dalia & Mitchell well in thier new marriage! Mazeltov!!

wedding video + destination wedding

Crazy Schedule, Destination Weddings, Jewish, Travel

February 2nd, 2008 by edit1media

wedding show + Seattle

Business, Crazy Schedule, Networking, News, Wedding Show, Weddings

October 20th, 2007 by edit1media

We keep talking about adding at least one Mac to our editing arsenal. I think this one would be perfect! (tongue in cheek!)

http://www.powermax.com/parts/show/ma896ll__a-gdd

The Top 25 Retreat and Symposium (as it is being called!) got my creative juices flowing and I have a million new ideas running through my head. Here’s a photo below of those who were able to make it courtesy of David Robin. Of course our first priority is to get caught up on our editing, but we’ve already implemented some Same Day Edit only packages that you can see on our website and we are planning on adding in some other new, fun video offerings so keep your eyes open for those!

No, I can’t seem to ever take a good photo!

After the Top 25, we were back for 1-1/2 very short days. We barely had enough time to catch our breath and headed off to the Bay area for a 5-day corporate shoot. Since we had to take a ton of gear and Sherlock (our new shooter/grip who is AWESOME!!) we drove down there. The shoot went really well and the footage is gorgeous HD with great lighting, teleprompter, the whole nine yards. But it took us almost 15 hours to drive home yesterday in the pouring rain. That part wasn’t so much fun! But we had a good time getting to know Sherlock a bit better. He has done about 4 or 5 shoots with us now and will definitely become a more permanent part of Edit 1 Media as time goes on. He certainly proved his stamina and devotion to us by listening to my constant chatter for that long! LOL!

I promise I’ll post some more video VERY soon!! Thanks for reading and feel free to comment!!

wedding video + high definition

Corporate, Crazy Schedule

October 8th, 2007 by edit1media

Chris and I were invited to a retreat for the “Top 25 Videographers” in Riverside, California. Since it’s already getting cold and rainy in our neck of the woods, not to mention we never take any time for ourselves, we decided to go!

So we laneded in Ontario, California today and it’s a gorgeous, cloudless sunny day. We are staying at the historic Mission Inn and I even indulged in a wonderful massage this afternoon. Boy did I need that! Our friend Julie Hill from Elysium Productions is going to pick us up shortly to take us on a tour of all the great wedding spots in the “OC” and then we are meeting up with another videographer friend, Daniel Boswell from dvArtistry for drinks later tonight.

Tomorrow and Wednesday we’ll be getting together with a majority of the “Top 25″ to talk about ways we can help increase the respect for wedding videography and talk about new ideas…and just to visit with some great friends and get some inspiration! So Andrew is holding down the fort while we are gone and hopefully keeping the editing train rolling!

Believe it or not we didn’t bring any sort of camera…not a still camera or a video camera, so I doubt I’ll have any photos to post. You’ll just have to use your imagination!

wedding video + high definition

Awards, Crazy Schedule, Networking

March 29th, 2007 by edit1media

March 29, 2007

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

cancer, Christian Ceremony, Corporate, Crazy Schedule, Personal Life, Real Weddings, Travel, Video Clips, wedding videographer

February 2nd, 2007 by edit1media

February 2, 2007

On Thursday and Friday (25th & 26th) we filmed at three locations for a short concept video for the Aegis Living Annual Leadership Meeting. Then we had a wedding with a Same Day Edit on Saturday (more about that below!).

Then Sunday through Wednesday the Edit 1 Media team went to work at the meeting! Chris and Brian shot tons of video and I wound up creating a total of 7 videos for the conference. That’s right…SEVEN videos in 3-1/2 days! There was about 50 hours worth of footage from two cameras, not including the “Amazing Race” where 7 teams of people each had a video camera and I had to edit their footage. I didn’t sleep much and hardly ever left the hotel room, but the execs were thrilled with the results.

This is truly a remarkable company and we love working with them. They are creative, loving, loyal people and they really understand the impact of good videography. We are truly honored to be working with them so much! As a major side bonus we get to see some amazing speakers and be inspired by great people.

Here is the video from the Amazing Race. All this footage was shot on tiny little Panasonic 320 3CCD cameras by a team member. The teams didn’t know about the race and some people had never met each other before, so it was a cool experience for them! They had several areas throughout Seattle that they needed to go to and take a group video. Then the last stop was a place called FareStart which helps the homeless learn skills to work in the restaurant industry. The teams had to help scrub the place (and it was a real mess!) as a sort of community service. Even the CEO got in there and mopped floors! Like I said, they are an amazing group of people!

Now this is the highlight video that we put together for the very end of the Awards Banquet. It has footage of speakers, the Amazing Race, cleaning at FareStart, and when they went to a totally cool private theater called The Big Picture and saw the movie The Pursuit of Happyness. But the coolest part is at the end of the movie Christoper Gardner himself came out onto the stage! Everyone was blown away!

KOMO4 News was also there to capture the moment and you can see their video here.

business

Corporate, Crazy Schedule, Seattle, Video Clips

January 18th, 2007 by edit1media

January 8, 2007

I’ll try to make this brief because this weekend was just insane and there is way too much to write!

The Seattle Wedding Show was Saturday and Sunday. We had two booths and eight non-paid clients who volunteered their time to help us. What amazing clients we have!!! I believe the final count was over 8,000 people attended and we handed out over 2,000 demo DVDs. One of our booths was dedicated to showing the difference between High Definition and Standard Definition and with a very impressive demo. It was great to see vendors we haven’t seen in awhile too! Overall it was a successful and fun show! I can hardly wait until next year! Thank you to Sharon of Third Day Creations for making our booth so beautiful with the flowers and candles!

After the show, we had to break down the booths and get to the airport to take off to Jacksonville, Florida for the 4Ever Group’s Video ’07 Conference. After flying all night we got in this morning and took a nice long nap! Then we headed out to the Awards Banquet where we had a seat waiting for us next to our buddies from Pixel Pops in Dallas, Texas. I handed out quite a few of the awards, including quite a few from a company I had never heard of before! Below is a photo of Chris and I with our new Top 25 award. Then the party started!! It’s nice to be able to let loose once a year and have Cosmopolitans to my heart’s content and gab with old friends and make some new ones! Videographers rock!!

This week I will be on two panels…one on Same Day Edits and one on Judging. I’m also going to be doing a Same Day Edit of the conference on Wednesday. Then we head out on Thursday so we can do Jill & Bart’s wedding on Friday. Crazy week, but that’s our life and we love it!

wedding

Awards, Crazy Schedule, High Definition, Seattle, Travel, Wedding Show

January 15th, 2007 by edit1media

October 29, 2006

After three days of being confined to a very small room in a crappy hotel and watching 14 hours of videos each day, I’m happy to be back home! The final judging was an educational and amazing experience. One I would be happy to do again in the future.

The three other judges were Sheila Orsi, Joe McManus, and Jay Stein. I already knew Sheila but didn’t really know Joe or Jay, so it was great to get to know these fine folks! We had a ton of fun and I hope we’ll all stay in touch from now on!

The videos…the cool thing about the final round is that by this time almost all the videos were awesome! My head is spinning with great shots, cool music, and the fact that an hour long video seems SO much longer than a 30 or 40 minute video. The amazing thing is that the 30-40 minute videos actually seemed to have more footage and tell more of a story than the longer videos. So the first thing we are going to do is implement this style into our own productions.

I was also happy to see more videographers incorporating voice over into their weddings. It really helps to tell the story and condense time without making the viewer feel like they are missing anything.

The funny thing is that they wouldn’t tell us who the winner’s are. We won’t know until everyone else finds out at the AAA Awards Banquet in Jacksonville, Florida in January! It’s killing me! There were several winning videos who I’m pretty sure I know who did them, but there are quite a few that I’m not sure of. I can hardly wait until Jacksonville now!

It truly was an honor to ask to be a judge by the 4Ever Group. Again, I’d do it in a heartbeat. The ONLY downside is that we couldn’t enter the contest ourselves and we had some pretty amazing videos this year. But there is always next year!

wedding

Awards, Cinematography, Crazy Schedule, Travel