As mentioned in the last post, the current wedding is Nicole’s. Her ceremony was a Greek Orthodox one. Orthodox weddings are somewhat different than traditional ceremonies, but being Orthodox myself, weddings like hers are more familiar to me that others. Except this one was almost all in english, which I am not used to hearing.

Some of the differences in Orthodox ceremonies is that the couple does not say anything, everything is done by the priest, so there is no exchange of vows or what one would consider a traditional ring ceremony. One of the other unique things about them is that for part of the ceremony the couple wears crowns, which is what the following clip is of. After the crowns are placed on the couple, they then circle around the alter 3 times. In some ceremonies the couple does not wear the crowns, but the best man and maid of honor hold them above the couples heads the entire time.

Anyhow here is the clip. I think it still will need some color correcting before it is final…

This ceremony is perhaps one of the most difficult I have ever edited. In Orthodox churches, the people attending do a lot of standing up and down, so the camera I had in back of the church had to be in the center of the aisle or it would be blocked 1/2 the time when everyone stood up. And since it is in the center, thats’s where everyone goes for pictures, so you get a lot of blocked shots there as a result as well, but not as much. It’s sort of a no win situation in that respect. As a result a lot of the ceremony involved just editing around all of that. Had to replace a lot of shots just to make it work, but not here in this clip.

Plus during the ceremony it changes from day to night, so the light is not the same the entire time, meaning there is a limited amount a footage you can steal from other spots that will match what you need at a particular point in time in terms of the light levels. Not to mention that the bride and groom throughout the ceremony change how they look (they put on the crowns, they hold candles at one point as well), so that also narrows down were you can get shots to cover certain things up.

I hope I am explaining this correctly.

When I shoot something I am always thinking how am I going to be able to make it work from a practical stand point, then when I start editing I think how am I going to make it work from a creative one, so I remember as I was shooting the ceremony thinking that I was going to need to do a lot a tricks to make it all come off as seamless, so at certain points I just concentrated the camera on the B&G so that I would have shots to cut away to.

The audio was really good though. The priest projects his voice so well that I hardly have to do any work on it, which is awesome because audio is the hardest thing to get right because you can’t cover up audio mistakes. Either it sounds good or it doesn’t.

Enjoy!