‘Long Island’ Category

OK, so I finally have something to show from Laura and Ro’s wedding which I did this past weekend in Wading River and not as far up Long Island as I thought it was.

Everything came out well and it was a really fun wedding.  A day one at that, which you never really see anyone have anymore.  Friday is the new Saturday afternoon.  I want to say a day wedding is a very british thing to do, but I know I am wrong because I’m pretty sure I just made that up in my head.

Anyway, here is the clip…

Just based on how things went during the day, I have a feeling I’m going to wind up taking more of a documentary approach and once I started to realize it during the day I started to shoot things more like that.  The clip here kind of reflects that.  I did it pretty quickly because I know I was behind on posting it, but it kind of shows what I am thinking.  I already know how I am going to start it, which is always a time saver.

I am seriously starting to think that I may no longer put previews up after I shoot a wedding.  It takes time going through the footage and compressing it and uploading it, and now that I am starting to hit my really busy stretch of bookings, takes away a lot of time from what I am currently working on.

I know I said I was going to post something from the wedding this past weekend and have yet to, but I haven’t forgotten about it.  Have just been so tied down trying to get stuff done that I have not really had much of chance to get to it.  Unless I can think of something off the top of my head what to put up, then it takes a while to figure out what to show because there is a lot of footage to go through, and since it’s all still on tape and not digitized onto the computer, it’s an entire process.

Tomorrow one way or the other.

Anyway, I do have another clip to show from Nicola and John’s wedding.  It’s from the photo shoot outside at the hall.  They said that they wanted a more observational approach to their wedding, so I cam leaning more to the documentary style throughout the entire video, as shown here.

It’s more slow paced than I would normally do when editing something like this, but I think this is what they are looking for.  Not really sure if I will put music underneath it.  I always think it’s better not to put any when trying to go documentary, but will try something later to see how it works.  Plus music a lot times is just an easy way out when editing something because it tells people what they should be feeling or thinking instead of letting them decide on their own when watching.  ”I don’t know what to do, just stick some Celine Dion and just get it over with already.”

But that’s just me…

So now I have a clip from Nicola and John’s ceremony, and as the title of the post indicates, it’s the first kiss during the ceremony.  Normally I guess people would go pretty tight on the couple for the first kiss, but after the kiss the couple usually steps away from each other and turns to the audience, and when that happens most of them are no longer in frame, so I like to keep it safe and go a bit wider to make sure if that happens the shot is still usable.

You can see a pair of hands clapping on the left side of the frame, but when it plays on a regular TV like it’s meant to and not a computer, you won’t be able to because the hands are out of the TV safe area.

From a technical standpoint, there were a lot of issues involved in shooting the ceremony that needed to be addressed when editing it.  

In terms of audio, the church was very large, so it created an echo.  Also, the only place I could really set up the camera for a good shot was all the way in back, which was pretty far away, so the audio had to be really cranked up a lot in post.  Still need to do some tweaking to try to “flatten” the sound.

In terms of the church itself, the sun was hitting the alter really brightly, but when the bride and groom stood for the vows, they were in the shadow, meaning the alter was really bright, but they were a bit toned down I guess you could say.  I could of opened up the lens to let more light in, but then the alter in back would be way overexposed and not look good at all.  You can sort of see it in the clip how much brighter the alter is behind them.

Also the floors in the church in back where not even with the floors in front, because I centered the tripods so the shots would be straight according to the bubble guide on them which is always accurate, but then when I went back and looked at the footage, everything was at an angle.  Had to to fix that as well.  It’s not really a problem, but it just takes a long time to render it all.  I want it to look as good as it can, so I set it to render at the high quality setting, so it took 11 hours for the computer to render the entire ceremony so that the shots were straight.  And I know the issue was with the floor because both cameras were off by the same exact amount. 

I have another clip from Nicola and John’s wedding.  This is more from the hotel.  As mentioned in the previous post, the makeup was done in the lobby of the hotel, but then the hair was done in the room.  I wasn’t too sure how to approach it at first, because normally I will consolidate hair and makeup together continuously, but I couldn’t do that here because it would look odd if the location just changed between shots.

I wound up doing what I had to do, which is divide it into two separate mini parts.  The makeup part is edited with a more quick pace, but this part I decided to slow down more to give it two distinct feels to each part.

Here is a more documentary approach that lets thing play out more.  Like I said, it’s more slow paced, but it works here.  It shows the dress, but like I have stated before, I don’t think the dress should be the focus of the preps, thus no angels singing when it is shown.  It’s more about getting glamourous than putting on a dress.  You have an entire video to show off the dress, you’re probably not going to get another chance to show off any glamour.  

You can’t always hear or understand everything that is being said, but that’s not really important as long as it gives you the feeling that something is going on.

I am going to try to start getting things done quicker now because summer is coming and so the bookings are starting to pick up.  That doesn’t mean I am going to spend less time working on each wedding though, just less time on other stuff, like eating and sleeping. 

Now moving onto the next project and Nicola and John’s wedding.  They are both performers- she’s a dancer and he’s a singer.  The “Proud Mary” and tap dance clips are both from their wedding.

I always work in order from start to finish, so this is from the hotel when Nicola was getting ready before the ceremony.  She actually got her makeup done in the lobby rather than her room because the lobby had more light for the person doing her makeup.

Shooting it there actually presented a problem because the light was not even and coming at different intensities where ever I shot from.  From a technical standpoint the reception is the easiest thing to shoot, because it’s probably going to be at night and indoors, so once I put on my light I am able to control things more.

Anyway, as a result of the different light intensities and because it’s so uneven, what was shot there required a lot of color correction to balance things out, which is not always easy.  I used to work somewhere that was pretty high end in terms of production that employed a lot of really skilled editors, and even this place would have to send stuff out from time to time to get stuff color corrected properly. 

This is not 100% final.  I am probably going to put some music underneath it really low and add a d-verb to it to make it sound like it was playing there at the time in the background.  I’m still going to keep the background noise there though because it’s important to keep it there to give a realistic feeling. 

This is also a lot of quick shots and jerky camera moves, which as I have stated I really like using and now starting to incorporate more into weddings rather than just the reception.

I have a couple of clips from a wedding I did yesterday.  It was on a Thursday, but it felt like a Saturday.  The couple, John and Nicola, are from both sides of the pond.  He is from New York, and she is from jolly old England.  You always have this image of British people being very serious and reserved, but this wedding was certainly not the case.

The clips are from the reception at Westbury Manor.  The first clip is the mother/daughter dance.  Nicola is a professional dancer, so instead of a traditional slow dance, she did a tap dance with her mother instead.

The second video is another dance clip.  It’s Nicola doing Proud Mary.  It’s just a fun clip and I get so bored sometime always putting up something I edited and then trying to explain why a simple fade should win me an Oscar.  Or at the very least an Emmy. This was actually really hard to shoot because it was impromptu and a lot of people around them watching, so I had to hold the camera over everyone’s head, making it hard to get a good angle, but it came out well.

There was a lot of great footage shot this weekend, so I decided to just get into the editing right away.  I want to share this particular clip because I love how it looks.