MEET THE EXPERTS

Wedding videos, like vacation slides, tend to be enjoyed by only the people who were there. Paul Korver, though, strives to make wedding films for the ages. His company, Fifty Foot Films, works only with film--Super 8, 16 and 35 millimeter. Video, he and his clients believe, is far less flattering and subtle, and it can start to fade after a dozen years. Korver and his team use the vocabulary of the filmmaker--including long shots, establishing shots (from a helicopter or a boat, for instance), selective focus, black and white and the slowing of time--to create unusual and personalized short films that look like no one else’s. They provide lyrical editing and soundtracks that shy away from the expected or the familiar, greatly reducing what Korver likes to call “cheese.” You will not hear “Pachelbel’s Canon,” “Sunrise, Sunset” or “How Sweet It Is (to Be Loved By You)” on a Korver production. “Film can be kind of white or kind of gray, which is how life is,” Korver says. His client list includes the royal family of Qatar, baseball player Mike Piazza, Jessica Capshaw (shot on the estate of the bride’s mother, Kate Capshaw, and stepfather, Steven Spielberg), as well as Mariska Hargitay, Tori Spelling and Christina Aguilera. Korver finds that media-savvy people understand why they are paying in the five figures for his work. “They know that film is flattering. It’s the people who haven’t seen themselves on film--they are blown away.” www.fiftyfootfilms.com

--Elizabeth Khuri