fig blog

Partnering with Dean Delisle, fig filmmaker Melissa Martens came up with this concept for forward progress.

A quick scripting and idea session with Melissa and James, Dean came in one afternoon we filmed it in 2 hours. Melissa directed Dean to get the energy and tone. Then the editing began:

Many moons of editing and rendertime later- the video is completed and posted to youtube.

Its fast, cost effective and efficient not to mention a ton of fun. Ask us how you can get one for your own for your site: info@figgy.net

120 Connect: Episode 4, Viral Wedding Videos from Fig Media on Vimeo.

Blog entry from 120 Connect:

“Everyone is discussing: What is viral video? What makes things go viral?

Some of the widest circulated videos are uploaded by you. They get passed around because they are funny, shocking, moving or clever. So when creating something that you want to go viral, follow this rule:

If you want to watch it over and over, send it to all of your friends and so on…then you are onto something. If you don’t like it…it won’t get passed around.

In this episode, James Gustin and Melissa Martens explore this topic using their favorite viral wedding videos.

Why wedding videos?

James started his company, fig media, 15 years ago with wife Michele Gustin. They operated out of their apartment deejaying and documenting weddings. Their vision on documenting the American wedding was unique in the industry at the time. They focused on telling great stories through getting to know their couples and their families, telling the story of the day through documentary style cinematography. This was years before the trend started to catch fire. Today fig media has a team of film makers, deejays and photographers delivering this same vision, using weddings as a way to develop themselves as artists. Together they are developing the fig films brand to further their mission of telling great stories. fig holds the art of documenting a wedding as an honor, documenting and making films for families that will live on for generations. Being passionate about this mission, the film team is always looking at what couples are doing with their videos…and it just so happened that these wedding videos were starting to get notice from 23 million people…so being curious fig wanted to dig into why.

So we have included the videos below for your viewing pleasure. Post your favorite viral video in the comment box!

Recently one of these clips show up on the ABC tv show Flash Forward, kudos to you if you can figure out which one.

Check back next week when Kevin returns to talk about how companies are using social media to create a new type of website…you won’t want to miss this, its super cool!”

Click on photo above to watch.

At fig we constantly look at ways to increase the quality and impact of our work.  This year we decided to start doing fashion photography.  But before we did, we did some research and invested into the world of fashion.  “You can never do enough research,” once said John Lassater at Pixar, and we agree.  So first we started at trying to understand the history of fashion photography and where it all came from.  From photographers like Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Martin Munkacsi, David Bailey, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Helmut Newton, Herb Ritz, Patrick Demarchelier, Steven Meisel, Mario Testino, & Annie Leibovitz to name a few.  Why would we do this kind of research you might ask?

Well like all history, without understanding, it will repeat itself.  In photography and art, copying and duplicating what has been done is not what you want to be doing.  From all this research and understanding these artists, a true photographer will want to attempt to create more than a photograph but art.  So every shoot we do, we take everything into full consideration.  Light, clothes, makeup, model, hair, locations, what’s in trend, not in trend, and what would get us excited to create.  We feel that the more positive creative energy that is put into a project together as a collective, it reflects that energy in the photographs.

Here are some of our favorite inspirational photographers recently;  from Nick Knight, Paolo Reversi, Glen Luchford, Tim Walker, & Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott.

click on above image to download PDF of Top Ten Best Practices for a Successful Marketing Video.