This clip is from Dawn and Andy’s wedding which took place at The Inn At Longshore in Connecticut. It was a really nice location because the inn is located right on the water. The ceremony is going to look really great because it’s just clear blue water in the background. This particular clip here is part of the opening to the video. The first few shots I left out for whatever reason, but this is more or less how it is going to open. I may wind up moving a few parts around here and there depending on how everything sits with me when I go back and assemble the final cut, but I also may not. I arrived early and as usual, rather than just sit and around and wait for things to start, I went to the bridal suite and just started shooting what was going on.

There is no music here yet, but I am going to add a few short cuts in certain parts to pick everything up a bit. There is none here because I haven’t found the right pieces yet that work. The very beginning leading into the bridal suite I think needs some. Also when she is posing on the bed a few seconds of something there just to punch it up a bit. I like working without music, but at the same time sometimes it can really help to accent what you are trying to do.

There was some stuff of the bride posing with the bridesmaids on the bed that I am not going to use. It just wasn’t working for me and I kind of want to concentrate on how this will lead into the first meeting between the bride and groom. I like the stuff of her on the phone and how it’s framed tightly all on one side. And her putting on the makeup as well, always like showing stuff of the bride doing things herself rather than someone else doing it for her.

I like how the first shot of the bride is her walking out the room and how it’s so direct. I also like how the first shot of when she is putting on the makeup begins on the end of the shot coming into focus. I like stuff like that too because it helps serve as a transition. I wanted to actually move that part of her doing the makeup a bit earlier to when she comes out of the room for the first time, but it wasn’t going to match because after she applied it, it all of the sudden would no longer be on her.

My favorite shot is actually at 2:20 when going through the digital camera to look at the pictures. I always try to get a shot of that, but it never comes out. This time it did so I made it a point to make sure it gets in.

If you watched the previous clip, the camera in the back has changed positions from the center to the right side behind the pews. Had to move it so that when everyone exited there was nothing in the way. This is actually the position I would normally put the camera, because as you can tell it’s a nicer angle, plus if someone stands in the center I can just zoom in close so that they are not in the shot. And it just shows off the alter better.

It’s a new angle to work with, therefore I tried to use as much of it as I can. I’m not Ron Popeil and don’t like to just set it and forget it, so during the ceremony rather than just leaving the camera at one set point, I zoom in and out for different shots to make things more interesting. For example, this ceremony was 40 minutes, so if you just kept on going back and forth the entire time between the same two shots it would get boring very quickly. It helps with the pacing without actually editing anything out.

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!

I think it’s a good idea, but unfortunately the practicality of it when doing weddings just is not there because it would just sound like you are using the same music over and over again. Not sure if that is something people would pick up on. I guess it’s the same idea as the first dance song. That’s the couples theme and when you hear it played, it makes you think of the couple every time. But using the first dance song in that manner in a video would not work. It’s an idea to think about though.

Anyway…

I know I have not been posting lately. Just have not had a chance for a number of reasons. One is that I recently got a new system, so I am now finally an Apple Intel chipset user. Burning disks and rendering effects are so much faster now. But I have officially returned.

This clip is from Nicole’s wedding. It is her coming out of the church after the ceremony has ended. Kind of quick. There is nothing really edited here, I just like the shot. Lots of flowers. I did do some very basic color correcting in the first 1/2 of it because it was night, so the shot had to be lightened up because they were too far away for my light to have any effect.

I am still sorting everything out and going through the footage (meaning trying to figure out what to do), so I am posting this before I have really made the first cut. It’s like they say, the first cut is always the hardest, mainly because when I start working on something I never know what am I going to do. I don’t just cut and paste or repeat everything with every wedding I do, so I really have to think about it when I work on something. But once I have the first 30 seconds or so worked out it starts to come pretty easily after that. That’s just the way I work because it works for me best. Sometimes I will hear a piece of music I really like and I will become inspired to pull something off really great and just cut to that piece of music. Sometimes I just start laying down shots one after another until something starts to form and just hack away and move stuff around until I have something I really like. That’s probably the purest form of editing.

Anyhow, I will be back soon with something that is actually edited.

I do not like getting all fancy with everything when I edit photo sessions because for most people, posing for photos on their wedding day is probably the only chance they’ll get to act like a model, so I like to show off all the different poses that brides take and the photographer giving directions. I think that’s better than putting some silly Celine Dion song over a bunch of black and white effects.

Wedding videos are like Hollywood. You have all these blockbusters that despite being poorly written, produced, directed and full of nothing but special effects, make a ton of money. Everyone says they are horrible and get terrible reviews, but they make millions of dollars. Then you have the independent films in which the people who make them labor over every shot and spend years trying to get everything right, then when they are released get rave reviews, but make no money because no one bothers to go see it because they don’t have any effects in them.

That’s what wedding videos are like.

Everyone says that they hate cheesy videos with loud music and wall to wall effects that are poorly shot, but yet the videographers who make those kind of videos and the ones who most people book. People say they want a high quality and tasteful video, but then when they see the work of people who do videos like that are like, “where are all the effects? There’s not enough music.” Just like Hollywood.

That being said I think Iron Man 2 looks really awesome!

Shooting this was actually kind of hard because I do not like heights or getting close to windows that are really high up, so I kind of tried to stay against the back wall most of the time. When I did get close to the side, I just made it a point to not look over it. Shooting weddings is scary stuff!

I say it all the time because it’s true- it’s not what someone likes, it’s what works best. I love Guns N’ Roses, they are my favorite band ever and I waited 17 years for Chinese Democracy to be released, but my first dance song was not “Sweet Child O’ Mine”. (Did you know that if they all stayed together they would be going into the Rock N’ Roll Hall Of Fame in 2 years? Actually, they never really broke up, everyone just left one at a time, only leaving Axl by himself. But that’s a story for another time…)

Just today’s random thought of the day.

Anyway, time for the next project. This is Kim and Herb’s wedding. I really enjoyed doing this wedding because it was such a laid back day and you can really tell that both bride and groom were genuinely happy to be getting married. They were so easy to work with. And the photographer was great too.

This clip is from Kim getting ready at the hotel. It was an afternoon wedding, so shooting at the hotel started at 7 AM. I actually got a lot of nice stuff in the room. When I went back and started to edit it I was really happy with all the footage here. I got so much good stuff that the bridal preps will wind up being longer than usual. There were not a lot of people in the room, which helped a lot. Normally there are so many people around when the bride gets ready that as soon as you set up a shot someone walks in front of it, so as a result everything here came out really well.

I am taking it really slow here. Like I said, it was a laid back day so I want the video to reflect that. If you go back and look at the bridal prep clip from Allison’s wedding a couple of months ago, this is the total opposite style because I don’t just cut and paste every wedding. Heavy documentary feel. The footage is really good, so I am just going to let the images speak for themselves rather than do anything fancy here.

No music either. The same way I am over feeling as though I need to fade between shots and add transitions between everything, I am over feeling as though I need to have music under things. I have come to appreciate and understand the power of silence. Just hearing a few camera clicks says a lot. Not that there is no need to ever use music, but the same way effects are used to cover people’s mistakes, music is used the same way too. Just over it.

I really like it when her mother says how beautiful she thinks Kim looks. Very nice quite moment.

I met with the bride and groom prior to the wedding, during which I got the feeling that putting on the dress for the first time was a big moment for her, so I really made it a point to show off the dress when I shot, then edited the hotel preps. I really don’t always make a big deal about the dress because I take a more low key approach to things and try to nail down the little things as the day goes along, but since I knew what’s what she wanted that’s what I made it a point to do here.

That being said, I was really freaked out when I got there and saw what it looked like. Outdoors, but everyone is underneath a roof, so it’s basically like shooting in front of a super-massive window.  Since the camera is going to be shooting looking directly into a strong light source it’s hard to find a good balance between the brightness of the view and the shadows that everyone is going to be standing in.  Plus the bride and groom are nearest to the edge of the balcony, so they are at the highest risk of being overexposed.   I spent so much time just trying to find a nice compromise with the light that I broke from the photos early to make sure I got it right, which I did.  It was a really small space and I basically could only position the 2 cameras in two specific places, so it wasn’t like I can just pick a spot to set up where the angle was such that not a lot of light was coming into the camera.

When everyone walked down the aisle I was literally hanging over the side of the balcony in order to get a good shot where I did not have to worry about the photographers getting in the shot.  I have hung over so many places to get shots while doing weddings that sometimes I really feel as though I should become a stuntman.

Another issue involved in the ceremony was that it was raining all morning, so there was a lot of condensation in the air. After everyone walked down the aisle I then zoomed on over to put the camera on the tripod on the other side of the balcony, but all the moisture in the air expanded the base of the mount and made it hard to fit the camera on correctly because the base has some rubber on it. I had the other camera wide to catch everything fortunately, but it made it just made editing everything a lot harder than usual because it then became a matter of trying to back-time stuff and what can be taken out early on to make it fit in order to not have the same shot up for too long a time.

As I mentioned in one of the previous posts, I managed to get a lot of nice shots that day, so this clip is just a bunch of different shots strung together to show some of what I got. It is not necessarily the final look, nor everything that I have. It’s just to give an idea of how it came out. I knew I did not have a lot of time at each location to get creative, so I just concentrated on getting as many good shots as possible.

The shots are really nice, so I don’t really want to do much to take away from them. I’m just going to add some spanish guitar under it and no effects. I kind of have to add music to this part because during the field shoot, the photographers left their car running, so you can hear the motor running during a lot of it. And during the beach shoot, it was pretty windy so you can hear the wind blowing against the camera mic. Also during the beach part, it started to drizzle a bit and a drop got on my lens, so I had to take time to clean it and as a result lost a minute or so of b-roll.

Could not really get close to the bride and groom during the field and beach stuff, so I did a lot of wide shots to show off the locations. The field was like a jungle and as I went through the grass to get a shot the only thing I could think is that some sort of anaconda (or Long Island equivalent) was gonna jump out and eat me.

What one does for their art…

Anyway…

Here is the continuation of Dara and Jedd’s wedding. This clip follows immediately after the last one below. It’s just more of her getting ready in the room, then her seeing her soon to be husband for the first time that day. They did the first meeting by the same window she took her pictures in front of and we all know what I think of shooting in front of windows.

I did not think I was going to get anything good here, but actually did. The most important thing is getting the kiss and somehow I managed to get an open angle despite the limited room. Just like the cake cutting, the first meeting is really more for the photographers than anything else. They are always directing when to turn, how many steps to take, when to stop. I think the couple always thinks its going to be spontaneous, which is not the case. Then when they kiss for the first time, they always make them hold it for a long time. I’m not criticizing, just making an observation.

I like the first shot of the bride kind of standing there looking nervous, then the shot of her playing with the ring. Totally cheated there, but that’s what editing is. Also like the slow pace of her putting on the necklace and veil. There was a lot of talking when she was doing it. Some of the background talking I left, because it helps play up when she says that she is leaving to take pictures- kind of funny that she’s having this big moment for herself that day and everyone is just doing their thing in the room. Kind of “hello, I’m getting married!” Funny, but I’m not sure if it’s something that people will get, just very subtle joke.

When her mother walks in the room, I had to replace a lot of that audio to make the shot work because the talking in the background was just to distracting. A lot of it just popped in and out really quick, so I had to replace it. It was just 5 or 6 frames here and there, but it took like 20 minutes just to make it fit. You can kind of see their lips moving a bit and there is not anything being said for a couple frames. I’m just going to say that they are speaking too low to hear, OK?

Last thing. I really like that the sun had not yet come out that day. It rained really hard in the morning and still cloudy at this point of the day. Think the lack of sunlight gives it all a nice atmospheric feel…. if that makes any sense. The sun came out later for the ceremony, so it all worked out nicely, but here the lack of it is a nice touch.

Anyway…

Here is the next wedding, Dara and Jedd.  Sometimes you have a lot to show, sometimes you don’t.  That’s why not too much posting lately. Their wedding took place on Shelter Island.  Had to take a ferry to get to it and did not sink, so I figured that was a good sign.

This clip is the beginning and Dara getting ready.  After the initial establishing shots it just kind of gets into it right away with the photos. Other than one fade, it’s pretty much all straight cuts.  I am over feeling I need to fade all the time between shots.  No music here as well.  The less music you use the better.  And a new font for text!  Just white on black- simple, minimalist.

I like it because right after this is her meeting seeing the groom for the first time, and I tried to edit it to give a sense of anticipation and nervousness beforehand.  Cut out all the smiles except for maybe one laugh, tried to put in a few quiet moments to herself.  I like how the first shot of her is just the close up of her eyes, kind of a striking first image of someone.  Again, close-ups of the eyes are always my thing.  I can kind of tell how well the day went if I get shots of certain things I like to use, but do not necessarily need to complete a wedding, and the eyes are one of the big ones.

When they take the photos by the window in the hall, that was just killing my camera.  Dark hall, strong light source that keeps on changing brightness, not fun to deal with.  And it’s also two photographers in a small space, so a lot of blocked shots.  I was just hanging on the sides of the walls and running the camera the entire time until a spot opened up that I can get a a good shot from.  You can tell a difference in light in some shots.  Some shots I just did not use because of light issues.  It works though.

Not too sure about the stuff with the feet towards the end, may just cut that out.

The bride poses very well here, so I tried to edit it like a fashion shoot.  Don’t know if people can really pick up on it though.  Also shot this differently than usual.  Held shots longer, tried not to have as frenetic a camera.  I think it came out really well.  I watched it all as I was importing all the tapes yesterday and I think there are a lot of really nice shots.  You can’t really tell how well something looks until you actually see it on a monitor on some sort, just watching as you are working tells you nothing really, and I must say I was very pleased.