KSN Throws a Wedding!

Fat Cat Productions and KSN team up!

We are very excited to announce our most recent news! Fat Cat Productions has been asked by KSN (Channel 3) in Wichita if we would like to participate in their latest project, “KSN Throws a Wedding!”.

The project has been in the planning stages for several weeks now and we are excited to be a part of this special event for one lucky couple from the KSN viewing area!
Starting at the end of July, KSN will be announcing the details of the contest that will run concurrently with the national competition hosted by the Today Show on NBC.
We feel very honored to be the exclusive cinematographer for this event!

Couples who are interested in letting KSN throw them a wedding can learn how to enter to win later this summer. Watch KSN for those details. The station will choose finalists and after a winner is announced, the viewing public gets to help in planning their big day this fall!

By online voting, viewers will choose most everything for the couple, from the tux, to the wedding gown, to the rings, to the cake and honeymoon location! It will definitely be a very exciting time for the lucky couple and we cannot wait to meet whoever that might be! Other area wedding vendors will also be involved from floral design, to wedding and reception venues and entertainment.

Fat Cat Productions role will be in providing the couple memories on video of the event from the salon to the party! We hope our blog readers will follow along with all the excitement later this summer as the contest kicks off and we are able to post more information!

Stay tuned to the Fat Cat Productions blog and KSN Channel 3 for more updates as we get closer to the event!

Fat Cat Goes to the Dogs!

Yesterday and today we spent some time in the morning filming for a very different type of project. J. Mannebach of Oz Cow Dogs in Colwich, Kansas has asked Fat Cat to produce a working dog training video for them. The video will cover how to choose the right working dog and specific training methods to work a dog on stock (cattle). This is not the type of herding you see at AKC competitions with cute little geese, fluffy white sheep, and bouncing baby goats running circles and pretty patterns through gates in record setting times. This is training for real working ranch dogs. High drive dogs. The kind that will run the cattle all day if you would let them, think on their own, get rolled by and kicked at by 800 plus pound cows and they keep on going, live and breathe for the opportunity to chase after and nip at a cow- and love every minute of it. They are the take charge type dog that will bite at the heels and nose of the cows to get them to move and not blink an eye. They aren't your pretty competition show dogs either, after a good work out with the cattle they enjoy rolling in the mudholes for a job well done!

So off we went with our nice clean shiny tripods and expensive cameras we spent our hard earned money on, into a pasture full of cow pies and mudholes and about 6 or 7 head of cattle to film the dogs at work, hoping the dogs were in control enough to not cause a stampede right over top of us. Needless to say it was the most fun we've had in a while! Being the avid dog lover and trainer that I am, I even picked up a few pointers!

Filming will continue for the next couple of weeks off and on, as weather permits and this summer we will be editing the complete DVD Training Video Set, target completion date is sometime this fall. When it is completed, we will post a short clip to show you how exciting it was. Unfortunately I wasn't able to take pictures as I was busy filming!

Until then, it's time to keep Moo-ving on in the edit que. Things never seem to slow down around here!

Adam and Jena

Yesterday we were able to share the day with Adam and Jena. What a great couple! The wedding was held at Central Christian Church in Wichita with the reception at the Broadview Hotel.

It was another twist on our destination weddings in Wichita. Jena is from Wichita, but Adam is originally from New York and family was present from all over including New York, Florida and Canada!

Jena prepared at the church with her 6 bridesmaids. The bridesmaids all chose different dresses to compliment their own personal style and they looked fabulous all in a bright beautiful red. Jena was then taken to the prayer room where close family shared a prayer of blessing upon her before she walked down the isle to see Adam for the first time that day.

Stems provided beautiful flower arrangements and candles adorned the altar area for the ceremony.

After vows were exchanged, they chose to symbolize their coming together with Unity Sand instead of a Unity Candle. After being introduced as husband and wife, pictures were taken and they were wisked away in a stretch SUV limo to the Broadview hotel for the party hosted by Scott at AMM (Accent Mobile Music)!

Very touching toasts blessed the couples new lives together and they danced the night away!

It was a pleasure to work with both Jena and Adam, we hope you enjoy their wedding Prequel, set to the music that Jena marched into the church to!

New Website Launch!

We have said for some time that we had exciting news coming about a new sister site to Fat Cat Productions.

We’ve finally got things up and running with all of the hub bub around here and are proud to announce a new web site totally dedicated to… babies! So after the wedding when little ones start arriving, don't forget to keep capturing life!

www.announcemychild.com

This site is to share and promote our newest venture, Baby Stories and Video Birth Announcements! There are samples in the gallery to give clients ideas, you may have seen them here in our blog already. We can film from the first time parents perspective, existing children looking forward to a baby brother or sister, etc. It’s totally up to the client and what they are looking for to document the arrival of their child!

Thanks to Tyff and Jeff again for the great layout and design work! Not to mention some adorable baby pictures from their amazing Progressive Sessions! What a great keepsake for when your child is grown, a Progressive Session, a Baby Story, and a video Birth Announcement.

The site is not chalk full of information yet, but it has enough to go live. The more projects we are able to do, the more we will be able to share with you!
If you know of someone who would be interested in this exciting new venture, pass the info along and call Fat Cat to schedule Baby Story planning today!

Gunther D. Dog

Happy Easter to everyone. We celebrate Easter today with a mix of emotions after losing one of our greatest dogs ever yesterday morning, Gunther. Gunther was our Rottweiler of 9.5 years. Everybody was scared of him because of his breed but he was absolutely the sweetest. “Gunni” as he came to be known was the million-dollar dog, receiving surgery for hip dysplasia when he was 8 months old from the best Vets and Vet students in the world at K-State University. Later he had knee surgery in the opposite leg.

Through all that he remained a certified Search and Rescue Dog locally specializing in both Wilderness Search and Cadaver Search. He was a Certified Therapy Dog and had his Canine Good Citizen Certificate for many years. He got to meet the Governor years ago when a Bill passed for protection of Search and Rescue Dogs, as well as being on some notable search and rescue missions here locally. He retired from his working life a few years ago and enjoyed sleeping on the couch and in the bed and eating anything in sight. We eventually lost Gunther to bone cancer, and he was euthanized with us by his side and his two biggest "fans”, our great friends Wade and Carol. Thanks to all our friends for your support, you mean the world to us. Pictures of Gunni's great life are pictured here. He loved children, swimming (AKA "The Shark") and of course his Daddy!

Live Easter Edit!

Last night we didn’t get much time to think about our Gunther as we had to get ready for a live edit of the Glenville Baptist Church Easter Program “The night before Easter”. We have worked in and with the church before on many projects and think they are a fabulous group of people. We prepared all day for the event, printing DVD’s and stuffing the cases with labels, gathering all needed wiring supplies, etc.
We were blown away with the performance. There was a huge cast (even a live donkey, just for Steph!), and talented cast to say the least, an elaborate set and a wonderful message. Some cast members were actually previous wedding customers! It was great to see old friends again!
So what’s a Live Edit you ask?
We filmed the production with a three-camera HD shoot and fed the signal into a video splitter. Our colleague Alan VanPetten operated the splitter for us and acted as Director. One camera was unmanned for a cutaway shot, but Barry and I ran the other two cameras and we were both in communication with Alan via Clear Comm headsets as he would cue us when our camera was to go live.
He made the cuts and dissolves as they happened, not in post as we do at weddings, and the signal was burnt live to a DVD as it happened! After the performance, we were able to make duplications of the program rather quickly with our tower duplicator for the audience to purchase afterwards for a donation to the church. Discs were pre printed that afternoon.
It was quite the production. Set up was tedious, shooting with manual iris, focus, and gain with constantly adjusting stage lighting was a challenge. But we learned a lot and now have the experience to be able to do more work like this in the future. Thanks to Alan at AV Video Productions for his lending a hand and expertise and Nate at Glenville for thinking of us for this project! Glenville rocks!

Pictured above is Alan checking over all the equipment. Below is the cast going over final preparations before the start of the show, Barry setting up the third camera shot with our back up camera (the A-1) and the duplicator churning away!