Okay so… a confession.
We love a good trailer as much as the next pair of Film-Makers. Thirty seconds of golden light, a laugh that makes your cheeks ache, one vow line that gets our eyes leaking on the couch. Very useful. Extremely misleading.
The trailer is lying to you. Not in a villain way. In a “highlight reel of the things that were already obvious” way. It shows you we can find pretty. It does not show you whether we can sit still long enough for the bit that actually matters.
What we love about being filmmakers is catching the seemingly ordinary moments as much as the extraordinary ones and making sure they are never forgotten. One of our most treasured possessions is old Super 8 of Shaun’s grandparents young and in love. Nobody is performing for that camera. That is the energy. Trailers almost never have room for it.
So here is our slightly bossy, very sincere request: watch a whole one.
Not the vertical snack. Not the “best bits.” The film. The one where Nick & Carissa’s day gets to unfold at real length — the grins, the chatter, the bits that never make the thirty-second cut. The one where Ben & Natasha’s Thailand day breathes instead of getting chopped into fifteen-second snacks. The one where you hear the breath before the vow, not just the pretty cutaway of rings.
I try to refrain from being TOO over the top gushy-gush-gush on the love-stuff… but I just can’t help it. NOTHING gets our eyes leaking, our hearts pounding, our cheeks aching and our creative juices flowing like those unedited stretches of honesty. If a film only works when it is chopped into fifteen seconds, it was never a film. It was an advert for a wedding that already happened.
We are a boutique pair. Shaun is usually the one with the camera on the day, disappearing into the room so you can live it. TJ is in the emails, the plans, the “have you written your own damn vows yet” conversations. We do about thirty weddings a year because that is how many we can still care about this hard. That is not a sales line. That is why we keep asking you to press play on something longer than your coffee takes to cool.
If the full film makes you restless, we are probably not your people — and that is okay. There are excellent snack-makers out there.
If it makes your throat do that stupid tight thing, and you find yourself rewinding a laugh that was not for the room… then come say hi. Coffee. Virtual margarita. We are not precious about the drink.
Watch first. Then talk.
Big love,
Shaun and TJ
Lemon Tree Films · he***@************ms.com · @lemontreefilmhouse
