One of the questions we get a lot is how we get videos cropped the way we do. With that super crazy widescreen look. Right off the bat let me say that I’m sure there are other ways to get videos to look like this, but this is the way we’ve found works best for us.

So here’s the clip we’re goin to use

Once we’ve gone through and edited our video, we then go to our effects Bin.

We open the Video Filters, and then open the folder called Matte. (is it bad that we can’t remember if this set of plugins come with FCP or not? We’ve got a ton of plugins and kind of forget which ones originally came with FCP, but we know we’ve been using this plugin since we’ve had FCP.)

Then we drag the plugin called Widescreen down to our clip. This is where the magic starts:) If the only plugin you have applied to your clip is the widescreen plugin, then your filters window should look like this.

The first option you see is [TYPE]

This is where you decide how crazy you want to get when it comes to your widescreen plugin. Everyone’s different and different options work for different scenarios. Here are the 3 different [TYPE]‘s we use most.

2.35 : 1

2.55 : 1

3.00 : 1

The next option we use a lot is [Offset]

[Offset] determines what part of your clip is shown. If we moved the slider all the way to the left our clip would look like this

if we moved our slider all the way to the right our clip would look like this.

So you can see how, not only can the widescreen plugin give your video a completely different feel, but changing the offset can also be a big factor.

Set-up for Vimeo

So if you export this clip like you always do and tried to upload it to vimeo, then you’d still have the black bars, which if your’e cool with that then you’re finished:)

But we just don’t really like the bars, so what we do is export our clip from FCP and then open up the exported clip with Quicktime Player 7 (we haven’t been able to get the new quicktime player to export clips like we want.)

Once we’ve got the clip in Quicktime we go to [FILE] and then click [EXPORT]

You should get a window that looks like this one.

You want to be sure your export is set to [MOVIE TO MPEG-4] and then click [OPTIONS…]

Below you can see all of our settings. Now keep in mind that these settings are for when we use the widescreen [TYPE] of 2.55 : 1

Once all of the settings are set and ready to go we click [OK] and then we set where we want our clip to export to, and click [SAVE]

Once quicktime does its thing we upload the exported file to vimeo, and have our super crazy widescreen look:)

Hope this has been helpful!

Let us start out by saying, we seriously don’t go out and try to find the hottest couples in the world, but its pretty cool when we end up with freaking super models to work with:) You may remember Brent and Tami, a couple we had the privilege of meeting and being a part of their wedding day. It’s couples like Brent & Tami, Dan & Randi, and so many more who make it possible for us to go without having to pay for advertising or do bridal shows several times a year. Before you peeps who do advertise and do bridal shows get worked up, understand that we’re not saying that those things aren’t any good, but that referrals from previous couples have been what works best for us. Everyone’s different.

With that said, because of our fun couples who insist that their newly engaged friends and family just have to have us shoot their wedding, like only we can, we get to spend more time getting better and better at our craft instead of dealing with bridal shows!! (Nashville has some of the coolest bridal shows by the way.)

We just wanted to take a minute to not only thank these two couples, but all of our other couples, as well as the amazing vendors who are always referring us to their friends, families, and clients.

Dan + Randi

Dan & Randi were married at the always beautiful Cathedral of Incarnation in downtown Nashville. By the way, they were married at the perfect time because the sun was shining in gorgeously. They were even caught off guard by how caught up in emotions they were when they were saying their vows. It was such a great wedding!
The reception followed at the War Memorial Auditorium (which were so happy to be finally shooting!) We also had the privilege of working one of the most enthusiastic people we’ve ever met, Super T!!! This man & his band kept the party rockin’! His enthusiasm was infectious & had people dancing the moment the band started playing. Of course, he & Eugene hit it off immediately! During dinner they were chattin’ up a storm. Needless to say, we cant wait to work with him again! Once you meet him you’ll never forget him or his costume Great job at picking vendors, Dan & Randi, people will be talking about your wedding for years!

Todd & Candice were married in South Carolina at a beautiful venue called The Creek Club at I’On. We were with this beautiful couple for only a short time, but it didn’t take long to find out how close and beautiful their family and relationships were! Many close friends and family gave touching and funny speeches at the rehearsal dinner; and you could truly feel the love all over. Their family was so friendly and welcoming to us. They made us feel like part of the family!

Todd & Candice had a sweet sunset ceremony by the water; and the reception followed inside the club. Not only was South Carolina a gorgeous location, we also had the privilege to work with some awesome new vendors! We really enjoyed rubbing elbows with the sweet Sara Hosch of Southern Protocol and the coolest cat Richard Israel of Richard Israel Photography. This was definitely one of the smoothest weddings we’ve ever shot, thanks to Sara and her organization (we’ll have a whole post dedicated to her later.) We love our Nashville vendors, but hey, we all like meeting new people

Welcome welcome welcome! Wow! Has this been a journey to get as far as we’ve gotten with our website & blog! We’re sure you’ve seen us tweeting about our new blog, and wow! we’re so excited to finally be able to share it with every one. We really really hope you guys enjoy it!

Being in business for ourselves, we’ve learned that we’re not pros at everything -duh ProPhoto Blogs was one of the best tools we could’ve asked for. With ProPhoto Blogs we could actually make our blog look professional. However, even as simple as it was to use, we still were missing out on a few features we wanted.

We had been speaking with our freakin’ amazing friends Zach and Jody Gray about what we wanted to do with our blog, and how it seemed that everyone was starting to use the ProPhoto Blogs theme (which is great that people loved the theme but that just meant that a lot of our blogs started looking the same.)
Unless you’ve been hiding in a hole, you probably know that Zach and Jody Gray have one of the most awesome blogs around; so of course we asked them who did their blog. Without even thinking twice, they said that we had to call their good friend Allie! They even offered to shoot the photos for our blog (which turned out awesoooome!)

Well, the first time we spoke with Allie, we could tell she knew what she was talking about! After, she got a feel for our personality, she emailed us a few questions about what we wanted in our new blog. Well, poor Allie, because this is what we gave her: (don’t be jealous of the stick figures)

Allie turned this gorgeous drawing into the awesome blog you see now! We promise you she has magic powers Allie we cannot thank you enough for all of your hard work.

We also had a guy code our site, who…well thats a blog post for another time (not a good post either.) We should’ve just done a little more research on the guy before hand, but we’ll just say that we’ve been tweaking a lot of the code ourself along with having some guys code the blog so things function the way they’re supposed to. You’ll be seeing changes to the blog every now and then to make it actually do the things we want it to do. We just couldn’t wait any longer to give you the feel of our bloggidy blog.

Feel free to look around and check out our new features! (and let us know if there are any issues you come across) …. oh but wait….. we have another surprise for you! Along with our new blog look, we’ve also given our website an extreme makeover! So check it out too! You’ll love the new look (with the same ol’ Eugene and Heather, of course!) Be sure to leave a comment or send us a message to let us know what you think! Aaahhhhh! We love it!!