Storytelling Outside the Box/Documenting weddings

All good stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Ali+Mark – DC Fall Wedding

For Toy Box Studios that beginning was 10 years ago. Hard to believe it’s been 10 years of wedding films, but you know what they say: Time flies when you make people cry for a living.

Having a background in journalism has truly influenced how we wanted to operate from day one- We went from telling stories on a daily basis (many of them not fun stories) to telling the stories of the best days of our clients’ lives. Having that ability to quickly assess a scene, figure out the key characters, and see those special moments before they happen are all skills we honed in working in news.

I once had a news director tell me something I’ll never forget:

“Sometimes when you show up to a fire, the story is behind you”

Don’t get distracted by the flames! Yeah, they’re part of the story, but not the only part, and very rarely the most important part. The flames are the catalyst. The effect they have is the story. The way those flames impact lives. They’re bright and distracting, but they don’t give you the emotion of the moment. You know what’s behind the flames? It’s the father of the bride seeing her for the first time in her wedding dress. It’s the special bottle of scotch the best man brought for a pre-ceremony toast. It’s the laughter shared between the bridesmaids getting ready. Because what the flame, what all the pageantry is really about, is the emotion – the love – that brought them all together on this special day.

Sometimes I look back and I have trouble believing the things we’ve done, the places we’ve gone, and the stories we’ve told. At the core of it all, documenting moments, telling stories.

This year we want to take our readers on a journey too. Every month we’re going to take you in-depth into all the ins-and-outs of documenting weddings. Our approach, what a couples’ expectations should be when working with a videographer, our experiences, our favorite wedding venues, and we might even share our best (and worst) memories of filming weddings 🙂 The Why and the How of what we do.

Welcome to the middle of our story!