Kristin & Joe's Love Train

So much of Kristin and Joe's life in Chicagoland revolved around the elevated train system that they decided to let the CTA chauffeur them to their wedding. I was invited along to videotape the ride.

I edited the piece using The Ojays' "Love Train" as the soundtrack, and that was the form I gave to the couple as a finished piece. But when I first posted the video to Matchbook Films, I went back and stripped out the music, feeling timid about copyrights. The quietness of what was left retained, it seemed to me at the time, a feeling of incompleteness.

Thus had I intended to post the original edit, rights issues be damned. But when I went back and watched both, it was the version without music that stood out as the better piece. Perhaps because I've been watching videoblogs of late, and have become accustomed to the rhythms and silences of "real", or, at least, less-mediated, life.

By the standards of this evolving medium, the original soundtrack was completely overbearing, and drowned out several opportunities for a viewer to discover some of the human moments I had managed to capture.

So once again: without.

Length: 3:03

Click to view

[Update: the musical soundtrack has not been removed; it has simply migrated to a position as the underscore for this late night taco run.]