CINEZONAFILMS was featured in 944 magazine!
The Art of Weddings: Videography on the Edge
~Cinezona Takes Wedding Videos from Tepid to Epic~Weddings have become lavish, high-budget events, with the average cost for a ceremony in the U.S. at more than $26,000. Couples expect the perfect day to impress their guests with originality and extravagance, as well as being transformed into royalty themselves, and for the entire thing to be captured on a video that looks like a Hollywood feature.
The process of bringing a film-like video to fruition is intricate, challenging and can be tedious. To artists like Michael Tassoni of Cinezona Films, shooting the wedding is just a part of the job. In fact, most of the work is in the editing. Videographers now edit their footage on computers with high-end software, the same used to make commercials and feature films. Tassoni says the elaborate technology of his hi-def camera and editing software, in combination with the 8-millimeter film he also uses, allows him almost limitless creativity. The drawback of all this technology? One minute of true edited video can take a day or even longer to complete.
Tassoni takes wedding videography to cinematic heights, immortalizing each couple. “I want [their film] to be their own personal movie, like a window they can always look through to relive their wedding,” he says. Throughout the process of shooting and editing, he finds personal moments that showcase the couple’s true feelings, like a glance, a stolen kiss or private conversation. And the wedding guests — especially when the couple is obviously, truly in love — are in awe of them. They become an audience watching a love story unfold, and capturing the audience is nearly as important as filming the couple, according to Tassoni.
Having been in front of and behind the camera since adolescence, Tassoni has cultivated a view he says people are born with. “I feel artists are born, not made, though it helps that I grew up with a father obsessed with capturing every moment on film,” he says. “I learned at an early age what it means to have an eye.”
He shares his father’s passion for recording life. “I think documenting our lives is important, especially the happy moments,” he says. “I love this because each wedding is a new film with different characters. They are telling a story and I just record it unfolding. I don’t have to cast, produce or write anything, it’s all right there.”
Surprisingly, a large number of couples either add small videography budgets late in their planning or they don’t have it in their budgets at all. This, Tassoni explains, is a wedding faux pas. “If you talk to practically any bride that didn’t have a videographer she’ll say she regrets it,” he says. “Video is the best way to really capture the entire day.”
In the end, it’s all about style. “I take chances when I’m filming,” he says. “Some things I do may seem odd, but in editing end up being amazing. I shoot from rooftops or at the couple’s limo out my car window — whatever I feel at the moment to bring journalistic style.”
Say cheese at www.cinezonafilms.com and www.merkowphotography.com
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