for weddings, it’s all too easy to go to the top 40 or to pick a song your couple has decided on, but is that really fitting to the story or will it have the same impact in 1 year, 2 years, 10 years, etc? while we most certainly like our couples to share their music tastes with us, it’s less about guiding our soundtrack selection and more about really telling us about who they are, both as individuals and as a couple (do they like the same music? why, or why not? etc). what our couple listen to can be a huge tell tale of who they are.

back to song selection – for us, it usually starts with lesser known artists. the reason is quite simple – we want the songs selected to be our couples – we want the first time they see their film to be 100% about their story and nothing more. selecting song they haven’t heard guarantees there are no preconceived notions or memories associated or attached to the soundtrack. as a side note, it also helps…

an indie artist immensely and it feels great knowing we’re supporting musicians who will benefit immediately from licensing their music.

actually narrowing down to the specific tracks isn’t an easy task and does take some time. it almost always starts with finding the right feeling – do the songs feel right for the couple. for Ariel and Ricky, Sunbeam felt right from the start. knowing Sunbeam personally definitely helped, but how i feel when i listen to Sunbeam is exactly how i felt filming Ariel and Ricky and how i felt after putting together their film.

after finding the right musician, it’s about narrowing down even further to finding the perfect songs, and in this step we’re looking for tempo, where the crescendo’s hit, lyrics (if applicable) and the overall length. The Garden was a perfect introduction for Ariel and Ricky – it’s upbeat, fun and most of all, carefree – like them. at the same time, it has a great energetic opening which paired perfectly with the opening scene of Ariel and Ricky shipping rocks. for the end of the piece we cut to Let It go, again by Sunbeam, as it’s a much slower paced song to match the more emotional vows. it’s still a Sunbeam track, meaning it’s still fun, but it’s also much quieter and more subdued.

from there, it’s just a matter of laying them in the editing suite and finessing them so the levels of the song match the VO and nat sounds and the overall emotional spikes in the film.

now, soundtrack selection for our commercial pieces is a whole other story. one that we’ll tackle in another upcoming q of the week.

Justin

Being that we had more room to breath and think about our shots we decided to light everything we could in a way that complimented what they were doing but didn’t give the film too much of a produced feeling. Having a couple of lite panels and a few small lights kept things much more low key, but gave us the flexibility to make our shots look a little more crisp and give the whole piece a more elegant feeling which really reflects the kind of couple Ariel and Ricky are.

Meet Ariel and Ricky. We sure loved getting to know them.

- Justin & PWL

featuring music by Sunbean – The Garden and Let It Go
licensed through WithEtiquette.com

;

years of late-night brainstorming, so many amazing experiences of sharing ideas across the world, and countless hours of refining, has brought us all to this one very exciting point: the launch of stillmotion’s app, SMAPP.

SMAPP was designed to not only make the filmmaking process easier, but also to…

…help the filmmaker really understand the decisions they are making. learning this craft can be intimidating and there are so many tools that we often don’t even realize we have, or we don’t fully understand how to best use to tell our story effectively. SMAPP was created to make all of filmmaking more approachable and to empower the filmmaker to tell relevant and meaningful stories, their stories, with more confidence than ever before.

SMAPP is a tool for filmmakers created by a team of artists that are filmmakers, photographers, designers, and educators. it features tutorials, filmmaking tools, reviews, and more.

visit http://www.MeetSMAPP.com and sign up to find out the second SMAPP hits The App Store.

every Tuesday we’ll feature a weekly update on SMAPP right on the stillmotionblog.com. check back this coming Tuesday for an overview of all of the features you can expect to find in SMAPP when it launches this April :)

to celebrate SMAPP, we have some brand new tutorials we’ll be sharing in the coming weeks. the first one we’d like to share // 10 tools that will save your life (on a film shoot, that is).

over the years we’ve listened to thousands and thousands of songs to find the song.  as such, we’ve amassed a pretty good library of songs that work perfectly in various film scenarios, whether it’s a commercial, wedding or corporate piece.

we just launched the first of many playlists at With Etiquette that we hope will help you find the perfect soundtracks for your films.

the first playlist features 14 tracks that we’ve used in a number of our projects ranging from our wedding films, Callaway spots and even a couple that were used in A Game Of Honor.

click here to check our first Playthis.  we’ve got plenty more on way.

- justin