September 17th - Paint the Dress!

A photographer I work with occasionally, Karen Jennings, approached me about a month ago with a Dress Trashing idea. She really wanted to trash her 80's era wedding dress with super large shoulder pads. You can imagine how excited I was to ruin that thing! Anyways I came up with the idea to use paint as our "trashing" method and invited my good friend Mark Gardner to help me brainstorm ideas shoot some photos. Karen wanted to focus on the fact that she has been married 15 years, has three kids, and a whole ton of stress. Mark and I decided to use this at the central story of our production. I think it turned out really well and I had a great time working with my buddy Mark all day. Karen was a blast as well, I still can't believe she let us cover her (and the rest of her family!) with paint from head to toe!

The video I put together is a trailer for the final video. I really wanted to get something together fast for various reasons, including some I will share shortly. Check it out and let me know what you think via the "comments" button below.

BTW... be sure to check out Mark's awesome pictures on his blog!

August 31st - Something A Little Different

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of shooting Jim and Angela's wedding in downtown Allentown. Usually I'm driving down to Philadelphia to shoot weddings so it was a pleasure working in my own backyard for a change. Every location was less than 20 minutes from my house! My friend, Karen Jennings (their photographer), introduced the couple to me a few months back and they became one of my first Aubert Films projects. Karen and I are trying to convince Angela that trashing her dress would be really cool... hint hint!

Anyways, the "Something A Little Different" is their trailer. I'm usually more of the documentary kind of guy who uses lots of ambient audio in my pieces. I am not a huge fan of the very dramatic, slower paced edits that some are so famous for. This wedding, however, stuck me quite differently than most. Usually I gloss over things that were said during the day since I'm concentrating on shooting the best video ever. During the ceremony, the priest was giving his homily and his words really stood out to me. He was talking about love. Almost every pastor or priest talks about love during weddings but the way this priest delivered his speech and the things he said really stood out to me. I stopped paying attention to what was going on with my camera (don't worry Jim and Angela!) and I listened to what he had to say. After he finished I knew that I wanted to do something special with what he said so I used his talk about love in this trailer.

"What is Love"

August 23rd - Back from Cali and Vegas

So I got back from Vegas earlier this week after another exciting WEVA convention. I had a great time hanging with all my friends and visiting the trade show. I also got a chance to work with the famous (sometimes infamous) John Michael Cooper. I planned a Trash the Dress shoot with a few other videographers and John. Enough about that, I will post about that in a few days.

The real reason I'm posting is because the GPVA (Greater Philadelphia Videographer's Association) entered a contest called the Battle of the Associations at WEVA. Basically we had to create a 60 second commercial advertising wedding video and WEVA. Last year we entered the contest with a montage of our best footage and won. This year we wanted to do something totally different. This year we made a spoof of the popular Mac vs. PC ads Apple is currently running. There were 6 other associations who made videos this year so the competition was steep. But in the end we made it through and overwhelmingly won again! I really wish I had the ad to show you but as soon as I get it I will post it here.

Here are some pictures of us after winning:

The project team

The attending GPVA members

August 11th - San Francisco!

Sorry for the delay in posting! I've been very busy preparing for my trip to San Francisco and the annual WEVA convention in Las Vegas.

I flew into San Francisco yesterday on this really cool airline called Frontier. I had never heard of them but apparently they're pretty big on the West Coast. Whats really nice is that every seat has its own LCD tv and 25 channels of live television! It was so cool watching CNN at 36 thousand feet. Plus the seats were really nice had had these pillows you can adjust to fit your head, haha.

When I arrived I took a quick nap and then headed out to China Town. Ever since my month long stay in Beijing last year I've always tried to find REAL Chinese food. I've gotten close but I figured in San Francisco I could get what I wanted. I looked for over an hour! I couldn't find any real authentic Chinese food! I was pretty upset but I felt better after I found a Chinese bakery that did have some treats I remember eating in Beijing.

Today I will be traveling to Napa Valley with Kristen, the videographer who hired me to come out and shoot with her. We're doing a wedding at a recently built castle and I expect it to be really cool! We're going to chill the rest of the day out there until tomorrow when we shoot the wedding.

I'll see if I can get some pictures up.

July 24th - Some Great Photographers

Yes I know... more news about the AC TTD shoot right? Sorta. But I swear this is the last time!!
Anyways, while at the shoot I had the chance to work with some really great photographers from around the country. It's always fun to see how other people work and learn from them. Even though I'm a videographer and not a photographer I still am inspired by their work.
Here are three of the photographers I got to work with who I think are really good at what they do. These aren't the only ones and I will probably post a few more in coming days so stay tuned.

Mark Gardner

Mark is located in Maryland (Close to Delaware, so Philly Brides he's the one for you!) and does some awesome work. He was leading one of the groups at the AC TTD shoot and can be seen in my video toward the beginning. His photos are stunning and I really hope I get a chance to work with him again.

Jason Domingues

Jason is probably one of the coolest photographers I've had a chance to work with. He's cool as hell and fun to be around. I spent some time with him at the AC TTD shoot and made a new friend. He's out of Kansas City but does several weddings in the Philly area each year.


Mark Eric

Mark Eric is founder and admin of TrashTheDress.com and is really responsible for brining this cool new trend into the limelight. Mark is a great guy and a classic Southern Gentleman. He was a pleasure to shoot with in AC and a great guy to be around. Mark is located in Alexandria, LA but also travels around the country.

July 13th - Trash The Dress

What can I say? The Trash The Dress event in Atlantic City was a blast! There were 11 brides trashing their dresses that day along with 50 plus photographers shooting stills. I got to work with some of the best in the industry including; John Michael Cooper, Mark Eric, The Wiebners, and Jason Domingues. Below the pictures, check out the video I put together for the event.

The Wiebners snapped some photos of me shooting during the event:

July 10th - Dress Trashing in Atlantic City

So the largest Trash The Dress event in history is going on later today.... and I'm the videographer for the event! I'm really excited! This will be my first official Dress Trashing so I'm unsure of what to expect. I know though that its going to be a lot of fun!

The event is being held at the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. I'm assuming we'll do some downtown shooting and then head over to the beach for some sunset shots.

There will be over 40 photographers attending with about 10 brides who will be trashing their dresses. Some big names like John Michael Cooper, who started the Dress Trashing trend, and Mark Eric, founder of trashthedress.com, will be there. A real star studded event tomorrow!

I will try to get an edited video up soon so you all can see how cool this thing really is.