Joanne Tong
- Jan 8, 2013
- 2 min read

Design Talk: Videographer Jason Magbanua

Updated: Aug 2, 2020

At a wedding I attended several years ago, everything was going according to plan — right up until the bridal bouquet toss. As tradition dictated, the bride turned around and flung her bouquet toward the bachelorettes gathered in the center of the room.

Not part of the script? The cluster of ladies dispersing like shrapnel as the bouquet sailed toward them.

“Times have changed,” the father of the groom stage-whispered amid giggles from the audience.

That same year, many of the same women who’d avoided that bouquet like the plague went googly-eyed over a series of wedding videos posted online. I should know — I was one of them!

The filmmaker responsible for this apparent change of heart? Jason Magbanua.

Last June 2011, my friend Spike helped me secure tickets to an Ayala Museum Design Talk featuring the man who’d single-handedly revolutionized the wedding video industry. Status Magazine, one of the event sponsors, hit the nail on the head with its write-up:

“Whenever you watch… wedding videos by Jason Magbanua, [it either] makes you feel [like] you want to get married, or that you want to make something as awesome as that.”

I attended the talk with Marla and Joel, the duo behind Natural Selection Design Co., two months prior to their own wedding. I could tell Joel was a bit apprehensive about the content of the talk – to those unfamiliar with Jason’s work, the phrase “wedding video” conjures up a montage of contrived couple poses, puffy pastel dresses, and floral arrangements set to cheesy 80s music. He emerged like the rest of us – inspired to create and impressed by this man, who approached his craft like a teacher first and foremost.

Between the Sarah Meier talk that I’d just attended at CoLab earlier that morning and this talk, it was a great day for enlightenment. Talk about a game change.

The strips below include highlights from the talk. Credit for the content goes to Jason, but any errors in transcribing and interpreting his speech are my own.