The Los Angeles AIDS Walk

One of our favorite officiants, and we do love many- but this certain one is close to our hearts, since she is the one that married David and I (so who can blame our nepotism?) is walking for the cure. The cure for AIDS.

David and I tend to follow many causes like the cures for Cancer, Alzheimer’s, and basically any other horrible disease that exists in this world (Cancer and Alzheimer’s because we know many affected people- and cured  !!!)- so when we got the e-mail from Elizabeth of Marriage To Go - we had to pledge.

Her goal is to become a “Star Walker” in the next 5 weeks, by raising $1,000. She made it simple for us to pledge- all we had to do was donate and she would do the walking! So as the holiday season comes into full swing, let’s all remember the less fortunate and if not donating your money, perhaps your time- with a little positive thought on the matter or volunteering. When we look at some of the countries that are devastated by this disease- we thought that it was the least Charles Lauren Films could do.

If you do feel moved though, please visit our officiants website and pledge a few dollars – what’s 5 bucks? – a day without a Starbucks?- every little bit helps.

Here is the e-mail she sent to us…. you read it and if moved, you can copy the links and paste them into your browser to make a difference today!
AIDSWalk is an important annual event in Los Angeles which shows community support for AIDS patients and gets desperately needed funds to the organizations that care for them. Funding needs for prevention efforts are now more urgent than ever. Half of the new HIV infections occur in people under the age of 24; more than one million people in the United States are estimated to be living with HIV – a first since the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. If current trends persist, AIDS could claim up to 100 million lives worldwide by 2020, and AIDS will become the worst epidemic in human history.

So we all need to keep on walking–for hope, for research, for prevention, for patient care, and for a cure. You can walk along with us with a few clicks of your mouse or strokes of your pen. Here’s how:

**If you’d like to WALK or VOLUNTEER for the event day, you can register online by clicking “Register Now!” (why not start a team at work and get a corporate matching grant?): http://www.aidswalk.net/losangeles

**If you’d like to DONATE TO MY STARWALKER EFFORTS, click on “Sponsor A Walker” and type in my name to go to my donation page. (Elizabeth Oakes)

**Any donation amount is appreciated–a lot of little steps add up to the journey home! However, the website won’t take donations under $25, but you can submit a check made out to “AIDS Walk Los Angeles” and mail it to me by October 15th–Elizabeth Oakes, 3435 Ocean Park Blvd. #107, Santa Monica, CA 90405–and I’ll be sure it gets where it needs to go. You can also send a check if you prefer that to online donation.

**My goal again this year is to make it to “StarWalker” status, which means I have committed to raising $1000 in the next five weeks. If you make a donation–no matter how small–you’ll receive a thank-you newsletter with photos and my personal account of the walk (and find out whether I made StarWalker or not!) plus the gratification of knowing you are helping to make the world a healthier and more loving place.

A little love goes a long way! Thanks for sharing yours.

—-Enough said.

Fall is Almost Here…

Who can help it- it’s almost that time of year again. It begins to cool down and the summer days of laziness and suntans are replaced with cuddling up by the fire with your loved one and sipping hot apple cider in a big mug in front of you. These are our favorite days- and even more fun when we do fall weddings. Perhaps it’s all in anticipation of the holidays to come, but I think- it’s Fall itself that has a special meaning to us. So keep your eyes posted- we do a lot in the fall, besides weddings, and we will be sure to tell you about it!

Freedom Writing

Kelsey and I finally saw Freedom Writers last night. It was a film that was true to what happened while trying to make a connection to the book and diaries that it was really based on. I know Erin Gruwell through video projects that I did with her and the Freedom Writers after they went to college, for archiving and documentary purposes. I was moved to tears every time they worked on new material and practiced telling their passionate stories. I was honored to have worked with them and have included at the bottom of this post a page from their book that they autogrpahed and gave to me. After seeing the movie, I had to bring that out and take a look at it again.
I know how hard Erin Gruwell had to work to make what she did happen with her kids. The Long Beach School District acted exactly how they are portrayed in the film. Many of my friends from high school and college are teaching now in the Long Beach and the LA Unified School District. The bureaucracy and vain attempts to come up with ideas, get messages across and be efficient is blocked so often that many of them have thought about quitting after only a few years of teaching.
If you are interested in social change or teaching you should see the movie.

This was one of those times when people came together to make amazing connections and create brilliant ideas that caused actual change in a community and the country. Many of the writers and Erin spend most of the year on tour doing speaking engagements at schools and corporate events around the country. Just remember that true passion, the kind you need if you want to grow to your true potential, often doesn’t involve people you used to relate to. The people around you in life need to grow with you. If they don’t, you need to move on.

If you don’t want to see the movie, the book has much more emotion.

Happy Summer!

The last few weeks have been very exciting and busy times. We have filmed eight weddings and all of the CSULB graduations since the last post. We have created about 80 hours of tapes. I thought I would share a blog posting from one of the couple’s whose wedding we captured during the time. Michele and Philip had a very hard time finding a videographer. They met people in their dirty homes, others who they had appointments with never showed up and left them waiting at Starbucks. I can promise you that you will never have that experience if you come visit us for a consultation. People have said that our meetings are more like friends talking and watching TV in a living room than an office consultation.

One of the coolest weddings we did during the break was Evan and Elena’s. It was at Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica. The ceremony was outside on the sand, and as soon as Elena walked down the sandy aisle, everyone on the bike trail stopped to watch. Evan is an amazing guy and is very connected to the natural world. As I stood with him on the beach waiting for Elena to have her picture taken, a bee landed on a bouquet he was holding and he began to pet it! At the same time, someone in his bridal party found a sea shell that was small and red which looked identical and was the same size as the design on his red tie!

The next day we were very lucky to work on Jennifer and Wayland’s wedding. This was a Chinese/American wedding where Kelsey and I split up at 7:00 to film each of them getting dressed. Then we met back at Jennifer’s house for the traditional entry game where Wayland has to prove his worthiness to Jennifer’s bridal party. Then we went to Wayland’s house for a Chinese Tea Ceremony. Then they had a party downstairs with a real roasted pig. After that everyone went to Pickwick Gardens for formal pictures and the tradiational American ceremony. Then they took more pictures as we went to Ritz Gardens for a huge Chinese feast and celebration with dancing dogs, a 10 course meal, nonstop activities and dancing. All day there were firecrackers going off, flying in the air, flying towards my camera, flying at the neighbors. It was cool.

I’ll talk about more next time as we prepare for Corrine and Kenny’s wedding this weekend. The ceremony will be in one of her relative's backyard. When people invite friends and family to a private home it makes for very personal and emotional experiences and I am looking forward to it. It is all happening around our old office location in Long Beach and Lakewood.

Masters of Reflection

“m a s t e r s of r e f l e c t i o n”

Today I was listening to the National Public Radio (NPR) station in Los Angeles, and they had begun a discussion on the “Ask a Ninja” podcast. Very funny show if you ever happen to catch it on- anyway regardless to say- I’d never heard of it, so I went to “i Tunes” and started watching it. The segment I saw was on Ninja’s and their reflections in the mirror. Of course this is a funny show- so he commented on how Ninjas are “masters of reflection” and then went onto many more funny comedies on everyday things. I laughed at how he said that Ninjas were masters of reflection, but then I started thinking and knew it was time to write another blog.

Just as a Ninja is a master of reflection so too are the videographer and the photographer at every wedding. Everything anyone ever sees after the wedding will be directly related to the reflections the photographer and videographer presented in their album books or the finished DVD. So when it comes to choosing a videographer and a photographer a bride needs to make sure that her reflections match that of the videographer and photographer. If their ideas don’t click together and they can’t relate to anything the videographer/photographer are saying or presenting than the brides day won’t be properly captured as a reflection of what she and her groom/family/etc. wanted. Fortunately, most brides have this inner gut feeling on exactly what they want- so sometimes it’s not that complicated. Other times however, since video is a very new medium to this industry- as oppose to say photography- a bride might not be sure exactly what she wants and how to capture that. When a bride and groom come into our studio they sometimes are not sure what to expect, but then we go through the process and show them how we capture the love, emotions and details of their day and then they are “sold” that this is the right reflection they want to remember of their wedding day.

As recently a bride myself, since we couldn’t videotape our own ceremony/reception of course- we went looking for other videographers. I won’t go into it in this blog, but many of the videographers we interviewed did not even remotely compare to the reflections I wanted to remember of my wedding day. I don’t want to put our industry down, but I would say a good 70% of them did not even compare. I couldn’t believe it, a trained videographer (me) searching for another trained videographer, and it was complicated. I can only imagine then what a bride must go through. That is why videographers need to step it up a notch, become real, be professional- when a bride sees you in jeans and a t-shirt and says my studio is being remodeled let’s go to a coffee shop and they can’t get their portable DVD player to work- there is a real problem. And it reflects badly on all of us. Let us not be an incoherent mumble jumble distorted reflection of our industry- but let us all rise up and be masters of our own reflections.

Temporal Distortion

“ t e m p o r a l

d i s t o r t i o n”

One might ask….What gives video its true emotional impact? CLF would answer- Temporal distortion. Although videos emotional impact is not limited to this reason alone, but temporal distortion does play a significant role in the way we view the images we see on the screen. Now what do we mean by this- again this goes back to the theory of wedding/ event videographers as memory keepers that have access to time travel.In our wedding videos we often show the ceremony taking place and then overlay an audio sound file of the best man giving a toast- thus reconfiguring the way the event was presented in real time, lending to a temporal distortion- moving through the dimensions of time however we see fit, to present the event in the best light possible. Go to www.temporaldistortion.tv to learn more on how temporal distortion is the key to filming biographies .

Marriage

“m a r r i a g e”

Until 3 weeks ago, I had had no personal knowledge of what it takes to be a bride, other than behind the lens. Sure you know how to capture the first dance, getting great push in shots with the steady cam for the emotional first dance that leads the couple into the “forever and a day, say I do club”- I could always convey the emotion that the bride and groom were going through- but to actually feel it, is a whole other story. An awakening of a now tangible memory that will be held to my heart for years to come, as a keepsake and testament to the love we vowed to honor and uphold just hours before… and the great thing about that is, it was all recorded.

As the years fade the image could lessen in purity and my memory could falter- but whatever happens, no matter what, the image will stay pure, the memory will forever be kept, because I did what every bride must do, have it captured on video. Of course I did, I am a wedding videographer- but it only stressed to myself how important our job actually is. Wedding videographers are the memory keepers, that have access to time travel- to take anyone, anywhere they want to go in time. For anyone who says the time machine hasn’t been built yet, I laugh at them. CLF has been building it for 5 years- and we keep adding to the archives, event after event.

Storybook 4.15.07, Charles' Log

Kelsey Lauren and David Charles have now officially tied the knot. The wedding videographers have wed themselves. So is married life any different? Yes… Did we have any stresses up to or on the wedding? Yes… Can we edit better films now because we’ve been in the shoes of our clients? Yes!Stay tuned… for tomorrow Kelsey Lauren (KL) will give you the post bridal play by play- as for David Charles (DC) “I’m just glad it’s over so we can get back to doing what we love- filming weddings, not that I didn’t love marrying KL, but you know the score. Strangely enough-but true, event after event only gets better. Each wedding we film has a special unique touch, different than the previous and different than the next. Because of this factor- it makes my job, filming weddings, truly something I want to go back to work for, day after day, year after year.

Storybook 4.15.07, Lauren's Log

Wedding Videography that Captures Love . . .

Welcome to the Charles Lauren Films (CLF) Blog. This is a place for our clients to come and see the trends that CLF is setting in the wedding videography industry, but most importantly a place to have just a little bit of laughter, because let’s face it we all need a place to laugh.

What can we expect from the CLF Blog?

If you’re one of our clients and have recently been married- expect to see your highlight reel posted for friends and family to enjoy and watch over and over again.

If you’re thinking about becoming one of our clients- expect to see other couples highlight reels posted for screenings, and don’t forget your handkerchief, because remember this is going to be you sometime in the future….

The thoughts of our company, what we’ve been going through, what we are up do, technical updates and the like.

The FYI section, what we have noticed happening to the wedding industry, things to consider when tying the knot, sensational ideas and the like.