Each time Motion Films receives an assignment to cover an Indian wedding in Vancouver; we take it as a challenge and an opportunity to be part of delightful proceedings. The challenge lies in cinematography. If it were a simple video coverage it would not tax our minds so much but to create something unique and memorable that will capture the essence of a ritual and the spirit of two joyous souls uniting in marriage and present it in different way calls for a lot of extra effort.
For Motion Films of Vancouver, a wedding is an opportunity to apply cinematographic skills to achieve a unique effect. Anyone who has watched Hollywood films will admire the cinematographer’s skills in endowing the film with its unique light, texture, camera angles and the pace at which it proceeds. Cinematographers are known to employ colourists to achieve a specific effect and maintain that theme despite changing lighting and scenes. Motion Films approaches wedding video coverage with the same serious intent of purpose to create something new each time. For us, the wedding of Amit and Sunita presented a cinematographic challenge. The undefined script was to present it as a love video culminating in marriage the Indian way.
It could have been stage managed but with a simple story line we let the couple play around naturally while videographers captured fleeting emotions and the interplay of guests as well as the charming locales selected to serve as the backdrop to their pre-wedding shoot. The wedding day was well planned by the team at Motion Films to focus on moods and emotions and bring out the rich, vivid, saturated color of Indian weddings, the action, laughter and also the tears at the parting of the bride from her family mingled with hopes for the future. Lighting played a crucial role as did the use of appropriate camera angles with the use of lenses and gels for that dreamy yet vividly rich look.
Light is but one part of the emotion. What stirs the heart strings more is music that goes into the scene as any cinematographer will tell you. The team chose a soulful rendering to provide the audio backdrop to the event. When the family finally watched the edited and polished video, the scenes playing on the screen went straight to their heart. More importantly, it was the music that helped achieve the emotive push. Inspired by Hindi film directors of the 1950s who were skilful into weaving songs into the story of the film and words into the songs that meshed with the story of the film, we tried this approach for Amit and Sunita. It worked. They were more than happy with their wedding video created by Motion Films, the top wedding cinematographers in Vancouver.
For us at Motion Films, shooting video at weddings is not just a job in the routine course of things. The day will never repeat and we aim to capture it for posterity with our own unique skill set honed by years of experience and insight.
