Charles Lauren Films

"m a s t e r s of
r e f l e c t i o n"

Today I was listening to the National Public Radio (NPR) station in Los Angeles, and they had begun a discussion on the "Ask a Ninja" podcast. Very funny show if you ever happen to catch it on- anyway regardless to say- I'd never heard of it, so I went to "i Tunes" and started watching it. The segment I saw was on Ninja's and their reflections in the mirror. Of course this is a funny show- so he commented on how Ninjas are "masters of reflection" and then went onto many more funny comedies on everyday things. I laughed at how he said that Ninjas were masters of reflection, but then I started thinking and knew it was time to write another blog.

Just as a Ninja is a master of reflection so too are the videographer and the photographer at every wedding. Everything anyone ever sees after the wedding will be directly related to the reflections the photographer and videographer presented in their album books or the finished DVD. So when it comes to choosing a videographer and a photographer a bride needs to make sure that her reflections match that of the videographer and photographer. If their ideas don’t click together and they can’t relate to anything the videographer/photographer are saying or presenting than the brides day won’t be properly captured as a reflection of what she and her groom/family/etc. wanted. Fortunately, most brides have this inner gut feeling on exactly what they want- so sometimes it’s not that complicated. Other times however, since video is a very new medium to this industry- as oppose to say photography- a bride might not be sure exactly what she wants and how to capture that. When a bride and groom come into our studio they sometimes are not sure what to expect, but then we go through the process and show them how we capture the love, emotions and details of their day and then they are “sold” that this is the right reflection they want to remember of their wedding day.

As recently a bride myself, since we couldn’t videotape our own ceremony/reception of course- we went looking for other videographers. I won’t go into it in this blog, but many of the videographers we interviewed did not even remotely compare to the reflections I wanted to remember of my wedding day. I don’t want to put our industry down, but I would say a good 70% of them did not even compare. I couldn’t believe it, a trained videographer (me) searching for another trained videographer, and it was complicated. I can only imagine then what a bride must go through. That is why videographers need to step it up a notch, become real, be professional- when a bride sees you in jeans and a t-shirt and says my studio is being remodeled let’s go to a coffee shop and they can’t get their portable DVD player to work- there is a real problem. And it reflects badly on all of us. Let us not be an incoherent mumble jumble distorted reflection of our industry- but let us all rise up and be masters of our own reflections.