If you follow our blog, then you’ll know that we shoot a ton of weddings. There’s nothing more special than being with a couple on one of the most important days of their lives. It’s been said that you can’t be a good wedding videographer if you shoot anything other than weddings -we’re living proof that that’s not true.

Anyone can take a bunch of cool shots and just throw them together, but that can only keep your attention for so long. We like to tell a story to keep your attention -and that’s what we strive to do for all of our videos. People have asked us, “How do you come up with such cool shots and still tell the story?” Well, to be honest, we get a lot of ideas from our photographer friends. If we see an awesome photo, we figure out how we can convert their photo into our video. To learn new things, you must try new things -and we’re always trying to think outside the box! As we’ve said before, even though we’re always trying new things like posting stills from our video … you won’t find us doing anything else except video

Recently, the ever so sweet and talented EyeCandy Salon was having a photo shoot with Ace Photography, and they asked us to shoot a “behind the scenes look” for the salon! As you can see above, this “behind the scenes look” is a perfect example of our mix-and-match shooting/editing style. Not only were we shooting beautiful, “cutesy” models, we also were shooting hot, punk rock models. Below are the some of the rockin’ stills we pulled from our footage… ENJOY!!!

“Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.” -Isaiah 41:10

We love this verse! Through ALL of the things we go through in life, God says, “Don’t be afraid because I’m always with you.”; and don’t be discouraged because I (the only God who has made everything that exists) am your God. He promises to give us strength, help us, and sustain us. What a great inspiration for, not only Monday, but for life!

Now, the easiest way to white balance a shot in post using FCP is to simply use FCP’s 3-way color corrector plugin. You then can select the white eyedropper, and then click on something white in your video footage. You’ll want to do the same with the black eyedropper, only selecting something black in your footage instead! For the most part, the plugin does a pretty good job, but (like we said earlier) we like to just have the white balance correct the first time! The examples we’ve used below are from our recent shoot with Eye Candy Salon.

In the screen grab above, you’ll notice we have a before and after shot! The shot on the left was straight from the camera. Notice how her face is kind of lifeless, and just doesn’t really pop off the screen. One reason for that is the fact that we shoot all of our videos flat in camera so later we can have complete control over the color and look of the shot. You can easily see that our pretty model’s face gets lost in the shot. There are a lot of ways to bring the shot to life, but in the shot above, all we did was tweak the black & white levels a tiny bit using FCP’s Color Program. Isn’t it amazing how tweaking something just a tiny bit can change the look of the clip!

In the screen grab above, you’ll see that we had a little fun with the color options for this oh-so-cool guy! However, when shooting for a salon, we’ve learned the hard way not to tweak colors too much. You’ll notice in the “Fun Color Grade” his hair looks a little golden; and some stylists might get upset that his hair color doesn’t 100% represent the original color (which is understandable.) We say that to encourage you to recognize when you can go crazy color grading and when you should just make the basic corrections.

Above you see Ashley, another great Eye Candy Model. Working with models like Ashley makes for a fun time when you get to color grading. She pretty much had the best looking skin we’ve ever seen in our lives:) So color-wise we could’ve done anything. One thing to consider when color grading is not to just try to do something you think is really cool, but color grade your footage in a way that sets up the emotion you want to get across in your video! We thought Ashley was pretty much the nicest bubbliest girl ever:) So, if we were to do a video that just featured Ashley, and it wasn’t a matter of making stylists mad, we would use our “Fun Color Grade” for her video. It just says fun, bubbly, and carefree.

Now Caitlin was the bomb to work with. Not only was she gorgeous, but she was so good at delivering every look that was needed, without hesitation. She was also really good “fake laugher” [If you've ever shot a video that required laughing you'll appreciate that.] Now, if we were to do a video that featured Caitlin, we’d probably mix up the color a little bit. I think the black and white would be great for her though. It sets up that Abercrombie & Fitch feel (and trust us when we say that Caitlin could pull it off:) Keep in mind that when it comes to black and white color grading…theres way more to it then just black and white…Just saying.

We’ve saved Veronica for last:) You may remember her from one of our twitpics we posted a few days ago. We still don’t beleive that she’s never modeled before, but thats for another time. The Eye Candy Salon stylists wanted to go for a rockstar look on Veronica. She had the rockstar dress, heels and hair:) I think they got it right on! So if we were to put together a video that featured Vernoica, we’d probably color grade like the above “Fun Color Grade.” After watching some of the video footage we captured, Veronica came off to us with that Amy Lee-ish look.

So, clearly, you can see that color grading can make or break a video! Even if you’re just messing around, we encourage you to figure out different looks you can get by experimenting with color. Some of our coolest looks have come from us messing around and doing something we thought would look absolutely ridiculous:)

Have you ever wondered how a crazy couple like us, who have never had a single day of classes in videography, or business, have quickly become one of Nashville’s best videography teams? Of course you do … now that we’ve asked you:)

Well, we’ve been receiving emails from not only videographers here in Nashville, but also videographers from all over the world! The best email we’ve received is from France that said:

“Hello there,

I am writing to you from France! No, I do not wish you come all the way here for my wedding, but a friend of mine gave me your web address as i am about to embark in the video production adventure and need as many tips as possible.”

We thought we had landed our first out of the country wedding:) hahaha:) The fact is, we get emails like this all the time, but we are sometimes jerks and don’t get back to people fast enough. Its not because we don’t want to help others in our industry. It’s mainly because we receive a ton of these emails on top of the emails we get from all of our lovely couples.

So, instead of us being jerks and not getting back to the videographers who are still needing questions answered, we have a little something special for you:)

When we first started 2Duce2 Videography, we would call around and ask other videographers in the area for some help or tips. More times than not, we’d get vague responses, as well as the “I don’t have time for you” responses. We’ll never forget how sucky that felt, so we’ve always said that no matter what happens with us, we’d always be the videographers who would help out others in our industry.

So have you ever wondered any of the following?

We’ve now decided to offer 1 on 1 sessions. We will give you an hour and a half to pick our brains over coffee or lunch. Or, if you don’t quite think that’s enough time for you, we also offer a half a day of hands on training. Feel free to ask us any questions about business, editing, social media, etc. Maybe you would just like to have professionals critique your video. We will answer any of your editing questions, give you more info about editing, and/or give suggestions about your video.

As much as we love shooting weddings, we also love seeing how other videographers have taken what we’ve shared with them, and have used it to bring their business up to the next level!