Ella edited her first video at the ripe old age of 12. It was a masterpiece of shaky images, clumsy transitions, and scratchy audio. But thanks to a family friend who said, "This is great!," she continued creating better and better video, constantly trailing her family around with a giant video camera. Class projects: video. Family vacations: video. Dinner with her grandparents: video. Grandmother's secret recipe: video. Walking the dogs: video. Nothing was off limits, and everything was sacred.
At Hofstra University, Ella fell in love with documentaries and spent several years helping to tell the stories of breast cancer survivors on Long Island who had become advocates against the disease. During the many hours of shooting and editing, she realized that the documentary wasn’t so much about how they fought cancer as about how they never stopped living. The story was all the reasons to continue living, the relationships that make living grand, and the love that surrounded them through it all.
After Hofstra, Ella came back to Atlanta fueled by the positive messages from the women of Long Island and determined to create great documentaries. And then one day she overheard someone saying that they wished they had their parents’ wedding on video and it made her think how lucky she is to have her own parents’ wedding on film. At that moment, she knew she wanted to create documentaries that tell the stories of the most important and significant events in peoples’ lives. After having worked in other production companies, she founded Blue Orchid Productions in early 2002, and she has been crafting wedding documentaries and life event documentaries ever since.
To Ella, well-crafted video is the key to preserving memories. She may never be able to sit on her grandfather’s lap again, but she will always have his laughter.
Robin doesn’t have a great story of growing up with a video camera in front of her face - no family vacation videos, no action shots of her brothers and sister, no shaky homemade documentaries of her pets. Truth be told, she never really saw any value or importance in video.
But then one day she watched as Ella edited a wedding ceremony, and she was hooked. She didn’t know the bride or the groom, didn’t know the families involved. But there she was, choking up when the father of the bride saw his daughter in her wedding gown for the first time, sniffling when the groom wiped a tear from his eye as his bride walked down the aisle. She was shocked by her reaction, but she suddenly understood the incredible power of preserving moments and memories. After that, it wasn’t long before Robin joined Blue Orchid Productions as both a shooter and an editor. And now, she can’t imagine why anyone would miss the opportunity to capture the moments they’ll never want to forget.