Flashback: About Us

We've been running Pilgrim Pictures, our video production house, for nearly 4 years now. The stuff we've been doing are mostly wedding videos and a couple of corporate jobs. In fact, our very first job is a wedding video.

I have a love-hate relationship with producing wedding videos. Eng Tiong has no qualms about it. He actually enjoyed them tremendously.

We came from Ngee Ann Polytechnic's School of Film & Media Studies. Specifically, the Film, Sound and Video programme. We were amongst the top graduates. And that explains my grudge in doing wedding videos - ego, pride, snobbery.

In the world of video production, wedding videos (in most people's minds anyway), are the most lowly. I thought we were meant for "bigger" things.

The change in mindset came. Rather gradually, I might add.

Doing wedding videos is one of the most challenging productions. If you think about it, many things can go wrong - getting lost enroute to the bride's place, running out of tape, dirty tape head, waiting for the condensation in the camera to go away, lost of the sound signal in the middle of a speech or sermon, failing to capture that most important "pronounced husband & wife" kiss, etc, etc, etc... Even with the best preparations and intentions, shit happens. We just have to deal with it there and then. There's no retakes. Everything is "live".

I still get jitters doing wedding videos. It's stressful. Especially for someone like me who needs everything to be perfect, screwing up, even just a little, is very hard to stomach.

In contrast, Eng Tiong thrives in such situations. He thinks very well on his feet. He always tells me to relax, "It's a wedding, for goodness' sake!"

Before, I always have difficulties telling people, especially professionals in the industry, that we do wedding videos. I hate to see that look on their faces - like it's a loser's job.

But today, I'll gladly tell people that we are wedding videographers because I bet a lot of them can't take such working conditions and do a really fantastic job out of it.

We know what it takes to do a wedding video and do it well. We've won 3 international awards for the wedding stuff that we do at the Wedding & Event Videographers' Assocation (WEVA) Creative Excellence Awards - in the United States. We've received lots of compliments from our wedding customers and many have become our friends.

Like what Eng Tiong always say - "Even for the most "lowly" production like a wedding video, we put our hearts and minds into it and do it really well. Just imagine how it would be when we put our hearts and minds into making our movies..."