On October 15, 2011, I helped film Belle and Kevin’s wedding. It was a big deal, not only because it was my first ever wedding shoot, but I also wanted to give them a damn good video to remember the most special of days.

Shot entirely on a Canon T2i, swapping between a Canon 28mm f/1.8 and a Canon 55-250mm f/4-5.6 and using a Rodes VideoMic and a Zoom H4N to record the audio.

Song selection was easy: Belle’s father played this during the reception, and it was a no-brainer to use it here.

Congratulations Belle and Kevin! Thanks for making me a part of your special day.

Personally, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the video. It’s a great little story, and it’s clever, but I guess I expected to laugh a lot more than I actually did. That is fine, not everything tickles everyone the same way, and I hope Katie (who sent me this video!) wasn’t offended by the fact that I wasn’t the biggest fan of it.

However, I would like to point out one thing: they are a breath of fresh air for comedy in Canada.

Since the (good) days of Royal Canadian Air Farce or This Hour Has 22 Minutes, I have seen plenty of Canadian comedy shows show up on The Comedy Network, and they have all been disappointing. They would take the awesome sketch comedy formula that made the aforementioned shows so successful and tried to replicate it, except they wouldn’t be as smart, they wouldn’t be as intelligent, and they absolutely blew when it came to comedic timing.

It was like watching a really bad, half-hour commercial for a shoddy product. Without Billy Mays.

What I really like about Real Professional is that they’ve made a really great comedy short: it’s beautifully produced, it’s got just the right amount of cheesiness in it, and the actors and actresses don’t make me want to immediately claw my eyes and ears out. That said, the acting does fall short in a few places and the overall idea for this short just doesn’t do it for me, but there is definitely plenty of potential and I appreciate that.

I’m really looking forward to more videos from Katie and Claire over at Real Professional. I am hoping that this is a direction that many more comedians take when creating their content, it is an absolute breath of fresh air.

Cheers, ladies!

Brian always laughs at me.

But he said I should do it, and I was on my way. About 10 minutes later, I had a decent drawing of Ollie Williams up on the window, telling us it was cloudy.

Not bad eh?

Well, I went on to post it on Reddit thinking a few people might chuckle and potentially giving me an upvote. Boy, was I ever wrong.

The image above starts with the final count of the Reddit post as of this writing, and it climbed as high as 20th on the front page of r/funny (that I observed). The imgur stats are staggering: 9 hours up, 141,110 views, and 57.6GB of bandwidth!

I’m glad to have you in our office, Ollie, you’ve certainly made my day a lot more interesting!

UPDATE (12/7/2011): Final stats are amazing. 729 upvotes on Reddit, 198,146 views and 81.12GB of bandwidth on imgur. Madness!

I discovered Zero Sight and Zero Sum by B. Justin Shier by accident: I needed a book to read on my commutes to and from work, and I looked on the Kindle recommended books. On the third page, I found Zero Sight and read the description and my interest was piqued:

Meet Dieter Resnick. Dieter is the sole child of an abusive single father, a perennial schoolyard brawler, and Ted Binion High’s number one academic prospect. Dieter is terrified of staying poor. He has few friends and is absolutely obsessed with earning a college scholarship. He’s also a latent mage–one of the few humans left that can bend the manaflows to their will.

Too bad no one told him. Now a boy is dead.

Meet Rei Acerba Bathory. Rei is a second year student at Elliot College, the premiere magical training academy in North America. She’s also on an all-liquid diet. Rei acquired her odd speech and mannerisms living among her centuries-old kin–strange vampiric creatures that have carved out the Midwest as their playground. She can kill a man without blinking, but has a serious weakness for puppies. Thanks to a childhood spent living cloistered from the public, Rei knows little of modern society. She’d do well to make some friends, but her fellow trainees despise her. Rei is the first of her kind to be admitted, and many hope to make her the last.

Dieter was raised in the grimy outskirts of Las Vegas. Rei was homeschooled in a Chicago mansion. Both are on their way to Elliot College. Both believe the other is a creature of idle fantasy. In ten hours, they’re going to be at the center of a war fought by shadow actors. In eleven hours, they’re going to become a weft-pair, bound together by the most sacred spell in the magic canon. And in twelve hours? Well, in twelve hours, they’ve got to get to class…

With a description like that, who wouldn’t buy this book, right?

Here is why I absolutely loved this book:

• Strong cast of characters. They’re all young, they’ve got their own opinions (and powers!), and they’re distinctly different from one another.
• It’s hilarious. I laughed out loud on the bus several times thanks to these books, and it was worth the funny looks from other passengers.
• Fantasy mixed with realism. People are casting spells and slinging magic in the modern day. It’s as awesome as it sounds.
• Couldn’t put it down. I missed my stop SEVERAL times while reading these two, and I blasted my way through the books in days. It made me really excited to read!

Both of these books were an amazing read, and I couldn’t help but throw some extra support behind an independent author who has done an excellent job with these books.

I can’t wait for the next one!

Coffee. Not even once.

EDIT: Apparently, the book isn’t that far off:

Photo: Tim Chong Photography

Well, I survived and I think I did alright. Here’s a list of things I learned about shooting weddings:

• You will have to fight for position. Chances are that there will be a photographer there, in addition to everyone else who is holding a camera.
• Get a vest and stabilizer. Weddings are very long, your arms are going to get tired very quickly.
• Be familiar with your equipment. I have never used a Steadicam Merlin before, and I didn’t have enough time to get it balanced properly, so I couldn’t use it, which sucks!
• Bring all the wires you could possibly need. I brought a Zoom H4N to record audio, and I got lucky that the DJ had a spare set of XLR wires. I have perfect audio of the reception thanks to him.
• Scout the venues ahead of time. I didn’t get a chance to take a look at the venue beforehand, and I had to make some really quick choices at the very last minute on how I was going to shoot everything.

Lessons for next time. Working on getting the videos together, but thankfully I can start showing people the video I helped them make to kick off their reception!

Still learning to shoot with a DSLR, but we’re getting there. Slowly.

Wink.

Flickr Set: Cottage – July 2011

I need to do this more often.

Is that a douchey way to think? Of course! But what do you expect? They aren’t me and they won’t know what sort of shot I am looking for.

What is a guy to do?

While on vacation in Miami, I could only think of one solution: eliminate any variables that you can control before giving up control of your camera.

Before handing off my camera to the waiter to get him to take my picture, I did several several things:

• Switch the lens to “Manual Focus”
• Set the right shutter speed
• Set the right aperture
• Set the right ISO
• Turn on the LCD viewfinder

My trick was to make it as simple as a point and shoot camera is to use, without having to have them fiddle with any of the settings.

Once you get used to asking people to take pictures of you with your SLR, you will be able to finally have pictures of yourself in front of the camera for once!