For the second part of the blog on Michael & Nikia’s wedding (apologies for the wait) I am focusing specifically on the song selection.

I know Nikia and Michael had a very specific song in mind when discussing potential choices for their wedding trailer. The song “This Time” by John Legend was the only choice really, as it had such a deep connection to their story and their love. Nikia triumphantly walked down the isle to this gorgeous tune, sung by a family member or close friend. Unfortunately we had to make a different selection for the trailer due to licensing issues.

So I felt as though I had quite a challenge on my hands to come up with a song that could still speak to their story. I spent a substantial amount of time listening to a number of potentials, but it was early on when I checked out Kathryn Ostenberg’s song “Hold On.” It was one of the first choices I wrote down to come back to.

The song grabbed my attention in the first few instrumental bars. It’s soft synth sound created a light feel that I knew gave us time to introduce our setting and story of Michael and Nikia. Some songs come out too energetic at the gate, or the singing begins immediately and really makes it difficult to work in audio or just introduce the scope of the story without all the attention going to the music.

So the intro was a plus.

Kathryn’s voice is perfectly suited to this style of work, so I immediately liked it and knew right then this could be the one. The lyrics mattered though. The trouble of editing a wedding trailer is deciding on whether or not to use instrumental music or use vocals. Thus far, we’ve always edited with vocals, often because the words of the song blend well with the images we produce in the film. There are also breaks in the songs that allow us to include audio from the couple’s ceremony.

It’s still a difficult choice, and I felt as though we had a substantial amount of audio that I wanted to include, but there’s only so much room for it when you do not go with an instrumental track. But after hearing the lyrics a few dozens times, taking the song with me everywhere I drove and listening to it over and over…I knew this song had to be the one.

Kathryn’s lyrics cut straight to the chase, challenging listener’s belief that everything is under their control, but stating the obvious that things get hard and cracks begin to show. Kathryn forces us to face the fact that you cannot hide a broken heart. But her chorus reminds us that there’s so much to gain after a broken heart.

“So hold on, don’t forget your heart is so strong, even when it falls apart it fits back together, better than ever in restarts.”

The words are delivered with such honesty, one would be hard pressed to not feel strengthened by the message of the song. For Michael and Nikia, the lyrics only get better from here.

“You think you see, how things are supposed to be, convinced you know, how the story will unfold.”

Like the majority of us, we convince ourselves of how things should be in our lives. We don’t typically predict for things to fall apart of shatter right before our eyes. Michael and Nikia have an amazing story and like many of us, I am sure can find relevance to these striking words. But what’s next is the best part:

“You know what you want, but did it cross your mind, the best things will find you when the time is right.”

And here we have the most brilliant connection to the emotion embedded in John Legend’s “This Time” and once I understood these lyrics, I knew this was the perfect song for Michael and Nikia. For them, their time was right. This time, they had everything they could have dreamed of right before their eyes: Beautiful children, a loving cast of family and friends, and the two of them together, solidified in holy matrimony, merely a symbol of their already well-established love.

On a last note, I’d like to give a shout out to Hieu Nguyen and Kevin Lee from Lion Hart Media. Michael and Nikia requested us to do both photography and videography, which we could certainly do but we really love to film and Lion Hart Media stepped up to fill in for their photography needs. Based in the West Palm Beach area, they’ve got some stellar talent and equipment and even assisted us on some of the shots for the video. All of the photos featured here and on the previous blog were taken by them.

-APL

For those who haven’t seen Michael and Nikia’s wedding trailer, be sure to check it out:

[vimeo width=”640″ height=”360″ video_id=”72037438″]