W@W VideoFest aftermath: The Website
“Hello! My name is WeddingsAtWork.com. You may call me W@W for short. I am 10 years old.”
That’s not something like W@W would say if it’s personified. Maybe because W@W has never been just one person. In its inception, W@W may well be just Benz & me. But, by what seemed overnight, W@W vibrantly turned into a community of soon-to-weds. Slowly, W@W is now evolving into, not just a community of marrying & married couples, but THE community for wedding suppliers as well. A community that constantly grows and continues to evolve.
But if you look at it as a wedding-related undertaking, then everything changes. Benz is the face of W@W. She’s the ‘mommy’ of the W@Wies, a friend to the N@Wies, and a colleague to wedding suppliers. She gets to talk to them both online and offline. Me? I’m the introverted husband who does what he pleases when not forced to tag along. 😀 hahaha!
But if you strip W@W with all the love and goodwill — essentially it’s heart & soul — then W@W is simply just a website.
Not too may know that Benz & I aren’t web designers. I write and work best in a hush environment, while she’s good around people. Benz deals with replying to emails while I update the blog. It’s just us who handle and operate the website’s day-to-day concerns. But the back-end — the technical, complicated and boring stuff — is handled by the good guys of Havoc Digital Media. They are the heroes of the day when the site is down or when hackers attack! (take a virtual bow, you guys!)
Beginnings
W@W is our baby. We launched it in a bridal fair back when our other baby (Kite, our biological one) was four months on the way out in a world where parents sleep during daytime and work at night.
We paid for an exhibit space with nothing to sell but an idea.
A snapshot during our 1999 launch. Notice the “high-tech” 32-bit, 386 computer at the background. That was an era when monitors weren’t flat, keyboards were clanky and the mouse was as cute as an ugly rodent.
But W@W has undergone a couple of transformations since then. With the help of WayBack Machine, here’s how our site looked back in 1999 and here’s the site layout after its 2004 makeover.
Indeed, it’s hard to explain a website creatively without boring you guys. 😀
About the videographer
Videographer? That sounds like a misnomer as I write about Bob Nicolas today. For in the W@W VideoFest, he was not a videographer. He was a cinematographer.
I first noticed Bob’s work when we were filling the lineup for an AVP Week a couple of years ago. His work was featured side-by-side with the more experienced videographers: Imacron, Jason Magbanua and Threelogy. Two slots were reserved for two new “discoveries”: an indie-ish, edgy photo/video company from Naga called MangoRed (they have since focused in photography), and Bob Nicolas — a guy who happened to brand his video by his name. In those days, only Jason Magbanua dared (and succeeded!) branding his video with his name. I think that’s what mystified me with Bob at that time. His pride with his work, consciously or unconsciously, transcended with his branding. And the guy didn’t disappoint. Collectively speaking, it is by far my favorite AVP Week. 🙂
In the last W@Wie Awards, Bob was already part of the Top 10.
But for somebody who takes great pride in his work, Bob comes off as very shy and timid in person. But we also heard he unleashed the party animal in him at Jason’s birthday party but we left not late enough to witness it. So maybe, Bob Nicolas is a paradox. The guy doesn’t mystify me anymore, he confuses me! bwahaha! 😀
In the videofest, Bob seemed to have been assigned the hardest topic to cover – the website. Benz & I were actually hoping that Bob would contact us to give him names of resource people whom he could interview. We wanted to help, but in hindsight, we are glad Bob didn’t feel the need to seek it for he knew exactly what to do.
I call his concept high-brow. For who would ever think of a mountain location if all you need is to discuss a website? The unexpected location made his video a feast for the eyes. The background music in the opening sequence was mystical and haunting. Screen filled with images of dried leaves being blown away by the humid wind as brides meander barefoot deep into the woods. Sunrise & sunset. Symbolisms he may well wanted the viewers to interpret in whatever way they please.
But personally, I felt that those images provided the soft palette needed to present something so technical without compromising art. A fusion of the romance of wedding & the benefits of technology which, essentially, what W@W is all about.
And since Bob is the cinematographer, someone else was tasked to make the script. Dyoks (ni Selle) — a W@Wie and his former client — came on board to assist Team Nicolas.
Watch as Bob shares with us this cinematic experience.