We’re wandering down memory lane to bring you this vintage wedding film.
Often when people use the word vintage, they mean it’s got a retro film filter on the digital film, with a few light leaks thrown in for good luck. You’ll hear no criticism from us of that. A film stock LUT and a few light leaks is our sort of look. But actually we are instead talking about shooting on a 45 year old film camera.
In 2013, well before we moved into filming professionally, we shot a simple highlight reel of some friends on their wedding day as a present. Having played with the camera at our own wedding and honeymoon, there was at least some precedent. Film stock is expensive and so we only had 7 minutes of available filming time, so ended up cutting the footage with Instagrams harvested from the wedding hashtag. We animated these using the Ken Burns effect to blend it all a bit better.
It’s rough and ready, but it has a certain charm and it convinced us that, however rudimentary, there was real value in capturing moving images from a wedding day.
Tell me about their wedding day
It was a cracker actually. It was obvious they’d look good, as both bride and groom are highly stylish folks. Ally looked sharper than Ray Mear’s razor blade and Lisa was putting Pippa Middleton to shame in her dress. I did a bit of filming at Tigerlily in the morning as the ladies got ready, before racing over to Edinburgh City Chambers beside St Giles Cathedral for the service. For a council building, it was a stunning ceremony venue with lovely panelled walls and huge windows overlooking St Giles. After that it was onto the Assembly Rooms on George Street for the reception. Another incredible venue with dramatic tear drop shaped chandeliers. Such was the Georgian elegance of the room that you’d half expect to see Mr Darcy swanning about looking haughty. Being a non-commercial venture, I used Neil Young’s Harvest Moon as the track and the dreamy quality of the music worked perfectly with the fuzzy soft effect of the Super8 film.
How did we come to shoot a vintage wedding film on a 45 year old camera?
The camera was my grandfather’s cinecamera. As kids we’d watch silent films of my parents when they were young, or road trips through 1970s Germany (White VW Beetles everywhere). Then I rediscovered the camera and sourced some film for the wedding. It was a long shot but it worked. The biggest panic was not being able to get enough light. As it happened, it actually coped OK.
For the tech geeks amongst you it was filmed on a 1968 Eumig Super8 cinecamera using Kodak Ektachrome 100D Colour Reversal film
Nowadays, shooting digitally, I will turn up for a wedding with enough memory cards to film at least 10-12hours of continuous footage on 2 cameras. On this occasion, I had 7 minutes of available footage. Thank God for naivety. If I had to face that prospect now, I’d have a heart attack.
Will we ever use Super8 film again?
More than likely. While we wouldn’t attempt to shoot a vintage wedding film highlight with it, we are starting to think of ways to use it. So, watch this space or, if you have any requests, get in touch.
