An Elopement On The Cornish Coast
ELOPEMENT VIDEOGRAPHY
AN ELOPEMENT IN CORNWALL
ADELAIDE & KATHRYN
This week I travelled down to a little place in Cornwall called Freathy, to shoot the elopement of Adelaide and Kathryn. This was my first elopement booking and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.
As a wedding videographer you get to shoot so many large weddings in all kinds of amazing venues. Adelaide and Kathryn’s elopement was in many ways quite different to the majority of my bookings, but equally as beautiful. They chose a quaint little place called Freathy Farmhouse to host their wedding, with only their immediate family present. 6 people in total. The result was a genuinely lovely, intimate day.
After the ceremony we took a trip to a nearby beach to have a stroll and get some shots of the couple together. This was one of the most enjoyable couple shoots I’ve experienced to date. Not only are Adelaide and Kathryn lovely, fun people to be around, but the scenery was just magical. As a Cornishman myself I am probably biased, but there is genuinely something mystical about the Cornish coast. It can be so rugged and elemental. The weather added to the dramatic visuals, with amazing crepuscular rays shining through gaps in the clouds..
The couple shoot is without a doubt my favourite part of any wedding day. It’s time away from the hustle and bustle, to let it all sink in and enjoy some time out. It often takes place in beautiful spots and it’s also my time to get really creative. This one was no exception. I found myself climbing rocks and getting fully involved to get some interesting angles and shots with a bit of ‘wow factor’.
For their teaser, I wanted to reflect the scenery, and the couple being fully immersed in it. Rugged, dramatic and gritty. I’ve been waiting for the right opportunity to do a teaser or preview fully in black and white. I love colour, but black and white can be equally as beautiful when used at the right time. Many weddings this year we have been blessed with stunning, colourful golden hours and sunny days, so it wouldn’t be right on those occasions to take away that beautiful colour. On a bleak and stormy day on the Cornish coast, there’s little in the way of natural colour, therefore I felt this would be a great opportunity to go fully monotone. Their full film will be colourful and graded in my usual manner, because there was plenty of colour in their day, however just for this teaser, I thought it would be fun to go for a completely different look. So I produced the teaser in black and white. I added a faded look to the shadows and stacked 35mm film grains on the footage to give it a gritty feel. I sometimes feel that digital footage can be overly sharp and almost too ‘perfect’. This is great in the right film, but sometimes you want something that feels a bit more organic, so I also softened the footage slightly. The result of all this post production work has made the teaser look like it was shot on old film, rather than on a digital camera. I used footage from our beach shoot, combined with some beautiful words from Adelaide’s mother, to produce a very interesting little teaser. My intention was to make the viewer feel like they are there on that beach with them, so I hope it’s paid off.
I hope you enjoy it and I now look forward to putting together Adelaide and Kathryn’s full film very soon!
Enjoy :-)
