Anyone here a WEVA member?

[FatBird19]

What does the membership provide that I'd actually care to get?

Also, does WEVA provide any legal advice for using copyrighted music?(kinda' an innevitable thing when creating wedding videos)

[Sirius_Doggy]

membership gives you access to private forums and resources and reduced rates on convention attendance. I'm not a member but I"m in the local stagehand union and work the show here in Vegas every year. Pretty cool gig. Last year I ran camera for one of the Adobe Photoshop classes and picked up a lot of knowledge for free (actually I was being PAID!) that others were paying $125.00 to attend.

[FatBird19]

membership gives you access to private forums and resources and reduced rates on convention attendance. I'm not a member but I"m in the local stagehand union and work the show here in Vegas every year. Pretty cool gig. Last year I ran camera for one of the Adobe Photoshop classes and picked up a lot of knowledge for free (actually I was being PAID!) that others were paying $125.00 to attend.

sweet.


anyone know anything about the copyrighted music issue? Does the music industry basically ignore it when it comes to wedding videos?

[Sirius_Doggy]

They don't "ignore" it. It's just too minor of an offense for them to track down and prosecute every tom, dick and harry that's out making wedding videos. I suppose you'd get in serious trouble if you did some famous person's wedding and it got released to the media or something like that.
It is generally frowned on. There's plenty of sources for decent cheap music. Check out http://www.dittybase.com

[LMGvideo]

With wedding videos, if the customer supplies you with the tunes, you don't have to worry about the copyright issue.
As for WEVA, I was a member and didn't get much out of it, I've heard others that have the same opinion. My suggestion is to look on the WEVA site and the 4Ever group Web site and find a local videographers association and join that. This is a good way to network and share information with other videographers that are in your city and know what the big issues and opportunities are.

[Daniel_Runyon]

I've ready close to 100% negative crap about WEVA on the wedding forums I go to. The only people I've really seen praising it are the ones who are presenters at the conventions.

I do know that they havent put out a single issue of the promised WEVA magazine (part of your membership "benefits") in a loooong, loooooooooooong time. They tell you that super low rates on business liability insurance exclusive to members is a benefit, but I got mine at R.V. Nuccio (done through Firemans Fund) at significanly less than the WEVA deal, and R.V. Nuccio is well respected in the wedding videographer trenches.

Also they have some wonderful deal on being able to accept credit cards for your business, but now for 20 bucks a month you can get set up with a PayPal business accound with a virtual terminal and website payments that are transparent to the customer (the PayPal aspect of it is hidden from the customer).

They are supposed to be "representing the industry" but they've spent a fortune on frivilous lawsuits rather than, well, anything whatsoever than benefits the industry. For example, they have some kind of little competition called (I think) the Videographers Challenge, and when they found out that another org had a comp called the same generic thing they went into heavy legal action rather than putting it toward something like lobbying congress to create a reasonable use fee for music liscensing for wedding proffessionals like they have in Austrailia.

I say screw em.

[safarijoe]

I joined a couple of months ago and so far I've been unimpressed. The customer service is non existent and the "package" I got was a joke. To me the most valuable part of the whole deal is the forum and the ability to add your link.

[SilverWolf]

With wedding videos, if the customer supplies you with the tunes, you don't have to worry about the copyright issue.
.

I've heard that from a couple of people but a couple of lawyers I spoke with said that wasn't true. Purchasing the CD only gives you rights to listen to it and make a backup. It doesn't give you the right to make a copy of that song in your production. That's the main reason why I don't do wedding videos because I know the client will want there favorite song on it and I can't put it on there.