Happy Holidays Everyone!

Give The Gift Of Photography, Gift Certificates Available!

Give someone something special and unique this Christmas that lasts for years to come, the gift of photography!

Gift certificates are also great for baby shower, bridal shower, wedding, birthday, anniversary, party, first communion or if you are just inclined to let someone know you love them consider giving a gift certificate that can be applied towards the photo session, print orders, or albums with yours truly, Allure Films & Photography.

Increments are available for all budgets.

When purchasing a gift certificate, this Christmas season, the certificate will be inside a 5x7 picture frame at no extra charge. This frame can be reused by the receiver for their future pictures!

To purchase a Allure Films & Photography Gift Certificate call us today. We accept cash, checks, Visa and Mastercard.

Children, Engagements, Families, Maternity, Weddings

Holiday Photo Cards

While I sit and wait on computer parts to be shipped to me, for my video editing computer, I decided to take the opportunity to update our Holiday Photo Card pages. You can now see our available designs at our Photo Reflect galleries. Back ground colors and fonts and sayings are customizable to your desires. We can also custom design a card for your family!

If you have a family photo that you took, you would like to use, we will happily insert it into the card that you desire!

Don't forget we are offering free family photo sessions until December 15! Call today to schedule yours!

Family Photo Christmas Cards!

It is that time of the year everyone, time to order your Christmas Cards to send out to family and friends! We have a lot of new designs and are working on more! Check two of them out below!
Gift Wrap 5x7


Rustic 4x8

And we are offering a special for the photos to put in those Christmas Cards!

A Free Family Half Hour Sitting at a location of your choice FREE! That is right, we will come to you, no sitting fees! Give us a call today and set up your family portrait appointment.

Brian

Engagement Photography Session

Recently we spent a great afternoon with a fun couple, Erin and Adam shooting their engagement photos. Below are a few of my favorite photographs from our time with them.

Holiday Open House at Girly Girl Gifts

My friend Cynthia Basker, the best wedding coordinator in Michiana, is having her annual holiday open house at Girly Girl Gifts this coming Friday and Saturday.

Jared & Meg

A New Photo Gallery

Finally got around to editing together a new photo gallery. I'm stuck on Michael Buble music though. Need to change that. :-)

Allure Films & Photographics and Bridal Shows

I'm happy to announce that Allure Films and Allure Photographics will be in attendance at the upcoming Michiana's Premier Wedding Expo and the 24th Annual Bridal Spectacular. I'm looking forward to the new Wedding Expo, it's being held at one of my favorite reception halls in the Hilton Garden Inn. And I hear that Cynthia Basker or Celebrated Events and Michael Angelos have teamed up to decorate the fashion runway, which should mean it's going to be off the hook and look like nothing we've seen in this market before.

None of this is to say that you should wait to hire your photography and cinematography services till the bridal show. 2009 is booking up fast, I had recently 6 brides inquiring about July 11th which is now booked up. Six brides calling for the same date over two days is unusual but happens. So if you are interested in our services for 2009 don't wait to see us at the bridal shows, we might just be booked for your date if you wait that long!

Michiana's Premier Wedding Expo!
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Noon - 5:00 pm
Fashion Shows at 1:00 & 3:30
Fleur de Lis Ballroom Hilton Garden Inn

The Bridal Spectacular
Sunday January 4, 2009
12:00 to 5:00 p.m.
Fashion Shows at 1:00 p.m. & 3:30 p.m.
South Bend Century Center

Wedding Day Encore

Wedding Day Encore! What is a Wedding Day Encore? Well WEVA calls it in their Creative Excellence Awards an Instant Edit. The name that most videographers and cinematographers use is Same Day Edit. I don't like either name so I coined Wedding Day Encore for use at River City Productions.
A Wedding Day Encore is where we take the footage shot during preparations, the ceremony and the formals and cut it down to a 5 to 10 minute video and show that at your wedding reception. Yes you read that right! At your reception if you choose the Wedding Day Encore feature, you and your guests will be able to relive the earlier part of the day! And you will be able to take part of your wedding film with you on DVD on your honeymoon!
Watching a Wedding Day Encore can be very emotion, fun, exciting and filled with laughter. On a lark during the playback of the Katie and Brian Wedding Day Encore, half way through I turned on the camera and captured out bride and grooms' reactions as they watched. Below is that video synced with the Wedding Day Encore. Excuse the shot of the floor, I started off shoulder mounted but when you are trying to shoot something 60 feet away, keeping the image steady for an extended period is nearly impossible so I moved to remount the camera on the tripod. I decided to just leave the floor shot in as I move to the tripod since this video isn't intended to be featured in their final wedding film.
Otherwise enjoy and witness the power of the Wedding Day Encore!

Katie & Brian, A Wedding Day Encore

Katie & Brian were married on a beautiful summer day on the campus of the University of Notre Dame in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart with the reception following under the tent at the Morris Inn. For us this wedding was a special one, since we showed at the reception our first Same Day Edit or as I prefer to call it a Wedding Day Encore in three years and only the second one we've ever done! At 8PM that night, the newlyweds and their guest laughed and cried to memories just hours before.

Katie & Hamish, a Wedding Trailer.

I've Been Published Again!

If you are a bride or groom this won't have much impact for you, but it never ceases to be exciting for me when a magazine publishes anything that I write! So to toot my own horn, WEVA (Wedding & Event Videographers Association International) published my review of SpeedEDIT.

Brian

Photoshop Mistakes

I found this great website that details Photoshop mistakes with a wicked sense of humor. It is a laugh riot. Below is one of my favorite images. Evidently Thing from the Adams Family is loose in Great Briton.



Check out the Photoshop Disasters

Wedding Trailer

Untitled from Allure Films on Vimeo.

See the full video here: Matt

JoAnn & Marc

JoAnn and Marc were married on May 24, 2008 at the beautiful St. Joseph Church in Mishawaka. We had a lot of fun at this wedding.


Video: River City Productions / Allure Films
Photography: Zehring Photography
Church: St. Joseph, Mishawaka
Reception: Blue Heron, South Bend
Entertainment: ProShow
Cake: Macri's
Decorations: Wygants Floral

Rachel and Ivan at the Palais Royale

Here is our latest trailer for Rachel and Ivan. They had a really fun wedding at Palais Royale. Enjoy!



Wedding Video by Allure Films
Decorations by Michael Angelos
Photographer Alpha Zeta
Wedding & Reception at Palais Royale
Cake by Rascia's Creative Cakes

Mark and Maria A Wedding Trailer

Mark and Maria were married at the Notre Dame Basilica of the Sacred Heart and the reception followed at the Century Center White Water Ballroom. You couldn't ask for a more fun couple to document the day of. As you can see by the end of the trailer they were dancing on the altar, almost. And at the reception it was a non stop party with the happy newlyweds constantly on the dance floor. In fact the difficulty with this wedding film will be the abundance of great dance footage.

New feature: This is a wedding trailer video and as it's name indicates it is designed to preview the upcoming edited video. I played with a few of these years ago, in fact I think I'll go dig out my original one, and then promptly forgot about them. This year I am brining them back. The fun thing about them is this is where I can really experiment and play with new ways of editing videos. You will notice at the beginning of this video after the intros (and can you have a more fun intro) you can hear a voice track over the video and song of the bride and grooms vows. Yes it was intentional to have them talk over each other with the grooms vows coming up just after the bride starts speaking hers. Just an experiment but I think it's fun and if you'd like let me know what you think of it.

Also take note the images of the dome and the basilica were shot of super 8mm film! I love the look of film.

So enjoy the wedding of Mark and Maria.

Music is Stolen by Dashboard Confessional

Wedding Demo

Here is our new wedding film demo. When I got done with this I realized it has been 10 years since I actually created one of these. For years I've preferred using actual finished product as our demo reels. But then one day I was suffering a creative block while editing and to work through it I started throwing clips on the timeline just for fun. Half a day later I had this:

I think it's a lot of fun. It is made up of a lot of my favorite scenes from the last several years. Digging some of them up was a real trip down memory lane.

The music used in this video is:
Sewn by The Feeling
Love Song by Sara Bareilles


wedding video from Allure Films on Vimeo.

Locations in this video
Notre Dame Basilica of the Sacred Heart
South Bend Century Center
Saint Matthews Church
Saint Hedwig
Notre Dame Grotto
Palais Royale
Elcona Country Club

Great Music

For years as a disc jockey I ended the night with a two song combination, Last Dance by Donna Summer and What A Wonderful World by Louie Armstrong. Lately though the last song has been this great one from Michael Buble

Katie & Matt

http://rivercityproductions.net/matt_katie_2007.shtml

Celebrated Events

One of my favorite wedding coordinators is Cynthia Basker from Celebrated Events. When working with Cynthia I know the wedding day will flow like a well oiled machine. But what Cynthia is really known for is her decorating style, her receptions are always a burst of color and beautiful to look at and film.

In this clip from a wedding we worked with Cynthia, last year, we captured the bride and groom's reaction to the decorations that Cyndi designed with Michaelangelos. This is why I love video, pictures could never do this moment justice! The reception took place at the Palais Royale.

This may take a few moments to load as for some reason the video preloads before giving you the option of playing.. I'm experimenting with new codec mp4 and larger images for streaming to better present our videos. Let me know what you think.

Super 8mm Film for Your Wedding!

Everything that is old is new again! We at Allure Films / River City Productions are excited to announce that we are now offering Super 8mm Film as an additional service to be integrated into your wedding video!

Super 8mm Weddings!

Why return to those old days of film production? The feel, the look, the color of film is unique, organic and made of memories. Nearly every family has a closet shelf of Super 8mm Film from up to 20 years ago. The scratchy, grainy images of granddad, grandma, mom and dad, it's how we have learned who they were in their younger livesdays through the moving images of film.

Of course for years the ability to add fake grain, scratches have been available in the editing process. For me this has always looked fake, there is an organic feel to film that just can't be replicated by adding a digital effect on top of a digitally created image. I have resisted for years adding such effects with the opinion that if I wasn't offering the real thing I wasn't going to fake it.

Then last year on a fluke I bid and won a Super 8mm Film camera on ebay. Last summer I went out and test shot a roll of film wandering around the University of Notre Dame capus. The intention was adding the campus images into weddings we shot at the Basilica. The results of that shoot are below in the video. I just love the look of film and hope you like it too!

Oh during the shoot I ran across a bride and groom getting married on a Friday at the Basilica and shot a few feet of them walking at a distance for fun.

The Hilton Garden Inn

On Friday we were hired by the Hilton Garden Inn to photograph their wonderful Fleur de Lis Ballroom. I can wait to get into there and photograph or video an actual wedding reception. We had a lot of fun, here are a few of my favorite shots.



I love the effect created by a fish eye lens and for this shoot I brought along our new lens to experiment with.


My favorite picture of all the ones we shot. Don't ask me why, I think it's the symmetry. This is outside of Parlor C at the Fleur de Lis Ballroom.

Notre Dame Basilica of the Sacred Heart

I had my camera sensor cleaned this weak. Digital to me is the best thing to happen to photography in the last hundred years, but if dust gets on your sensor it's a nightmare. So it came back and I decided to test it out wandering around the lakes on the campus of Notre Dame. I was walking by the Basilica of the Sacred Heart when a little inspiration struck me. I love shooting dutch angles and I have done several upward shots on video and film from the front of the Basilica, when a little inspiration hit me. Why not include the sign!

So here are my three favorite shots of the Basilica from today's wandering. Which do you like the best?

Palais Royale

One of the most elegant wedding reception banquet halls in South Bend is the Palais Royale. Originally opened in 1922, in fact my parent's had their prom there, the Palais Royale features a beautiful chandelier that will take your breath away and art deco details that you aren't going to find in modern buildings. You can't take a bad photograph in the Palais Royale!

I was digging through the archives today when I ran across this wedding photograph of the first dance in the Palais Royale. What a magnificient reception hall.

Happy Easter Everyone!

Happy Easter and god bless.

MySpace page!

I have finally broken down and created a MySpace page for Allure Films. So feel free to check it out, Allure Films, there isn't much there yet, but I'll be working on it.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Happy Saint Patrick's Day! To celebrate this day here is a little clip from one of my all time favorite weddings. The bride and groom were a joy to work with. They were married in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at Notre Dame. But the standout moments were later that night at Knollwood Country Club, as the bride and several guest demonstrated Irish Step Dancing! Enjoy this clip of Irish dance on this Saint Patrick's Day.

Wedding Photography Special!*

Allure Films is having a special! If you are getting married between now and the end of July 2008 we have a photography deal for you!

6 Hours of wedding day coverage.
One Photographer
Image files burned to a DVD as Jpegs the next day to do with as you want!

$1100

*Restrictions apply, must be available for your date.

Grooms Survival Kit

Well I hate to admit it, especially since I'm a man myself, but this is probably a good idea. I saw this over at Michiana Weddings the Groom's Survival Kit.Over my nearly 20 years in this business I have seen my share of popped suit buttons, forgotten socks, bad breath to realize a few last minute problems could have been headed off at the pass with this kit.... The Groom's Survival Kit includes, Toothbrush, Toothpaste, Dental Floss, Mints, Pain Reliever, Antacid, Facial Tissues, Deodorant, Razor, Shaving Cream, Styptic Pencil, Adhesive Bandages, Nail Clipper, Hair Comb, Interior Mirror, Lint Remover, Mending Kit, Scissors, Safety Pins, Boutonniere Pins, Stain Remover, Static Remover, Wrinkle Remover, Stress Ball Keychain, Extra Wedding Bands, Black Socks.

So brides if you want to get to the wedding vows panic free you might want to buy your groom this. Locally I'd bet you could find it at wedding coordinator Cynthia Basker's store, Girly Girl Gifts 574.287.1423.

Weddings at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on Notre Dame campus

I just noticed, tomorrow is Basilica Day at the University of Notre Dame when the books are open for those wanting to have their wedding at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in 2009! For all those brides and grooms who will be rushing the phones in the morning and dialing until they get through, Allure Films wishes you the best in getting the dates and times that you desire!

And once you have your date and time, please consider Allure Films for your wedding photography and videography needs! We love working in the Basilica and are at ease working within the restrictions of the Basilica wedding day rules.

Bellow is some of my favorite pictures from the Notre Dame Grotto. Enjoy!







The next three images are the same image. We have been getting questions as to what special effects we can do to your wedding photos. Well we can do anything you like, but below is three of my favorites. Enjoy.


The traditional Black and White


Modern Antique finish. This is one of my favorite effects. It has the look of a Black and White photo but the original color still seeps through just a little bit. I actually like this better than B&W!


Black and white with a red tone.

Palais Royale

I love this photograph at the Palais Royale. I personally took this a year ago and forgot about it. Was going through some old cds when I stumbled across it.

Palais Royale

I love this photograph from the

Wedding Photography Gallery

The Swathwood wedding took place at St Thomas Church in Elkhart and the reception was at The Century Center in South Bend. They had a lovely wedding and reception culminating in fireworks off of the island at Century Center. Greg did the photography and I did the cinematography for the Swathwoods.

There is a lot of images in this gallery so it will take a minute or two to load. Please be patient.



Check out individual photos on the gallery page.

Wedding Photography Gallery Now Online

Here is our new wedding photography gallery.

Wedding Photography

Here is some more examples of Greg's wedding photography work.

Leeper Park


Notre Dame Grotto

Elcona Country Club

Lake Michigan


Saint Marys

Some more Wedding Photographs

I'm presently digging through Greg's work from last year trying to get a couple of galleries put together for our photography pages. It's a lot of work. So to tide over until the galleries are done, here are a few photographs from a wedding last summer in Mishawaka. Enjoy!