Roughly two years after Norville and Saori married in Japan and had their wedding reception in Southern California, I’ve finally managed to complete the final video of their wedding journey.

Back in 2019, Norville had asked me if I would be interested in joining him and Saori on a trip to Japan as their videographer/photographer as they would be having a traditional Japanese marriage ceremony near Saori’s hometown in Kyushu. I was stunned and couldn’t quite process if it was a serious request, but I instinctively responded with an unenthusiastic and slightly confused “Sure”.

This would be one of the most important projects I have taken on since I would be filming by myself, there are no retakes, I would need to balance the right amount of camera gear to bring, and my main task would be to recap the Japanese wedding ceremony for everyone at a second wedding reception in SoCal to see.

November rolled around and we embarked on our trip to Japan. In the past, usually the first day or two of a trip I’ll have a pretty clear idea of what video I wanted to make. However as the trip goes on, fatigue sets in as I try to balance enjoying the trip and filming.

I’ve come to the conclusion that this is due to a lack of planning in advance what story I want to tell in each video, as I tend to leave it up in the air and try to film every bit of the trip as I can and try to find the story in the edit later on. This usually leads to me being discouraged to continue editing and I’ll set it aside to try and figure out later.

After coming back to the States, Norville and Saori would have their wedding reception on March 14th, 2020, which I would have had about 3 months to complete a recap of our entire trip, but with the holidays and preparing for work events such as CES and PAX East, I ended up having to focus on completing the wedding day in Japan recap video for the reception first and completing the rest of the trip after.

While I don’t think I’ve quite found my way of storytelling that will appeal to an audience outside of myself and my friends, I do think that I’ve become better at putting together videos that bring back the memories and experiences of those people that lived it.

I just need to be better about not taking nearly 2 years after the fact to finish what I promised.