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MillimeterA Perfect Union
Jun 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By Cody Holt
Chuck and Jewel Savadelis are redefining the boundaries of wedding videography.
For nearly three decades, Chuck and Jewel Savadelis asked themselves the same question as they toasted each new year: “What kind of business can we build that will allow us to work together, have a lot of fun, and make a little money?”
On Dec. 31, 2001, Chuck came up with an idea that stirred the passion in both him and his wife — wedding videography.
Top: Using a Sony PD150, Chuck and Jewel Savadelis shot this wedding at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., in January 2003. Bottom: Scene from a promotional video made by Savadelis Videography.
“We had never seen a wedding video before, but it just seemed like a part of the industry where somebody with a good eye and good ideas could be successful,” Chuck recalls.
As a self-taught photographer who had shot three sitting U.S. presidents, Chuck certainly had an eye for composition. But he had no experience with moving images, and Jewel was even less experienced. She had helped introduce Pac-Man to the world as the director of marketing at Atari, but neither her time in the video game industry nor her current position as a stock trader had prepared her to frame a shot or create a complicated particle blur in a desktop NLE program. Still, she jumped in heart first.
“I felt it was time for a little payback because Chuck had always made sacrifices for my career, moving from Washington, D.C. to Boston to California,” Jewel says. “So when he asked me to do this, I thought that I would work harder than I've ever worked before simply because he asked me.”
In less than a month, Chuck had a job assisting a videographer near the couple's home in the San Francisco Bay area. To help Jewel learn composition, Chuck sent her out with a camera for 90 straight days on shooting safaris — sometimes shooting the same statue 12 days in a row, each time from a different perspective. It's an exercise the couple still practices today to fine-tune their skills.
On May 11, 2002, less than five months after that fateful New Year's Eve, Chuck and Jewel shot their first wedding together. The project was a typical one for the Savadelises, who celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary this month. They met with the couple twice before the ceremony to learn as much as they could about them and their expectations for their wedding day. They attended the rehearsal to get some preliminary footage and study the lighting and angles. On the day of the ceremony, Chuck and Jewel shot more than 10 hours of footage and then spent more than 100 hours in post, editing and telling the couple's story.
The 45-minute video includes several transitions inspired by the wedding couple's favorite movie, Somewhere in Time. The transitions, which total only 15 seconds of screen time, took 40 hours to create. Earlier this year, the video won a prestigious Aegis Award of Excellence. For all their hard work, Chuck and Jewel charged the couple $650.
“We've put the same amount of effort into every video we've ever shot,” says Jewel, adding that they now charge $4,000 for a basic wedding video. “We make videos that we'd want to own if video had been as pervasive when we were married. We're happy to say that we please ourselves as well as our clients with the videos.”
Today, Chuck and Jewel operate Savadelis Videography out of their Sunnyvale home. They shoot between 20 and 30 wedding videos a year and have also begun to shoot memorial videos and other social events that celebrate the personal relationships of their clients. They use MiniDV cameras — a Sony PD150 and two Sony VX2000s — to shoot and edit in Apple Final Cut Pro 4.1 on three dual-processor Mac workstations. Their desktops include Adobe After Effects, Discreet Combustion, and Elastic Reality, now owned by Avid.
In January 2004, less than 20 months after entering the video business, Chuck and Jewel Savadelis were named the 2003 Videographers of the Year by the Bay Area Professional Videographers Association. But their biggest reward, Jewel says, is building relationships with their clients and watching their reactions the first time they see their wedding video.
“If a bride doesn't use up at least three hankies, we haven't done our job,” Jewel says. “Our record is eight hankies.”
Cody Holt is a freelance writer based in the Midwest. Email him at codyholt@kc.rr.com.
