Sweet Pea Cinema

Blue sky wedding for Liz & Chris at Milwaukee Country Club

sweetpeacinema — Sat, 12 Sep 2020 14:59:32 +0000

It’s Debut Day for Liz & Chris, who were married earlier this month on a bright sunny Saturday at the Milwaukee Country Club in River HIlls amid a small outdoor gathering of close family and friends.

We will always remember their wedding day as simply brilliant.

It started with perfect weather: A cerulean sky dotted with cotton ball clouds seemed to make the club’s grounds even greener than most late summer Saturdays. Perhaps the lush plants sensed fall creeping in and added an extra green lustre just for the newlyweds.

Then, let’s talk about Liz & Chris, who simply glowed with that special energy that two people in love always have. You could see it in their eyes, which always sparkled at each other, in their ready smiles, and how they always seemed to be within close reach of each other throughout the day. So sweet!

Thoughtful details

Every detail, too, had been thought of carefully, from the order of the Bible verses read during the ceremony, to the bride’s stunning Sareh Nouri gown to the artfully composed floral designs from Wood Violet. Owner Emily and her team created a stunning focal point design – on site on the day of the ceremony! – to frame the bride and groom as they said their vows. We adored the bride’s delicate bouquet that gave a nod to an arrangement carried by a certain elegant British royal,

Two incredible moments stood out for us on a day filled with beauty and love. First, when the couple saw each other in their wedding attire during their first look on a picture perfect bridge on the golf course grounds. Wow! We never – ever – get tired of recording reactions when a wedding couple sees their partner all decked out for the first time. Pure love and joy.

The second wonderful moment came when Liz and Chris said a socially distant and loving hello to Chris’ grandmother, who was tucked safely to the side during the outdoor festivities. It was touch and go for her to attend, but every precaution was taken to keep grandma safe!

Congrats to the newlyweds, and we wish you a lifetime of happiness and love!

The Team:

santiagomurillophoto
gigimkeboutique
hhclothingco
lovebasedbeauty
erikofnorwaysalonspa
schwankekasten
milwaukeecountryclub

The Team – Choosing a Wedding Videographer – Part 2

sweetpeacinema — Mon, 30 Mar 2020 20:21:32 +0000

The team is the next important factor in choosing the right wedding videographer.

All things being equal — for instance, the gear used to record your wedding — what truly makes or breaks a great wedding film is the person behind the camera.

Team Experience with Gear Matters

We know our gear inside and out, and I can’t tell you how important that is when filming a wedding.

Lighting and audio change dramatically throughout a wedding day. We absolutely have to know how to adapt to different settings and troubleshoot to ensure that we’re capturing everything correctly.

An inexperienced shooter who doesn’t have mastery of their gear will simply miss a ton of moments, or they’ll be out of focus or overexposed, making the final product unwatchable.

Having a full gear kit with the right cameras, audio recorders and lights is no small feat. On average, we bring about $25,000 in gear to every wedding shoot, and we think that investment shows in our final product. A videographer with just one camera is simply not going to get the depth and breadth of our coverage.

Team Experience with Itineraries Matters

If you’re considering a friend or non-professional to capture your wedding day, you might save a lot of money, but you might also lose a lot of memories.

We’ve filmed nearly 100 weddings, and we are experts at understanding the flow of a wedding day so that we are anticipating the action rather than reacting.

Because of our experience, we also know that itineraries can change on a dime due to weather or mechanical issues. No problem! One of our favorite moments at a wedding was when the party bus broke down, and we worked with the photographer to use that time for some great candids and romantic shots!

Team Experience as Professionals Matters

You can be assured that we’ll act in a matter befitting of a wedding. We dress appropriately and blend in like flies on the wall, yet still capture every moment. It’s only years of experience and confidence in our ability and gear that allows that kind of approach.

Next week, we’ll share the last important factor when choosing a wedding videographer.

Cheers,
Cindy

Audio – Choosing a Wedding Videographer – Part III

sweetpeacinema — Mon, 30 Mar 2020 20:21:25 +0000

This is our Rode PinMic microphone. The nobby top is about the size of a button and we hide this mic on our grooms to capture vows. It’s the smallest, least-obtrusive microphone out there, and we use it so that no one sees our gear!

Audio is the last aspect we’ll talk about when choosing the right wedding videographer.

We love getting all those gorgeous shots of our couples in romantic settings, but all of that pretty footage doesn’t hold up unless you have a rock solid story to pair with it.

And that requires pristine audio.

Audio Capture with Three Sources

Audio is so important to our storytelling process, that we always have three sources of audio at every “big” moment of your wedding.

For instance, at the ceremony, we’ll hide the miniscule yet powerful Rode PinMic on the groom, tucked just under the boutonniere. This amazing microphone is about the size of a button, yet it pulls it the most delicious sonorous signals. This attaches to a tiny pocket recorder (about half the size of a deck of cards) that gets tucked into a pocket.

Then, we’ll use our RodeLink wireless microphone on your officiant to capture their important sermons and comments. Because this is wireless, we’ll be able to monitor the audio as it occurs, and because this setup is also powerful, it becomes our second source of your vows in case the groom’s mic fails.

We’ll also place a tiny recorder on the lectern, and if music is super important during your ceremony, we’ll also have a recorder next to your musicians.

Lastly, we’ll also have a recorder tucked near any speaker that amplifies the church or house sound of your venue. We rarely have to use this triple backup source, but having its recording gives me piece of mind.

Why Audio Is So Important

The reason we go to great lengths to get clean and rich audio recording is because as the editor, audio is the first source I turn to when I begin to edit your Cinematic Wedding Film.

I want the people who spoke at your wedding, as well as the words you two exchange, to drive the story arc of your film. That means you’ll see snippets of sermons or readings, toasts or asides, vows or first looks. I want you to feel the range of emotions you felt on your wedding day to shine through.

Audio is what makes the difference!

Cheers,
Cindy

Footage – Choosing a Wedding Videographer – Part I

sweetpeacinema — Mon, 30 Mar 2020 18:29:04 +0000

How much footage you receive is one of the biggest factors to consider when choosing a wedding videographer.

It’s one of the “big 3” factors that we advise couples to consider when in the hunt for a wedding filmmaker.

Choosing a Videographer: Lots and Lots of Footage

Our pride and joy is creating your Cinematic Wedding Film, which is a finely crafted highlight film of the best moments of the day. We carefully listen to the words spoken on your wedding day and weave them together in a story arc that will have you laughing one moment and crying the next.

Our longest Cinematic Wedding Film is 20 minutes, and yet there’s still a TON more footage that won’t make it into your Cinematic Film. And we want to make sure you get as much of it as possible.

Documentary Films Mean More Footage

We also edit Documentary Films of your Ceremony and Reception Key Moments. These videos are of those events essentially in “real time.”

What does that mean?

For your Ceremony, we record from the processional to the recessional and everything in between with multiple cameras. If your Ceremony lasts an hour, then we deliver an 60-minute ceremony, crafted from multiple cameras that always deliver the best angle.

For your Reception, we focus on the Key Moments, which include a grand entrance, cake cutting, toasts, first dances and any other event that you want captured.

Most Sweet Pea couples end up with final packages that are 40 to 60 minutes long as a result.

Yes, we love creating our Cinematic Wedding Films. We know they evoke tremendous emotion.

But we also know the value of having all that extra footage, too, as time marches on. You’ll definitely linger on those Documentary videos to look back to see all the people who attended your wedding, and to relish in so many moments that didn’t make it into your Cinematic Wedding Film.

Next week, we’ll share the second important factor when choosing a wedding videographer.

Cheers,
Cindy

Bringing Nature Inside for the Trapped Nature-Lover

sweetpeacinema — Thu, 26 Mar 2020 17:03:44 +0000

My father-in-law Paul loves nature. Hikes in vast forests and scrambling along mountain paths with his best friend and wife, Shirley, were a staple of most of their 63 years of marriage.This always-active couple also cultivated nature in their suburban backyard, creating a mini forest of towering trees, lush underbrush and native wildflowers.When you looked out the large sliding glass door of their family room, trees were all you could see. It was exactly how Paul and Shirley wanted: a view of lush, greenery greeting them every day.”Their forest” was so important to the both of them that, earlier this year, when Shirley opted for hospice care after her long battle with Parkinson’s, she chose her family room and that view as the place where she wanted to leave this world.Paul now lives in a specialty care home so that he gets help with the tasks of daily living due to Alzheimer’s. In addition to needed monitoring of his whereabouts, Paul’s ability to go for long walks has been significantly curtailed by severe stenosis of the spine.Simply put, Paul yearns for freedom to wander where he wants and for and daily contact with nature, even if it’s just sitting outside on the deck of his new home, which he can do in warmer months of the year.But winter, we worried, was going to add another layer of oppression for Paul, who also hates the cold.This had been bugging me for months, and one day, while I was walking our dog in the park, I found one of the answers in the podcast and NPR show, “The Hidden Brain” with Shankar Vedantam and his guest, pyschologist and researcher Ming Kuo. In her research, Kuo has found what we all suspect: That being in nature, even for as short a time as 15 minutes, can offer health benefits, including reducing stress hormones, reducing high blood pressure and increasing the hormones that elevate moods.Since I was walking in a park bursting with summer’s green, I couldn’t agree more. I was feeling great: calm, healthy, happy.Then Kuo mentioned one study that blew my mind: She said that people who looked at pictures of nature could also derive some of the benefits of being in nature. Not as much as actually being in nature, but enough to make the results significant.Boom! I had my answer for Paul. We would find the biggest picture of a beautiful woods for his new apartment, which he often said he liked, except for the view that prominently featured the other half of his building and a small courtyard with just a few trees.So I began an internet search for large images of forests and nature. Quickly, I found companies that make full wall murals, really extremely large stickers that you paste to a wall.We consulted with Paul about the forest picture that he liked the best, and I ordered it for about $100.It arrived in a few weeks, and we eagerly went to Paul’s apartment to install it.Installing it was both easy and challenging. It’s easy because it came in six wall-length panels and all you had to do was peel off the protective backing and afix the panel to the wall.The hard part was lining up the panels and making sure that the .25-inch overlap matched from the top of the piece to the bottom. With a lot of back and forth (read: bickering) and adjusting here and there (read: sticking it on the wall and taking it off several times), it took us about 90 minutes to install the mural.Paul was ecstatic. The smile never left his face once the mural was up, and staff told us that he brought everyone he could into his room to see his new “forest.” And every time we visited, he mentioned how much he loved looking at it and what difference it had made in making his apartment more like his home.But then … tragedy fell. Literally! Paul woke up one morning and the top half of the mural had fallen off the wall.Dean went over at lunchtime and tried to pull it back onto the wall and stick it with temporary pins until we could get a replacement ordered. It looked, frankly, horrible.But the company came through and sent a replacement.This time we took extra time to pressure it onto the wall and to install a strip across the top.Happiness reigns.