Editing Sweet 16's/Weddings. Worst thing ever?

sheeep

sheeep

Active member
Am I the only one who finds editing sweet 16's, weddings, or parties the worst experience ever? I have this unexplainable hatred towards doing them, for some reason it stresses me out to the point where I need to take breaks every hour or so.

Anyone else loathe these things as much as I do?
 
I'm sure everyone has. Its a lot of work and it causes a lot of stress (at least for me sometimes)
 
I wouldn't wish shooting and editing weddings on my worst enemy, it can make you crazy.

OTOH, I have met a few people who are REALLY good at it, they must enjoy doing it to be so good at it. I just did the still photos at my little brothers wedding two years ago and just doing the stills was a nightmare, I can imagine what doing a decent video would be like.

Dan
 
Normally they're not too bad (well, terrible, but still do-able in the end), but this one was a terribly low lit club with no visually stimulating anything so trying to make dance-montage parts is making me lose it.

Arggggh.
 
I have worked with some pretty rough pit bulls from Warren Miller to Sharon Osbourne and I can tell you ya won't find a tougher client than the mother of the bride.
Back when I had to do event video, I shot and edited a 3 camera wedding. I took great pride in the post production, adding glows, animated text and perfectly-cut music.
The mother's revision when she watched it?
"why does my daughter look so big!?" she was mad too, like I'm the one who fed her for two decades. I was so surprised that instead of replying with the PC "weeeeeell, the camera doooes add ten pounds, my mouth quickly returns with "because she's fat."
lol
ask a question, get an answer.
I found with the reception, post, ect, man it was a hard way to pay the bills.
Most want to pay what they pay the still photog. Noooo thank you. I'd sooner show up, shoot some stills and bail for that.
I then stapped back and took a different aproach. What if one didn't compete for the wedding video (actually siggest to them athat uncle Bob do this part) what if I offer a top notch music video of the day and show it at the reception, calling it a freakin day when done?
This is not a video of the wedding at all... just great shots to music of the bride, groom and location they are at. Price point is what sold this one. I offered these styarting at $4k rather than a whole wedding video with much more work for a quarter of that price. I marketed it to the high end wedding boutiques as an out of reach service for most... which meant every female in a dress needed one. The higher the price, the more a music video sells itself.
The key is to emphesis it is NOT a wedding video. There will not be a ceremony or reception in it. It's a cool song with perfectly lit steadycam love teated as much as it can be before the reception begins. It's played as the highlight of the evening next to the throwing of the bouqet.
You can charge as much as you like for these once you have a few to show. Mother of the bride often has what I call Neimen Marcus syndrome. This is a crazyness that looks for the highest price of everything so she can go tell her friends how much she paid.
Use this to your advantage and can indeed get realistic video production rates at a wedding.
 
I once had to edit nine different video walls synchronized to the same Moby song for a cable channel. That drove me insane. Time to look for a new job.
 
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i've got a project that requires synced content for 19 led displays. its maddening, but i like the producers im working with and we're all in it together. makes a big difference.
 
sheeep said:
Anyone else loathe these things as much as I do?
Click to expand...

Yes. Needed the extra income for a few years, but was SO happy when I quit doing them. I won't even shoot a friend's wedding.

What made my situation worse, was the fact that I was being subcontracted shoots for a DJ company, and had to use their equipment. That's great, no use of mine. But the equipment was amateur and faulty at times. I told them all the time that they needed to upgrade and do things differently, but never listened. It's so hard to stand there and shoot video during the vows, hear crackling audio from a wireless lav mic, and know there was nothing I could do... I hated it because it made me feel like it was my fault their equipment was awful.
 
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