BLOG - Sweet Pea Cinema

Spring: New growth, new hope and fresh approaches

sweetpeacinema May 5, 2014

It’s Monday and the sun is finally shining here in Milwaukee.I don’t know about you, but I feel energized through and through. Maybe it’s the sunny daffodils waving in the warm spring air, or the trees starting to bud. Could be the six hours of yard work we did on Sunday.Maybe it’s because I’m so jazzed up about Sweet Pea Cinema’s new website.I love it.It’s fresh, it’s clean and it’s our heartfelt way of trying to communicate what we’re all about at Sweet Pea. Stories … great stories all wrapped up in a cinematic visual approach. We know our films make you lean forward in your chair a little bit and hold on until the end, but we needed a new website to help people find them.We have to thank Kevin Kosterman of The Album Factory, who helped us conceive the new website and who took the time to get to know us as artists and business people. He not only came to understand our work, but he figured out our style, which is no easy task when our guidance to him was: simple, clean, bright, meaningful. Kevin also produced an array of print materials we’ll be using this year to spread the good word about Sweet Pea, so don’t be surprised if you find something in your mailbox from us some day.He’s exactly the kind of artist and professional we have come to seek out when we need help with our business: creative, thorough, kind and an expert in his field. He and his toddler son, Ian, who graces the cover of our “Life” pages and materials, can also be highly entertaining. It’s the kind of trust that’s important when you’re embarking on a big, bold change.Please check out the rest of the website, and let me know what you think and if there are any spots you think we can improve upon.Cheers,Cindy

A rush of love to the head

sweetpeacinema May 2, 2014

Before we tumble headlong into wedding season, it’s time to reflect on many of last year’s gorgeous weddings.When we finish a wedding film for a couple, we always take time to look at what we did that worked, and where we can improve our craft and push ourselves to be better artists.And every year, I intend to produce a Highlight of Highlights film to encapsulate our journey through that season of ceremonies, flowers, family and fun.This particular highlight is also going to serve as a promotional video for Sweet Pea, a demo reel for prospective couples to get a super-charged look at our work. Hopefully, they’ll get a feel for what we do, and if they want to see more — and perhaps slow it down a bit — there are plenty of our other films to view on web page and Vimeo.I’d like to thank all our couples for the honor of filming their big day and for entrusting us to tell the story of the start of their married lives together. We enjoyed every minute of filming and editing.Lastly, I’d like to thank voice over artist Amie Breedlove, who I found through Voices.com (a fantastic website to find truly professional voice artists), and song is “We Build Tomorrow” by Teliss, which can be found on AudioJungle (a fantastic resource for music tracks).Thanks for watching, and let me know what you think! Cheers,Cindy

True tears of joy in this wedding video

sweetpeacinema April 23, 2014

When Sue called to tell me she was getting married, I was so thrilled. I’d been hoping she and Steve would tie the knot after meeting Steve about four years ago. These two are such a lovely couple. Sue is a former newspaper colleague of mine, a creative dynamo with boundless energy and intellect, super funny and endearingly loyal. Steve, an architect, is a tall drink of handsome with an extra shot of calm and laced with a hearty dose of wit. I wanted them to get married after spending about 10 minutes in their company.But it took them a few years, and the wait was definitely worth it, in my opinion. Being a second marriage for both, Sue and Steve wanted to keep the affair simple and earnest. Sue’s children and two dear friends bore witness, and Sue’s daughter made an amazing, double-layer chocolate cake that ended the day on a very sweet note.This short “sneak peek” is a new style for Sweet Pea. It will serve as the introduction to Sue and Steve’s longer wedding video, a 20-minute extravaganza that we genuinely want to be a permanent and loving record of their union. Please come back for the full story in a few weeks.Cheers,Cindy

A GoPro Kind of Sunday

sweetpeacinema April 10, 2014

We are gearing up for a phenomenal 2014, and that means a lot of exciting changes at Sweet Pea Cinema. But more on that in the weeks to come.One thing we plan to do a lot more of is to post not only after our great weddings, business commercials and life events shoots, but when the spirit moves us. We’d like to share more of our story and to peel back the curtain on how we work.I gotta say, much of what we spend our time on is testing and practicing with our gear. We have a lot of gear. And just when we think we’ve got EVERYTHING we need to shoot a wedding, small business commercial or another live event — bam! — we realize we need another piece of equipment to get the audio or shot we want.This year, one of the new pieces of gear we purchased is a GoPro Hero3, the tiniest yet most awesome camera out there! We wanted it in our arsenal because Dean is going to be using it for a project in the coming weeks. It’s going to make a great addition to our camera array, for tight places we can’t get our Panasonic GH cameras into and for time lapses. More about this camera here. This afternoon, Dean literally just read the manual and decided to do a quick time lapse in the front yard to check out the images.Normally we wouldn’t waste your time posting this video, but check out the two layers of clouds. They’re going in two directions at once. I’ve never seen that before, and I thought it was an apt metaphor for our often crazy lives — when we’re running around in all directions.I guess that means it’s time to turn off the computer and slow down for a bit.Have a great Sunday, folks!Cindy