Featured filmmaker: Sarah Pendergraft of PenWeddings

I met Sarah at POSH 2010 last year. Sarah is such a cool lady and probably one of the most helpful filmmakers you will meet. We got a chance to talk shop at lunch & dinner a few times and I loved that she came from a television background like I did and has developed a passion for filming weddings. I think coming from tv production, you truly have a love for finding the story and that is what wedding filmmaking is all about. She runs PenWeddings with her spouse, Rick and talks about how it is working with her husband in the feature below. Enjoy – Reagan

1. Tell us how you got into filming weddings.
If you had asked me in high school, or even college, what my career would be, wedding filmmaker never would have crossed my mind. I went to school for broadcast journalism, and worked as a TV news producer, reporter and anchor. I wanted to tell stories, and I was convinced I could use them to change the world. But after eight years and three TV stations, I became unhappy with the direction local news was headed. When presented with the opportunity to do the video production for my church, I jumped at it. This was around the same time Rick and I got married. Like many couples, we had the pre-conceived notion that wedding videos are cheesy and boring. But upon the recommendation of coworkers, we hired a mutual friend who did weddings through his production company, and we booked him sight-unseen. When we got our wedding video we were so surprised at what people do with them now. We looked at one another and said, “we could do this, and we would LOVE doing this.” And that was it. We borrowed or rented gear for our first season in 2008 and did a few free weddings to get a demo together. I left my job at the church in 2010 to run our business full-time and am absolutely loving it.

2. Why do you love filming weddings?
Someone recently asked me “Why weddings? I mean, do you just love weddings? You must love them to shoot them, right?” My answer… I love storytelling. I love the art of weaving together video and music and sounds so that it moves people, whether to laughter or to tears.

3. Tell us what it is like working with your spouse.
Rick and I working together was difficult at first. We often misread each other’s actions; if I was incredibly focused, Rick might have thought I was being short with him. PenWeddings is my baby, and I can get a tad bossy sometimes. In the end, though, it’s probably given us a better understanding of each other and we’ve developed a good rhythm.

4. What is your most used lens?
We are only just now moving to being “all DSLR” on weddings so we don’t have a very large lens arsenal yet. But I do love one of our vintage lenses, the Helios M44 F2. It’s a beautiful prime.

5. What do you think makes women unique in the filmmaking industry?
It’s not a 100% certainty, so boys, don’t hate me. But in most cases I think we do a better job of seeing things through the eyes of a bride. A beautiful shot may not make it into the final edit because it’s not flattering of the people in it. Or a shot that isn’t quite perfect may be included because of its emotional impact.