Rhett + Nicole | MUST SEE Wedding Highlights | Serendipity Studios

Travis Cossel · April 25th, 2011, 12:00 AM

It's easy to get excited about filming a wedding in the Florida Keys with a sunset backdrop and fire jugglers and junkanoo performers and fireworks over the ocean. What's even more exciting is when the couple is genuinely rediscovering true love through each other. For us, a visually-stunning wedding is nothing without a story of heart and soul.

We've been so excited to share Rhett and Nicole's wedding highlights video, but we had to wait until after it premiered at their 2nd wedding reception back in Ohio. Well, without further adieu, here is their wedding highlights video. Enjoy!

Jose Ortiz · April 27th, 2011, 11:27 AM

you kill it!!!
brother!!!!!!

Travis Cossel · April 27th, 2011, 01:27 PM

Awwwyeahhhh. d;-)

Osmany Tellez · April 28th, 2011, 10:19 AM

Nice job... i do agree about the beggining..slides..could be tide r. Oh man...that's my favorite band "Muse" I love that piece..i thought it was perfect for weddings..I was waiting for the right one...you beat me to it. Oh well...you used it well.

thanks.

Stelios Christofides · April 28th, 2011, 12:46 PM

Travis you work is always a standard of reference to me. I just bought a Canon 60D (with the 17-55mm 2.8 lens) myself to use for weddings as a secondary camera to my Sony Z5. The manual focus though of a DSLR is a "pain" but I guess, practise, practise, practise.

stelios

Travis Cossel · April 28th, 2011, 09:27 PM

Stelios, you're going to love the 60D and the 17-55 2.8. Great combo. Focus on a DSLR is definitely more challenging but also worth the effort. You'll do fine. d;-)

Victor Boyko · April 28th, 2011, 10:16 PM

can someone tell me how you get these amazing ring shots? what lenses you use, etc? thanks

Travis Cossel · May 1st, 2011, 10:51 AM

We were using a 100mm macro, but we just purchased a 12mm extender tube which is supposed to turn any lens into a macro, but much cheaper and smaller to store in your gear case. We'll see how it works out.

Victor Boyko · May 2nd, 2011, 06:47 PM

OK cool I am getting the 25 extension tube instead of getting an expensive macro lens since I'm only interested in very few macro lens. This tube is the perfect solution for me.

Johannes Soetandi · May 2nd, 2011, 11:01 PM

I really love how you control the flow of the video from the start to the end! Those shots of the B&G in sunset were killer! How did you get such a nice slowmo using 7D/60D? The framing seems very smooth.

Victor Boyko · May 3rd, 2011, 10:08 AM

Love this video. Keep watching it :) What were your settings for the time lapse in the end with the sunset?

Travis Cossel · May 3rd, 2011, 01:24 PM

Victor | Just had our 12mm tube arrive today but haven't had time to play with it yet. Glad you keep watching the video. That means we did our job. d;-) As for the settings during the sunset, I don't really recall exactly. I know we were at a low ISO like 160 and probably wide open (like 2.8) and using a pretty high shutter to control the light. We want the aperture to be full open to get high DOF so the sun would be really soft in the background. This helped draw the main attention to the rings.

Johannes | Thank you! A lot of thought definitely went into how to best use this song in terms of pacing. For example, we didn't even touch the Steadicam until the bridal entrance because we knew that was going to be our big shot for the crash of the music. The slo-mo at the end was all 60fps on the 60D and 7D and then conformed back to 24fps to give 50% slo-mo. We pretty much never use slo-mo but it just felt like the ending of this song was perfect for it, so we planned it out in advance weeks before the wedding.

Zhong Cheung · May 5th, 2011, 05:58 AM

Travis, inspirational work as always! Always admire your videos.

I like your approach - planning shots before the actual day, but I'm curious what that actually entails? Do you choose the song well before the actual wedding day, then think about what shots you would need for which parts of the song?

How do you ensure such a shot will be available to you during the actual wedding day? Do you go, "We need a tracking scenery shot," so you look for opportunities during the day to grab that shot? Or do you very specifically block/frame/stage the shot and already know the content (i.e. water, dancing in sunset, steadicam around the fire jugglers, etc.) before the actual day?

Travis Cossel · May 5th, 2011, 12:36 PM

Thanks for watching!

For the most part we choose music after the wedding day, not before. Our thinking is that you don't really know exactly how the wedding day will play out until you've been through it. However, we're experimenting with a change of philosophy right now, where we will tentatively choose a song before the wedding that we think will fit the couple and their wedding. Then, if after the wedding it doesn't quite fit we will just choose something else.

To answer your questions regarding this wedding, we were 99% sure that we would be using this song. It just felt perfect for the couple and their personal story, and perfect for the wedding they had planned. So in a sense, we treated this somewhat like a SDE. We picked the song and then pre-planned where we thought certain parts of the day would fit best. We had some specific shots in mind beforehand, like the shot of the rings with the waves, and all of the sunset shots. We did our research of the location online and knew that it was on the west side of the island and should have an awesome sunset. We also knew they had this tiny dock and knew we wanted the couple out on that dock during sunset, and especially a shot featuring this iconic bent palm tree that Pierre's is known for. We also knew we were going to use those shots at the end of the song, with the music slowing down, so we wanted to shoot for slo-mo. So everything during that sequence was shot at 60fps for that.

The tracking scenery shots at the beginning were semi-planned. I knew based on the pacing of the music that I mostly wanted tracking shots and not static shots because it would fit the energy of the music better. Normally we use very few tracking shots, so this was different for us. However, we didn't have any of those shots specifically planned. We just drew inspiration on the day of shooting.

The opening water shot was a moment of 'Serendipity' you could say. I was on the boat with the bride and her guests and got the idea to shoot the water. As you can imagine it was a very difficult shot to achieve given the length of the shot and the fact I was shooting on a moving boat over waves, but the end result was breath-taking I thought. Back in the studio I decided to open with the shot because it was so beautiful and dramatic and because it also feels like you're being led into the resort over the water.

Regarding steadicam, we use it pretty sparingly usually. I knew from choosing the song that I wanted a steadicam shot of the bride walking in and that this would be the first steadicam shot of the video. The music just called for it. As she was walking in I was searching for the best creative angle and decided to start on the shadows and use them as a reveal. For the reception I knew we wanted a good dose of steadicam because of the energy of the song we were using. I also knew I wanted a transition where the fireworks ended and we revealed the sunset session.

So as you can see, certain parts were planned, certain parts were semi-planned and certain parts were left completely to our own inspiration. I do want to point out that we are big believers in 'authentic' story-telling. There seems to be a trend in our industry to approach weddings more as movie producers and get the big shots versus the 'real moments'. That's not what we do. We employ planning and some limited setup and focus on capturing the real event.

Victor Boyko · May 6th, 2011, 09:47 AM

thats a pretty risky ring shot :)

Zhong Cheung · May 8th, 2011, 04:02 AM

Travis, thanks for your detailed response! It's going to help me a lot.

I did an event the other night at a very dark lounge with the 7D and fast Canon 2.8 lens (17-55 and 70-200mm IS), but nearly ALL my shots came out horrible - it was so hard to focus even with an 8" monitor, not to mention that the darkness was overwhelming, even on 6400 ISO (horrible noise, I know...but I didn't know what else to do) and even 1/30 shutter speed. We shot wide open on 2.8, but all our footage came back useless.

Everything was simply too dark. I imagine your outdoor scene at night watching the fireworks and the fire jugglers must have been very dark as well. How did you manage to get such clean images, exposed so your can see their faces, no real noticeable noise, sharp focus, etc? Did you use a video light? We didn't have one.

April 27th, 2011, 11:27 AM	#16
Jose Ortiz Major Player Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Tampa Florida Posts: 347	Re: Rhett + Nicole \| MUST SEE Wedding Highlights \| Serendipity Studios you kill it!!! brother!!!!!!

April 27th, 2011, 01:27 PM	#17
Travis Cossel Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Miami, FL Posts: 2,933	Re: Rhett + Nicole \| MUST SEE Wedding Highlights \| Serendipity Studios Awwwyeahhhh. d;-) __________________ Black Label Films www.blacklabelweddingfilms.com

April 28th, 2011, 10:19 AM	#18
Osmany Tellez Regular Crew Join Date: May 2008 Location: Panama City Posts: 190	Re: Rhett + Nicole \| MUST SEE Wedding Highlights \| Serendipity Studios Nice job... i do agree about the beggining..slides..could be tide r. Oh man...that's my favorite band "Muse" I love that piece..i thought it was perfect for weddings..I was waiting for the right one...you beat me to it. Oh well...you used it well. thanks. __________________ FCPS2, G5 Dual core 2.0 GHz, 2.5 Ram, Dell 2408, M-audio DX4, DVX 100A, Sachtler DV6, Manfrotto 561B, Zoom H-4, RE-50, AT890 shotgun, steadicam Merlin,

April 28th, 2011, 12:46 PM	#19
Stelios Christofides Trustee Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Nicosia, CYPRUS Posts: 1,080	Re: Rhett + Nicole \| MUST SEE Wedding Highlights \| Serendipity Studios Travis you work is always a standard of reference to me. I just bought a Canon 60D (with the 17-55mm 2.8 lens) myself to use for weddings as a secondary camera to my Sony Z5. The manual focus though of a DSLR is a "pain" but I guess, practise, practise, practise. stelios __________________ My Blog: http://steliosc.blogspot.com "I hope for nothing, I fear nothing, I am free" Nikos Kazantzakis

April 28th, 2011, 09:27 PM	#20
Travis Cossel Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Miami, FL Posts: 2,933	Re: Rhett + Nicole \| MUST SEE Wedding Highlights \| Serendipity Studios Stelios, you're going to love the 60D and the 17-55 2.8. Great combo. Focus on a DSLR is definitely more challenging but also worth the effort. You'll do fine. d;-) __________________ Black Label Films www.blacklabelweddingfilms.com

April 28th, 2011, 10:16 PM	#21
Victor Boyko Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: binghamton ny Posts: 82	Re: Rhett + Nicole \| MUST SEE Wedding Highlights \| Serendipity Studios can someone tell me how you get these amazing ring shots? what lenses you use, etc? thanks

May 1st, 2011, 10:51 AM	#22
Travis Cossel Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Miami, FL Posts: 2,933	Re: Rhett + Nicole \| MUST SEE Wedding Highlights \| Serendipity Studios We were using a 100mm macro, but we just purchased a 12mm extender tube which is supposed to turn any lens into a macro, but much cheaper and smaller to store in your gear case. We'll see how it works out. __________________ Black Label Films www.blacklabelweddingfilms.com

May 2nd, 2011, 06:47 PM	#23
Victor Boyko Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: binghamton ny Posts: 82	Re: Rhett + Nicole \| MUST SEE Wedding Highlights \| Serendipity Studios OK cool I am getting the 25 extension tube instead of getting an expensive macro lens since I'm only interested in very few macro lens. This tube is the perfect solution for me.

May 2nd, 2011, 11:01 PM	#24
Johannes Soetandi Major Player Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: Perth, Australia Posts: 387	Re: Rhett + Nicole \| MUST SEE Wedding Highlights \| Serendipity Studios I really love how you control the flow of the video from the start to the end! Those shots of the B&G in sunset were killer! How did you get such a nice slowmo using 7D/60D? The framing seems very smooth.

May 3rd, 2011, 10:08 AM	#25
Victor Boyko Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: binghamton ny Posts: 82	Re: Rhett + Nicole \| MUST SEE Wedding Highlights \| Serendipity Studios Love this video. Keep watching it :) What were your settings for the time lapse in the end with the sunset?

May 3rd, 2011, 01:24 PM	#26
Travis Cossel Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Miami, FL Posts: 2,933	Re: Rhett + Nicole \| MUST SEE Wedding Highlights \| Serendipity Studios Victor \| Just had our 12mm tube arrive today but haven't had time to play with it yet. Glad you keep watching the video. That means we did our job. d;-) As for the settings during the sunset, I don't really recall exactly. I know we were at a low ISO like 160 and probably wide open (like 2.8) and using a pretty high shutter to control the light. We want the aperture to be full open to get high DOF so the sun would be really soft in the background. This helped draw the main attention to the rings. Johannes \| Thank you! A lot of thought definitely went into how to best use this song in terms of pacing. For example, we didn't even touch the Steadicam until the bridal entrance because we knew that was going to be our big shot for the crash of the music. The slo-mo at the end was all 60fps on the 60D and 7D and then conformed back to 24fps to give 50% slo-mo. We pretty much never use slo-mo but it just felt like the ending of this song was perfect for it, so we planned it out in advance weeks before the wedding. __________________ Black Label Films www.blacklabelweddingfilms.com

May 5th, 2011, 05:58 AM	#27
Zhong Cheung Major Player Join Date: Feb 2011 Location: North Hollywood, CA Posts: 202	Re: Rhett + Nicole \| MUST SEE Wedding Highlights \| Serendipity Studios Travis, inspirational work as always! Always admire your videos. I like your approach - planning shots before the actual day, but I'm curious what that actually entails? Do you choose the song well before the actual wedding day, then think about what shots you would need for which parts of the song? How do you ensure such a shot will be available to you during the actual wedding day? Do you go, "We need a tracking scenery shot," so you look for opportunities during the day to grab that shot? Or do you very specifically block/frame/stage the shot and already know the content (i.e. water, dancing in sunset, steadicam around the fire jugglers, etc.) before the actual day?

May 5th, 2011, 12:36 PM	#28
Travis Cossel Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Miami, FL Posts: 2,933	Re: Rhett + Nicole \| MUST SEE Wedding Highlights \| Serendipity Studios Thanks for watching! For the most part we choose music after the wedding day, not before. Our thinking is that you don't really know exactly how the wedding day will play out until you've been through it. However, we're experimenting with a change of philosophy right now, where we will tentatively choose a song before the wedding that we think will fit the couple and their wedding. Then, if after the wedding it doesn't quite fit we will just choose something else. To answer your questions regarding this wedding, we were 99% sure that we would be using this song. It just felt perfect for the couple and their personal story, and perfect for the wedding they had planned. So in a sense, we treated this somewhat like a SDE. We picked the song and then pre-planned where we thought certain parts of the day would fit best. We had some specific shots in mind beforehand, like the shot of the rings with the waves, and all of the sunset shots. We did our research of the location online and knew that it was on the west side of the island and should have an awesome sunset. We also knew they had this tiny dock and knew we wanted the couple out on that dock during sunset, and especially a shot featuring this iconic bent palm tree that Pierre's is known for. We also knew we were going to use those shots at the end of the song, with the music slowing down, so we wanted to shoot for slo-mo. So everything during that sequence was shot at 60fps for that. The tracking scenery shots at the beginning were semi-planned. I knew based on the pacing of the music that I mostly wanted tracking shots and not static shots because it would fit the energy of the music better. Normally we use very few tracking shots, so this was different for us. However, we didn't have any of those shots specifically planned. We just drew inspiration on the day of shooting. The opening water shot was a moment of 'Serendipity' you could say. I was on the boat with the bride and her guests and got the idea to shoot the water. As you can imagine it was a very difficult shot to achieve given the length of the shot and the fact I was shooting on a moving boat over waves, but the end result was breath-taking I thought. Back in the studio I decided to open with the shot because it was so beautiful and dramatic and because it also feels like you're being led into the resort over the water. Regarding steadicam, we use it pretty sparingly usually. I knew from choosing the song that I wanted a steadicam shot of the bride walking in and that this would be the first steadicam shot of the video. The music just called for it. As she was walking in I was searching for the best creative angle and decided to start on the shadows and use them as a reveal. For the reception I knew we wanted a good dose of steadicam because of the energy of the song we were using. I also knew I wanted a transition where the fireworks ended and we revealed the sunset session. So as you can see, certain parts were planned, certain parts were semi-planned and certain parts were left completely to our own inspiration. I do want to point out that we are big believers in 'authentic' story-telling. There seems to be a trend in our industry to approach weddings more as movie producers and get the big shots versus the 'real moments'. That's not what we do. We employ planning and some limited setup and focus on capturing the real event. __________________ Black Label Films www.blacklabelweddingfilms.com

May 6th, 2011, 09:47 AM	#29
Victor Boyko Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: binghamton ny Posts: 82	Re: Rhett + Nicole \| MUST SEE Wedding Highlights \| Serendipity Studios thats a pretty risky ring shot :)

May 8th, 2011, 04:02 AM	#30
Zhong Cheung Major Player Join Date: Feb 2011 Location: North Hollywood, CA Posts: 202	Re: Rhett + Nicole \| MUST SEE Wedding Highlights \| Serendipity Studios Travis, thanks for your detailed response! It's going to help me a lot. I did an event the other night at a very dark lounge with the 7D and fast Canon 2.8 lens (17-55 and 70-200mm IS), but nearly ALL my shots came out horrible - it was so hard to focus even with an 8" monitor, not to mention that the darkness was overwhelming, even on 6400 ISO (horrible noise, I know...but I didn't know what else to do) and even 1/30 shutter speed. We shot wide open on 2.8, but all our footage came back useless. Everything was simply too dark. I imagine your outdoor scene at night watching the fireworks and the fire jugglers must have been very dark as well. How did you manage to get such clean images, exposed so your can see their faces, no real noticeable noise, sharp focus, etc? Did you use a video light? We didn't have one.