Photographs and film by the same two authors

The question comes up in almost every first call: do we really need both a photographer and a filmmaker, and if so, is it better to have them from the same studio? Our answer is not neutral, because we are a studio of exactly that kind. But here is the reasoning, so you can judge it.

Two things a day asks for

Photographs and film do different things with the same day. A photograph stops it: one frame, one look, one gesture you can hang on a wall and keep in your hand. A film gives it back moving, with the sound: the voices, the words you said to each other, the music of that evening, the murmur around you. Ten years from now the photographs are the ones you will look at most often; the film is the one that brings you back inside the room.

Most couples who come to Sicily to get married want both. The real question is who makes them.

What goes wrong when the two meet by chance

Put a photographer and a filmmaker from two different studios in the same room on the same morning and you get two people who have never worked together, each with their own idea of where to stand, each trying not to be in the other’s frame, and each, understandably, a little in the way. The couple ends up with a gallery and a film that look like two different days, because they were seen by two different eyes.

The other common shortcut is a photography studio that “adds video” with whoever is free that weekend. You have never met that person, and neither has the photographer.

What changes with two authors who always work together

We have been doing this together for years, so we know, without saying it, who takes the window and who takes the door. The preparations are followed by both of us in the same rooms, at the same time, without ever crossing. At the ceremony the film has your words in full and the photographs have the faces of those listening. In the afternoon the portraits are brief, because one of us is shooting while the other is filming, and nothing is done twice.

When the day is in one place with a smaller circle around you, the two of us are enough. When it is bigger, we bring a second photographer and a second filmmaker from our team, and the four of us cover what two cannot: both preparations properly, the ceremony from more than one point, and the dancing from inside. A wedding happens all at once; while you exchange your vows, in the front row someone is wiping away tears. With four, that scene is not lost.

Why the film and the gallery should come from the same eye

Then there is the thing you notice only afterwards. When the person who edits the film and the person who develops the photographs have watched the same day, from the same side of the room, the two tell the same story. The light is the same, the moments are the same, the rhythm is the same. The gallery opens, the film plays, and they look like what they are: one day, seen by two people who agree about it.

That is the only reason we exist as a studio instead of as two freelancers. Not because it is easier, but because it is the only way we have found to give a couple back their wedding whole.