Lifestyle stock video shoot

Recently, I helped put together a shoot for Tom, a friend I’ve worked with at Shutterstock, to shoot some lifestyle video to be sold as stock footage.  We started planning this in late summer and settled on a date when we could all get together.  Tom lives in a nice neighborhood in Manhattan so to keep it simple we shot in his apartment and just outside the building near the water.

The model on the shoot was Stephanie Damiano.  I worked with her 2 years ago when she was toward the beginning of her adult modeling career.  Since that time, she’s done very well for herself.  She’s currently in 3 films, had TV appearances and other exciting projects in addition to  being an NYU student.  Samantha Linn was the MUA that had worked with Stephanie in the past and joined us on set.  She was great to work with as well.  

Stephanie texting face-timing on camera

Anyway, onto the shoot.  I brought my Movi to the shoot to have Tom try it out.  We planned for some fairly static shots and some that included movement and the Movi gives you this fantastic, smooth feel to the shot.  While Tom was shooting the scene below, I was able to snap a few stills of Stephanie eating this fruit plate.  She did great in making it look like she was really enjoying it.   I’ll update this post once the final clips are posted for sale.

Stephanie enjoying "the best fruit ever"

Great crew and super fun shoot!

Update: Here's a link to the videos.

BTS: Stride Video Shoot

Okay, maybe the behind the scenes (BTS) material should come after the project but I have it now so I'm sharing it.  

Aldric (upper left), Darrin, Theresa, Lucille (lower left), Ian, Mike, Lucille (right)

A couple months ago I was contacted to put together a video that highlights what its like to work at Stride, an agile consultancy based in New York City.  We're shooting this in two parts.  First, we interviewed three employees, plus the Head Of Talent, Lucille to introduce the video for us.

Theresa (left), Darrin/Theresa (middle), Jenna (right)

There were three of us working the shoot this time.  Myself, Theresa, and Jenna.  While Theresa and I were shooting, Jenna grabbed shots of our talent and the crew working the scene.  Great stuff!  Soon we'll be shooting the second part of the video which will include some more interviews and a company meeting.  Stay tuned for updates on the finished video.

Darrin (upper left with Jenna in the lens reflection), Theresa (lower left), Ian & Mike (right)

I was fortunate enough to have some great help on this shoot:
Theresa Keil: 2nd shooting, video interviews
Jenna Fernandez: BTS shots + assistant

Web -> http://DarrinEstepPhotography.com
G+ -> http://plus.google.com/+DarrinEstepPhotography/
Facebook -> https://www.facebook.com/DarrinEstepPhotography
Twitter -> https://twitter.com/destep001 

Book Author's Promotional Video

Over the course of the past several months, Heather has been finishing up her book and getting things in line to announce it to the world that it is complete and ready to be consumed.  When I first started working with Heather, she didn't yet have a book title.  That's all changed.  The title of the book is called, "The Evolution of Her".

During the time we shot profile images for Heather, we also captured some video.  On a separate day, we recorded the audio.  Through the magic of post-processing and some collaboration between myself and Heather, her promotional video for her book is ready!

Stacy & Jimmy's wedding video (highlights)

Sometimes its not as much about being there as it is experiencing it.  In this case, I wasn't there - I didn't shoot this material.  I've helped a photography friend, Steve Kang, with some video editing of weddings that he has shot and the material is sitting in the queue for someone to piece it together and help tell the story of the day.

This was a fun wedding to walk through and edit.  It took place in Boston (or close to there) and there were lots of patriotic acts that were inspiring to observe. Best of luck to the newlyweds!

Bottle & Bottega: Team building Event

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve recently teamed up with Bottle & Bottega which is a paint and sip studio where you can bring some wine, food, friends and they have artists on hand to help you create your own masterpiece on canvas.

I tagged along to a team building event with Bottle & Bottega for Bayer at the Skytop Lounge in the Poconos.  The plan was for me to shoot video with the goal of capturing the event, featuring the painting and teamwork and ultimately the final mural the group put together.  In addition, I planned to interview as many people as I could get to sit down with me to give a sense of what their experience was like.  It all went even better than expected.

Upon arrival, I noticed one thing that was missing for me: a space to interview others.  I scanned the property and what I ended up with was an outside setup that unless I would have told you it was outside, you wouldn’t have known any different.  It happened to be a pretty hot/humid night so that was a little tough but everyone made it through the interview without a hitch.

After a couple of rounds with Bottle & Bottega, I have a finished product that they love and I’m proud to show.  I look forward to more events with this group! 

Music Licensed through Marmoset: Love and Oceans (Instrumental) by The Dimes

Marianne & Michael's Wedding Video Edit

You never know what a new connection will bring you.  I start with this because this is how I came to edit the video for Michael & Marianne’s wedding video.  I reached out to Steve Kang, a Facebook acquaintance that I knew from some photography groups we’re both a part of.  I asked him to lunch because it seemed like we were bidding on the same types of jobs and I asked him if there’s anything he’d like to collaborate on.  Turns out, he needed some help with an edit on a wedding he shot and had been sitting for a while.  We agreed that I’d do the edit in trade for him helping me with some production work (blog post and details coming soon).

Like so many things, it just wasn’t that simple.  Most would “Yada, yada” over the best part and say, “Everything went great, the edit was easy, and nothing went wrong along the way”.  If you want that version, skip to the last couple sentences.  As you can guess, that wasn’t my experience.  To start, I had already been behind on some other projects so I didn’t even look at this material until a week after I had the files.  Shortly after I started the edit another job came up (which is what Steve helped me with) and now I’m behind by two jobs.  Oh boy.  Its a nice problem to have but I hate the feeling of the ball being in my court and owing someone.  I want it done so I can move onto the next thing.

Meanwhile, I’ve been working on changing my technical workflow in my business. Painful to go through with the promise of better organization in the future.  While I was hard at work on the edit of the wedding, my editing hard drive failed.  Yikes!  Not. Happy.

I look up places locally to recover data and found one not too far from the house.  Fortunately, they were able to recover all the data off the drive.  I, of course, had a back-up of all the data on that drive except for the wedding edit.  I got the data back and now have a back-up of everything and also have a nice video to share of Marianne & Michael’s wedding.  I’ve posted a small portion of the edit here since the full version is about 30 minutes long.  Enjoy!

Agile NYC Promo Video

Back in September, I connected with Joe Krebs again to shoot material that would be used for a promotional video for the Agile NYC event that happens annually.  As you can imagine, there's a lot of planning and effort that goes into putting a day together that includes speakers, vendors, workshops, entertainers, keynote speakers, etc.  My role was to capture the day and showcase the vibe and the energy of both the presenters and the speakers.

As I started to think about what I wanted to see in a video, I knew I wanted to have Joe anchor the structure of the video so I had him talk about what the structure of the current event was and talk a little about what might be coming up next year.  I used this as a jumping off point for other material I show.  As was typical for this kind of thing, there's A LOT of material that I shoot that I don't show.  It gives you options as you start to tell the story and it can also provide ways to parse up smaller bits to feature in other ways.

After several revisions and working closely with Joe on the final output, I'm happy to show the finished result.  Check out the Agile NYC page for more information and future event details.

Tuthill Wedding

Back in September of 2013 I was asked to capture the ceremony with video for Emily & Christopher.  It feels like so long ago at this point that I had initial discussions with the bride's sister, Alyssa.

The goal was to capture a sense of being there and put together all the material that I would capture in a relatively short period of time.  The ceremony was about 25 minutes (and it feels even shorter when you're focused on capturing the event vs. attending).  I was a one-man show for this wedding so I was running quite a bit during the ceremony.

I arrived about an hour early to get set up and one task I had when the groom arrived was to mic him up.  When reviewing the audio, I noticed that I captured these really nice moments between Christopher and Emily during the ceremony.  Unfortunately, they were just too low for me to integrate into the video.  He whispered things like, "You look beautiful - I love your dress!" and "...are you nervous?".  Very cute.

Congratulations to you guys.  It was a pleasure working with you and your family.

Suman & Rishi's Wedding, part 1

Back in the fall of 2009, I asked a good friend that was getting married if they would be open to me shooting their engagement pictures.  She (Suman) checked with her husband to be and he was interested so we picked a date and found a really nice place in Central Park to shoot.  It was a really nice day to shoot because the weather was cool but not cold and the colors of the fall were in full bloom.  I've posted a few of the images from the engagement session here but for more of them, check out the set on flickr.

So onto the video.  The wedding itself was 3 days long with multiple events.  The first was the Mehndi ceremony on Wednesday afternoon.  During this session, I shot both stills and video.  It was a great way to kick things off.  Next was Sangeet at the groom's parents house.  So many colors and creativity from the children to the grandparents.  Everyone got involved in the singing, dancing, and just general celebrating of life.  Last was the day of the wedding.  In the morning, we started with a Chuda and Haldi ceremony.  Then comes a break and final preparation for the wedding and reception.  Actually, its probably best if I stop describing it with words and show you the images.

The video linked here are bits from all of the events described above that took place over the 3 days.  I was inspired quite some time ago by what a company in Canada is doing with wedding video.  They're called StillMotion (choose Cinema to see the movies) and they have some really amazing videos.  They suck you in immediately and feel like a movie trailer!  That's what I was going for here in the wedding highlights but keep in mind this is my first attempt :-)

Suman & Rishi's wedding highlights from Darrin Estep on Vimeo.

There's so much more to talk about with this wedding (which is why I named this part 1).  Stay tuned for more behind the scenes in putting this together and a shout out to all the great people I had the pleasure of meeting and working with.