Wedding Cinematography Discussed with Martin Kacvinsky

by Jakub HanJanuary 25^th, 2021

Martin Kacvinsky is a wedding cinematographer based in the Czech Republic. Making wedding films all over the world, he has been named Europe’s Best Wedding Videographer twice already. Johnnie talked with him and asked about his career, his filming style, workflow, and the equipment he uses. During the first lockdown in spring 2020, Martin created an online wedding cinematography masterclass. The full price for his eight hours of educational content is €690. With the coupon code “cined2021” you can now get it for €300 off Exclusively. (valid until February 7th).

This interesting interview with a creative person from our industry features Martin Kacvinsky from Kaco Films.

The Story of Kaco Films

Martin’s career as a wedding filmmaker is fueled by his passion for traveling. After quitting his corporate job, he started to film weddings and founded Kaco Films. As Martin says, he likes the creative freedom when working on a wedding film. He is based in the Czech Republic but has traveled extensively to weddings all over the world. Martin has been named Europe’s Best Wedding Videographer twice.

Martin films in a documentary style, so he tries to interrupt a wedding as little as possible. As he says, the most important thing is that the couple feels comfortable, and that this way, he can capture true emotions. On larger weddings, he works in a team to provide a second camera angle.

As he states, the best way to get new clients is a word of reference. Also, the existing portfolio and the style of wedding films within will attract similar customers.

Martin’s Equipment

Aside from telling a nice, emotional story with every wedding film, Martin puts emphasis on the image quality, the look of the film and color grading. Because of this, he films weddings in raw. After shooting with Canon 5D Mark III with Magic Lantern in CinemaDNG for years, he switched to the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K and shot a few seasons in BRAW. Currently, Martin uses the SIGMA fp and films again in CinemaDNG. He needs lots of storage for the media, but, as he states, the grading workflow and the resulting image is more important for him and for his clients.

Martin likes to use small, affordable lenses because he works handheld very often. As the cameras he uses do not have IBIS, the lenses should preferably be stabilized. Additionally, he always uses a loupe to help with manual focusing and provide an additional point of contact with the body, for more stable shots. He prefers to work quickly and not miss any important moments rather than trying to rig the camera to a gimbal and lose time. For audio, Martin uses multiple external recorders.

For post-production, Martin and his team currently use DaVinci Resolve. They have it running from a server, so there can be multiple people working on one project at the same time. When it comes to color grading, Martin likes to keep things simple and not try to change the colors too much. He primarily tries to have nice skin tones and the right exposure, so the resulting films are consistent. In the end, it is the story that matters most.

Kaco Films Wedding Cinematography Masterclass

Last year has undoubtedly been a tough one for many people from different industries. The most affected segments of the filming industry were event and wedding videographers. After Martin lost almost all planned shoots in Spring 2020, he decided to invest the extra time in a new project. As he often got asked about his workflow and equipment, he committed himself to creating a wedding cinematography masterclass.

The masterclass includes over eight hours of video content. It is designed to provide valuable information that usually cannot be found in any of the (mostly very technical) tutorials online. The Kaco Films Masterclass is divided into four parts:

• Pre-production. This part includes useful tips on developing a unique style, how to get the right clients, how to communicate with them, and how much to ask for a wedding video.
• Production. In this part, Martin goes through all his equipment (cameras, lenses, sound equipment and accessories) and explains why he uses each piece. He also talks about what to pay attention to when traveling with equipment, how to get to know the location better, plan the shoot, and how to cooperate with the photographer and second cameraman.
• Post-production. The third part includes tips on organizing the footage, editing it, and color grading the final movie. Martin also provides his custom-created KACO LUT with instructions on how to use it.
• Case Studies. For the final part, Martin selected 10 of his wedding films. He speaks about them and provides a technical break-down of each one.

While of course being primarily targeted at wedding filmmakers, I found most parts of the masterclass to be useful for other filmmakers as well, and have personally watched most episodes from the first three parts already.

The Kaco Films Masterclass is available for €690. CineD readers can get an exclusive €300 discount with the code “cined2021” when ordering the course online until February 7th.

What do you think of Martin’s work? Are you also in the wedding films industry? How are you dealing with these tough times? Let us know in the comment section underneath the article.