MZed is more than an educational resource - we're also a community of thousands of filmmakers from around the globe, connected through our shared love of filmmaking and learning.
Let's learn about each other, who we are, our passions and philosophies, where our creative drives come from. We want to share your story! Please get in touch if you're an MZed Pro member and would like to be featured on our blog and social media channels.
This week's feature is Philip London, award-winning wedding fillmmaker in the UK.
Introduce yourself - who are you, where are you located, and what kind of creative work do you do?
I am Philip London, based in the UK. I am a wedding filmmaker. I won '2020 UK Wedding Videographer Of the Year' at the UK Wedding Awards.
What do you love best about your type of work?
I love working around people who are having one of the best days of their lives. It's a great environment to work in, the polar opposite of many jobs.
Tell us about a project you're especially proud of.
My last wedding film was in Switzerland at Lake Lucerne and there were no COVID restrictions on weddings in August in Switzerland.
I am one of the few wedding suppliers this year to have been part of a normal wedding. Everything was great about this wedding, the location the people, their families, they wrote the most heartfelt vows, the weather was perfect... the ceremony was lovely. It ticks all the boxes.
How do you like to learn - to improve your craft and grow your passion for your work?
I have a degree in Physics, so I studied optics and light at University. The degree was largely self-taught, in that you would have a few lectures you didn't understand, and have to spend the rest of the week trying to teach yourself what they were talking about! It taught me that repetition is the mother of skill.
Using services like MZed, you are able to learn wedding skills from your 'Jerry Ghionis - How To Wow' course, with the filmmaking skills of 'Philip Bloom - Cinematography Masterclass', and listen to them again and again, until it sinks in. The Jerry Ghionis course has opened me up to historical artists like Carravagio, sculptors like Michelangelo, and the lessons we can learn from them when it comes to light and composition.
What are your future goals for your creative work?
To make the films visually more creative, and to tell more of the couple's story. Without it being too self gratuitous.
What are the challenges - or misconceptions - about the type of creative work you do?
Often people think that the wedding videographer produces a video journal of the day... you just turn up and press the record button following the day as it goes along. Which to be fair many videographers probably do.
I think as the standard of videography goes up, as it is, it will follow photography that the on-the-day skill will be the lighting, composition, and directing couples to look their best... which will mean you either need to have a photographer/videographer at the same skill level and style, or give them both time to create amazing shots.
I think to be one of the good wedding videographers, you will need to understand fully the cinematography skills around lighting and composition (watch the Shane Hurlbut courses)... so so well, that you can walk into a room without film lights, gaffers, flags, stands and a truckload of kit, and use windows for light sources, curtains as flags, white doors as reflectors, shower curtains or shades as diffusers.
You know the skills so well, you can Macgyver (watch the TV series Macgyver) beautiful looks with what you have on hand. Being able to do that, means you can be fast and unobtrusive.. without turning someone's wedding day into a film set.
What do you like about being an MZed Pro?
If you are a wedding videographer, you will end up dabbling in all of the course on MZed, from the sound courses from Mark Edward Lewis for your audio, Jerry Ghionis for your wedding-related lighting and posing, Shane Hurlbut again for the cinematography, the editing courses from Adam Epstein, and the colour courses from Ollie Kenchington. You also have courses from Ray Roman and many others which are all great.
See more of Philip London's work
https://philip.london | instagram.com/philiplondonfilms | vimeo.com/philiplondon | facebook.com/philiplondonfilms
