Eric (aka X-angel) first wedding recap

x-angel

x-angel

Well-known member
Since the other Erik thre his work out here, I thought I would too.

I have already found some very rookie mistakes in this one, but I didn't have a lot of footage to begin with, and it was my wifes first time with a camera like this. (yeah...that's right...blame her... ;) ) This had to be one of the most straight forward weddings I have ever seen. 3 hours of prep, 12 minutes at the altar

Seeing how it was a wedding gift (the bride is a friend of my wife's) I just found this shoot to be a good learning experience, and it started my "reel building"

So please be gentle on the critique, like I stated, I have already seen a few mistakes. But an overall opinion would be nice.

heres the link

http://micha-angel.com/videos/jjrecapweb.wmv
(7 MB, 4 minutes)

Also, the player window will come up big than it should, so the video will look, well , internet quality.

Ok...I'll be over here...throw the tomatoes this way. :)
 
well...either no one is impressed...
no one can say anything...
or no one can see...

Just thought I would check :)
 
OK, I'll give it a go. I played it twice, but both times it stopped halfway thru

The shot composition is decent. Color looks OK. I liked the groom waiting at the altar composited with the bride walking down the aisle.

I would re-cut it and lose the zooms in the first few shots. They scream "home movie".

Unless your wife gets much better at handheld shots, I would recommend a monopod. It's a pretty good compromise between maneuverability and steadiness.

That's about it from what I saw.
 
Well you gotta start somewhere. I know that the first wedding I filmed doesn't look anything like what I can do now. (And I'm sure that my future video will look a lot better then what i can produce now.) What is most important is that the couple is happy with what they got. While we can offer our thoughts, it is their that counts in the end.

What I liked:
Choice of song. It seemed to fit the couple well. They seem to like things traditional, and simple and the song fit that.
The camera with the widescreen frame - the exposure was pretty good, and the colors were nice.

What I didn't like:
Wide Screen & No Wide Screen: Pick a style and stick with it. Going back from one to the other became distracting for me. (My guess is that one camera was on letter box, and the other on normal. If so, just add a matte ontop of the other footage to even things out.)
Zooming: Don't zoom just becaus you can. Know what you are going to do before hand and complete the move. It was distracting to see all of those zooms edited on top of each other. And the clip where is zooms in and out and in and out ... I would recommend getting rid of those shots if you can.

Well, congrats on your first wedding. Now the trick is learning from it and producing a better video with the next one you do. (With each wedding I do I find myself learning something that I can apply to the next wedding, making it that much better the next time around.)
 
I appreciate the honest input.

Since some people have pointed it out after I stated I have seen some rookie mistakes:

Yeah I know the widescreen to no widescreen is annoying. That was a really dumbass mistake on my part..you were right, one was on letter box, the other was not. That was my fault. Thats what you get for working with two different cameras for that shoot.

The colring during the ceremony: That church was so darkened. And we were WAAAAY in the back totally zoomed.

My wife wasn't used to working with that type of camera, AND being totlly zoomed (I wasn't so good myself), so thats why there were all those transisitions. Camera shake. She actually did better than I thought.

One thing I did not think about was the zooming during the scene...I can now see it...it does scream home movie...thanks for that tip. (remember...this is just the recap video it isn't that prevelant during the ceremonial stuff. ) I could have edited that better.

I am still waiting for someone to catch the glaring one...I mean the really bad one...Hint: it could be fixed in post production. ( Ifeel like I have opened a can of worms now... :) )

The couple is happy because : a)It was their day. b) it was free c) we are their friends. :)

As for the choice of song, it was the first song that they danced to. :)

But again thanks for the input.
 
x-angel said:
The couple is happy because : a)It was their day. b) it was free c) we are their friends. :)
Click to expand...

That's what matters most.

The first wedding I did I used the VX2000 in frame mode, becuase I though that it would give it that film look - boy was I wrong. I was able to get some great stills off of the video, but it was all strobe like. The couple did like it for the same reasons your couple liked their video. But that was a mistake I did not make again ...
 
yes, just like I will try to never use 2 different types of cameras again. Or if I do, keep them on the same mode.) Thats why I want to invest in at least 2 DVX100A's

Like I said I didn't have that much to work with when it came to this wedding. So "I made do with what I had"

Again thanks for the honest critique...at least you found something good in it :)
 
Shooting events (especially such an emotion laden one such as a wedding) are not for the faint of heart.

I don't do weddings, and shy away from requests from friends, saying that I would much rather "enjoy the day with them".

Shooting with two cams was a good call, even though they were different cams. You never know when you're going to need a safety shot of something when someone gets in front of your "A" cam. Ideally you want similar cams for multi-cam shoots, but you can combine different cams quite well if you pay attention to color balancing and perhaps segregating a particular cam to certain types of shots (one cam mainly wide shots, the other mainly CU's).

Congrats on surviving your first wedding. And as has been pointed out, the couple was happy, so you done good.
 
In my basic package, I state that I will provide 3 cameras. 1 static, 2 dynamic. The static one would probably be one in the balcony focused on the center of the event.

The 1st dynamic would be in the lower level, and the 2nd dynamic would be in the balcony getting different views from up there. Overkill? maybe...but better safee than sorry.

Of course this contigent on the fact that the facility/church/area will allow that. Case in point: this wedding where the church said no more than 2 cameras, and you couldn't be further up than the last guest in the pew.

Of course this is just a "guideline", it could change and the prices of my packages would reflect that.

I guess the only good thing that anyone has found is the song and the fact that the couple was happy. :) (I am a glutton for pity... )
 
Also, make sure you have enough like footage to do your cross dissolves. I saw a couple of times where the another shot popped on right in the middle of the dissolve.
I did a friends wedding and it was A LOT harder than I thought it would be. I kept wanting to yell CUT! so I could change camera angles or fix a mic.
Good luck....
 
I understand your feeling on that.

Like I said...this was one of the most non eventful weddings I have ever attended. (Of course I am Catholic, so I expect more events...)
 
After much reading and researching... I have decided to revamp this clip...

I have been on duty all night, so I'll see what I can accomplish before I crash out.

I plan to do some color correction, and trying to cut out some of those bad zooms.
Maybe some other things.
 
For wedding videos, I good tip I can give you is to use a shoulder-pod from Varizoom. With that, you can do nice steady shot and you will improve dramatically the look of your wedding video!

ElvisNTSC.
 
WEDDINGS?! GAH! COMMITMENT! WHAT A WASTE OF TIME. ITS STUPID.


Oh hold on my wife is calling me...






No, actually I'm 16 and try to fill the enormous void in my life by making people laugh. Forgive my self-psychoanalysis.

And nice vids, except weddings are so boring! Someone should have a wedding where everything explodes.
 
I've found that shooting with 2 cameras is kinda hard, especially if your by yourself. But it makes all the difference in the world! It gives you so much more to work with (Especially if someone get's in the way). In terms of sound quality, I've found that using a GOOD (I emphasize good in order to avoid dropouts with cheap models) wireless mic pack combined with a handheld mono mic on a mic stand aimed at the church's PA system speaker works the best!

The advantage: If your not allowed on the alter, chances are you won't get good audio. But if you use my method, almost everything can be picked up via the mic's they're already using, and there's a very minimalized echo if you put the mic right next to the speaker.

Advantage #2 if the person speaking forget's to pick up the mic and starts speaking, you at least have the excuse that it THERE FAULT you didn't get good audio. :laugh: and the couple will know this because they can see this.

Another tip: I know it's super hard to do in a church, but try and use no gain (It makes footage look terrible) If possible use lights to avoid boosting the gain, and stay in a wide mode.

Also, if using 2 cameras... make sure to white balance to the same colour in the same lighting conditions. (It will make life so much easier in post)
 
Almost forgot! If your doing color correction and effects in after effects, allow yourself ample time to render!

It took me 4 days to render my 1 hour video in AE on my athlon 2500+(1.83ghz) (I thought it was only gonna take 1 full day...haha)

1 pass of: Color corrections (To brighten footage), 1 pass of: magic bullet (To convert to 24p and correct compression artifacts), 1 pass of: magic bullet look sweet (To add more dream like looks), 1 pass of: magic bullet Vignetting look (To add a more filmlike look around the corners), and finally 1 pass of: magic bullet letterboxer (Duh... widescreen bars)
 
thanks for the tips.

I was fooling around with it yesterday, but crashed out...

I am using premier right now...but I guess I need to lean more towards AE.

I am doing this just to tweak my skills.
 
Ok...something weird is going on...
I went and redid the recap to get rid of those god awful zooms, but now I getting a weird rendering problem. I am using Premiere 6.0, and using the "save for web setting", and exporting in Quicktime. But even when I do it in WMV, it still has this issue... I find this strange because it didn't do this last time.

You can see the changes but yet, it looks like ****....

Click here to see it

I dunno...maybe I have been staring at it too long.
 
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