In this episode I’m looking at how to craft an artistic wedding film using a piece of work from international wedding cinematographers Maru Films.

Welcome to the Wedding Filmmaker Spotlight series, where I review the best wedding filmmakers in the business. The idea of this show is to dissect and analyze what makes these wedding films so good.

Filming

Okay. So the first thing I want to talk about in terms of what makes Maru films so great is that they shoot a lot more footage than the vast majority of wedding filmmakers.

If you take a look at the opening sequence of the film you’ll see a beautiful sunrise and some mountains. A shot like this can happen by accident but it’s more likely that it was a location they scouted and arrived at during the first morning hours. If you want to shoot a sunrise, you’ve got to get up early and you’ve got to know where to be to get the shot. 

I would guess that some of the b roll in the film, specifically the stylized shots of the couple in the deserted town were filmed on a separate day to the wedding. I don’t know if that’s the case, but they are wearing different clothes in some the shots so, I’m just getting that feeling. If they did get all of this coverage in a single day my hat goes off to them. Well done Maru Films!

I would call this style of wedding film experimental or avant-garde what makes it stand out is how much the final look is created in post. Well, that and a whole lot of planning and awesome camera work. 

Exposure

One of the reasons I love Maru Films is the way they expose their images. They have a strong tendency to expose to the right and protect their highlights which I believe creates a more cinematic looking image. 

Exposing to the right is a great way to make your run and gun images look more cinematic when you don’t have access to lighting equipment. 

Besides from always trying to protect their highlights they have a tendency to backlight their subjects which almost always produces a “better” result than shooting with the sun to your back. Remember the sun is bright. Try not to include it in your frame.

Editing

One thing that I’ve noticed about videographers who kind of fall into this camp is that, instead of doing something linear, what they’ll do is they’ll base the whole film around the most emotional moment of the film. 

This is an interesting technique that is hard to master and even harder to explain. It involves finding the part of the wedding that really connects and then creating the rest of the film around that moment. My best advice is to just watch the work of Maru films and Kreative Weddings on repeat until you see what I’m talking about. 

Grab them with the most emotional, most impactful moment first and then create the rest of the film around that. 

Unique Edits

So the kinds of things that are going to bring creative flare to your films when your doing this style are going to be things like speed ramps, key framing, mirror effects, cross fades, and just about anything you can throw at it to make even more stylized and interesting. 

My feeing is that this experimental style has got to be the most time intensive style of wedding film to produce in terms of both shooting time and post processing. 

I really love Maru Films. It was their work that inspired me to become a wedding filmmaker and I think we can all learn a lot from studying their work.