In this week’s wedding tip, Jeri Solomon of Jeri Solomon Floral Design and the Boston Wedding Group explains some of the key factors of what dictates your floral budget on your wedding day. Most people do not know what to expect when it comes to this part of the wedding budget, but Jeri has a few tips that will guide you in the right direction. Jeri has been working in floral shops since she was a teenager and she began her own floral design studio in the 1994. She is one of the leading floral designers in Boston and New England, and her work is just elegant, gorgeous and impeccable. Find out what you need to know about your wedding budget for your Boston wedding in this week’s wedding tip.
This week’s wedding tip comes from one of the top wedding planner companies in Boston and New England. Courtney Graham of Marrero Events and the Boston Wedding Group is a big supporter of having a first look, and we here at JPod Films have a similar view. We both believe that a first look has so many advantages to making your wedding day all that it can be. Many traditional couples will forgo this recent trend, but we think you should really look at the benefits before eliminating this from your timeline.
In addition to all of Courtney’s great points (which we agree with), we believe that having a first look will also make the whole day more relaxing as it “loosens” the timeline. You will be less rushed throughout the day, and by attending the cocktail hour, you will have a better chance to interact and thank your guests. That will translate to having more tie and more fun at your reception. For us filmmakers, the added interaction, emothion and personality of the couple’s first look helps make our Boston Wedding Films that much better. Let us know what you think below and subscribe to our feed to see more wedding tips as we unveil them each week.
This has been a whirlwind of a year in the making, but we are so excited to finally make the transition from JPod Productions to JPod Films. We have always been about visual storytelling and the word ‘films’ has always resonated with us when we thought about our final product. So, it was time to create a new website and accompany it with a new look, and of coarse, a new name. But, even with the new look, we are still driven by the same principles to tell each couple’s story in an a way that brings back the anticipation, excitement, subtleties and energy in each of our Boston wedding films.
As part of this journey, we were helped by so many talented individuals including our designer Molly Fabiano. A few years ago, we were lucky enough to be part of the team that filmed Molly’s wedding and we have just kept in touch over the past few years through facebook. When we looked at rebranding, we searched for a graphic designer that had the female touch that connected with our target demographic. Being a former bride, and after seeing some of Molly’s work, we knew Everyday Mojo was the right fit for us in creating our new logo, business cards and stationary.
Secondly, I turned to a former groom in Corey Condardo, who gave us the guidance and expertise for our new website. Corey gave us the confidence to learn enough of wordpress to begin building our new site. Corey and I had a couple of fun sessions of modifying and tweaking the website. as we laughed throughout the process. In the end, we turned things over to Corey to put the final touches on the new updated jpodfilms.com.
Finally, I have to thanks the female influences who guided our decisions along the way. I counted on several former brides and my assistant filmmaker Mia Major for a lot of guidance, as we wanted a look that was appealing to our target market. But most of all, I must thank my wife Alison, who was a huge decision maker in the re-branding process. As the owner of Alison May Public Relations, she just has a keen eye for design and the current trends of our target market. The last thing I wanted was a logo that I thought was cool, but didn’t connect with our target market. She has been amazing support throughout the process from logo design all the way through to the selection of our final packaging for clients. Love you babe!
Video is a powerful tool when it comes to marketing your business, and many of the great wedding professionals that we work with have started to capitalize on that fact with Identity Films. Identity films are really an ‘about us’ film that lets potential customers know what you exactly do in an engaging fashion. We are creating more and more of these films for not only wedding professionals, but for small businesses around Boston and New England.
Most recently, we had the chance to work on what will be the first of two identity films for Tricia McCormack Photography. Tricia is one of the top wedding photographers in the western half of Massachusetts, as we have been lucky enough to be paired with her on numerous events over the past three years. In addition to photography, she has added a brand new, updated photo booth to her business model in 2015. The photo booth is classic, clean and really adds a fun and exciting element to the weddings we film along side her in the Berkshires.
Last month, we had the opportunity to film Tricia McCormack Photography’s new photo booth on a Friday evening to capture what the experience is all about. The goal of this film was to show the fun, excitement and laughter that this photo booth can create at your event. You could not help, but smile and laugh as the guests continuously filed in and out of the booth with giggles and laughter. The photo booth prints out four-picture sequences for guests to take with them, and then the client gets to see all of the photos after the event. Check out Tricia McCormack’s website HERE, and watch her 90-second Identity film below.
On Monday evening, JPod Films was honored to win a New England VISTA award for the fourth consecutive year. The Boston wedding film Jen + Brandon was given the Gold Award in the ‘full wedding’ category. This was the highest honor JPod Films has received in the wedding film category. The category is one that best fits our most popular wedding film investment.
Each year, the New England Professional Videographer’s Association (NPVA) holds the awards in March to honor the best films in New England over the past year. Jen + Brandon’s wedding was filmed in the heart of Boston at the Museum of Science, with the preparations take place at the chic Ames Hotel on Court Street. The intimate wedding included a duck boat ride for all of the guests and a tremendous photo session that ended the day instead of beginning it.
The NPVA offers a fabulous outlet for JPod Films to improve our craft with many of the other best professional cinematographers in New England. See Jen + Brandon’s full film below.
Every year, it seems that we get to travel a little bit more each and every wedding season. Last year, we filmed our first wedding event on Block Island in Rhode Island. This time it was not the wedding of Pam and Nick, but their 20th year vow renewal. For Pam, it was a great reason to throw a party on the island (which she loves to do) that her family relaxes on every summer. The weekend celebration and Leslie Ulrich’s work was featured in Newport Wedding Magazine – you can see it HERE.
The wedding film had more of a documentary feel in many ways, as we interviewed many of the couple’s family and friends over the weekend to really bring out what has made Pam and Nick so successful over the past twenty years. We were also able to spend a little time with the family on the beach as part of the weekend filming experience. Pam and Nick renewed their vows at the Spring House, which boasts fabulous views of the ocean and some of the nicest accommodations on Block Island. They stood alongside their two children who also added their take to the documentary feel of the film with two interviews that were delivered well beyond their ages. The party was one that lasted late into the night and included a performance from the dance crew Static Noize and a fireworks show that the whole island got to enjoy.
Pam and Nick’s Block Island feature film clip shows the end of the night including much of the dancing, including the couple’s exceptional swing skill, and the firework show that stopped the island in its tracks. We are venturing away from our Boston wedding films and filming more and more weddings on Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and Block Island and enjoying every minute of it. So, reach out to us if you are getting married on one of of the islands south of Massachusetts or Rhode island. Until then, enjoy the show.
Amanda of Ready Set Film and I had an amazing time collaborating on this same day edit film for the September Boston Wedding Group (BWG) Meeting. The amount of time and efforts that all of the vendors (listed below) put in to making this meeting such a success is both inspiring and humbling. The meeting was the BWG’s industry-wide meeting featuring keynote Speaker Stacie Francombe, of Inspired Smart Success, who gave a plethera of tips on how to get noticed and published by the media. Edna and her team from EFD Creative Event Planning & Design did a tremendous job creating an elegant multi-floor event. It was the second time we have worked with Edna in the past month and I have to say that I love her and Kacie’s attention to detail. Below is a quick two-minute Boston Same Day Edit Film of the event that was held at the beautifully renovated Marriot Courtyard Downtown on Tremont Street in Boston. The renovated ballroom is elegant and large enough to hold events of many sizes in the Theater District of Boston.
It has been a fun process over the past 10 years continuing trying to grow and evolve our wedding videography business into something much bigger and better. Well, this week a long term goal of ours was reached, as we have opened a new office space in the heart of Boston. Our Boston wedding filmmaker name of JPod Productions can now be found at 137 Newbury Street! We have partnered with five other great wedding businesses from the city to provide a space for our couples to meet us throughout the wedding planning process. When selecting a space in Boston, Newbury Street was always on the top of our list, because we felt that it matched our brand and the wedding films we are trying to produce. The girls in my office are excited that we are located in the same building as Hotel Chocolat. We will definitely share more pictures of the space in the coming weeks. We are so excited!
JPod Productions was honored as one of the top filmmaking companies in New England for the third straight at the annual New England Professional Videographer’s Association’s (NPVA) VISTA awards last night in Dedham, MA. Our short Film, Jennifer + Michael’s Love Story was given the Silver Award in the “other” category. This Boston wedding video captures the story of how Jennifer Singer and Michael Marcus’ paths crossed and the journey that brought them to their wedding day. We premiered their film at their wedding reception just a few months ago. The reaction from that night was rewarding and electric and very similar to the response we get when we show a same day edit film.
We were also honored and very humbled as one of the other winners, Elena Coyne, thanked JPod Productions Owner Jamie Podworski for inspiring her with a presentation he did in January at the NPVA on creating wedding trailers. Elena said she used the knowledge and inspiration from that night to edit one of her weddings before the VISTA deadline, which was only three days away at that time. That moment definitely defined why we participate in NPVA group, as filmmakers share knowledge with other filmmakers. It not only makes our Boston wedding videos better, but it makes our industry so much stronger as a whole.
The VISTA awards are a New England-based competition run by the New England Professional Videographer’s Association (NPVA). The NPVA is an organization of not only Boston wedding videographers and corporate producers, but also companies across New England who meet once a month to learn from regional and national speakers who specialize in the film making industry. Awards in the VISTA competition are presented in four categories including “Full Wedding”, “Wedding Highlight”, “Corporate”, and “Other”. The “Other” category is designed for videos that do not fit into the other three categories of the competition.
After a couple years of offering DVDs as one of our choices for wedding film delivery, as of March 1st, thumb drives with high-definition video will become our primary form of delivery for our Boston wedding films. We will still offer DVDs as an add-on option for those couples that would like them to have them, but the primary delivery option will be thumb drives.
Why are we making this change? First of all, it will allow us to deliver our films in the highest quality possible – high definition. We film all our weddings, events and corporate projects in high definition; therefore, we want to deliver our final product in this high quality format as well. With DVDs, the final output is converted to standard definition, which lowers the quality of our films.
Secondly, we want to stay up to-to-date with the current trends. Just as mp3 files have replaced CDs in the music industry, videos and films are heading in the same direction. With Netflix, Hulu, and Apple and Roku TV boxes gaining in popularity, the future of video files will be in a digital format. Apple has already shown this trend as they have eliminated DVD drives from their most recent line of laptops. Any couple that meets for a consultation in our office, watches our films from an ipad in high definition through an Apple TV box.
Finally, with a digital file of your wedding film, you can share it with however many people you want. There is not just one copy for you and your parents. If your grandmother, sister, or best friend wants a copy, you have the ability to share it with them. Plus, the wedding film will play on your phone, your ipad, and your computer.
We are just excited to make this transition as the thumb drive delivery will keep our couples ahead of the current digital media trends, with a wedding video that is in a high quality format. And, that is how we want all of our Boston wedding videos to be viewed.
