Mitchell Ortiz, the filmmaker behind every wedding

This Journal almost always speaks in the plural: Iris and me. This one is about the half that films. I've been asked a couple of times — who's the person behind the camera — so here it is, short.

I started with computers, not with cinema

I studied Systems Analysis. As a kid, technology was what pulled me in: there were people at home assembling computers, and I watched. None of it pointed toward weddings. But when I picked up a camera, that technical head — understanding how a machine works, squeezing everything out of it — turned out to be exactly what the job needed.

Three years of quinceañeras before the first wedding

I didn't start out filming weddings. It was three years of quinceañeras first: waltzes that happen only once, reception light nobody chose, one shot at each thing. It sounds minor and it was the opposite — it's the best training there is for a wedding. By the time the first wedding came, I already had the "this doesn't happen twice" nerves under control.

From Ciudad del Este and Asunción to the Atlantic

I film in Paraguay, between Asunción and Ciudad del Este, where most of the work is. But the camera travels. I've filmed weddings abroad, and those are the ones that stayed with me most:

• Katia and Federico, in Tulum, Mexico — the ceremony facing the sea, with the sun going down.
• Nara and Diogo, in Fernando de Noronha, Brazil — an island in the middle of the Atlantic. They're both pilots, so we filmed the pre-wedding in their hangar, with their plane.

Marrying abroad changes almost everything; I wrote about that separately in destination weddings. What doesn't change is how I film it.

I film people, not gear

I spend a lot on equipment — I keep it up to date, it matters to me — but the camera is the excuse, not the point. What I'm after is the person: what makes them different, what crosses their face when they forget I'm filming. A wedding film isn't a list of pretty shots; it's taking the moments, pulling them apart and putting them back together until the film feels the way the day felt.

That's why I work from a distance and quietly. Get too close and people perform; from the back, they're themselves.

Today, with The Wedding Paraguay

Today I film under The Wedding Paraguay, with Iris on photography. She stops the instant, I give back the movement and the sound: the father's laugh, what the grandmother said in the toast, how the voice shook during the vows. If you want to understand why it's sometimes worth having both, I wrote it up in photography, film, or both.

If something you saw stayed with you, write to me. I like to know the couple before we talk about dates.