First Wedding Experience with DSLRs

A

allupons

Active member
I recently shot my first wedding with two 7Ds. I put together the teaser/trailer the other day and I would love some feedback on it. I would certainly not mind explaining what it was like to do a first time wedding with all of my prior experiences being exclusively on independent films, if people are interested in that as well. Let me know what you think!



http://vimeo.com/12844607
 
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I'm getting a few offers for weddings and thinking about doing them. I'm not too crazy about doing them though and will probably always get a 2nd shooter even if it cost me a little so I can be put at ease to capture everything.

Few questions for you or anyone else:

How do you do the ceremony. It takes seconds to switch the card or stop and then record again after 12mins. But do you plan it out with the 2nd shooter? What if you are the only one? Try to do it in the dead moments?

Are you able to change lens' at all during the ceremony? It's pretty difficult to do a smooth zoom with a zoom-lens. What are your experiences.

Thanks alot.
 
Not bad. Very artistic. The dolly shots are nice. I especially like the one with the shoes. Best shot is clearly the bubbles. I can look past the blown out window during the ceremony because you had no control over that. Its not like you can start putting bounce cards all over the church.

Really nice. The focus pulling I would keep to a minimum. Personally, I;'ve started to see that a little bit too overdone since the advent of the DSLR's, but to each his own.

You have a very good "eye".
 
So I am shooting my first wedding this Saturday. My plan is to film with my DVX and my friend's HMC, and then B-Roll from my 7D. My main concern is audio...

I have access to two sets of Sennheiser G2 wireless lav's as well as my own shotgun mic. I think my plan is to lav both the bride and the groom and have a shotgun somewhere in the front to capture audio from anyone else speaking. Any thoughts?

As far as cameras... I would most likely operate my friend's HMC and have a second cameraman on my DVX. What do you think would be the best angles for the ceremony? I think the DVX in the back and the HMC in the front left or right of the stage so I can get close ups and the famous shot of the bride walking down the aisle...
 
Thanks for the compliments thus far. I will do my best to answer some of the few questions that have popped up.

Regarding how I shot the ceremony, I had 2 7Ds each with a 32gig CF card inside of them. This basically meant never having to be down for more than a second or two as they can hold more than enough footage to cover the length of the entire ceremony. Each camera also had a backup battery, but this turned out to only be a precaution as there were no power issues whatsoever. Also, both cameras were fitted with 2.8 aperture zoom lenses of 28-75 so that no lens changing of any kind would be necessary during the actual ceremony. I imagine you could bother changing with the B camera, but I didn't want to take that risk at all.

Regarding the angles and audio, first I would mention that for this ceremony the church had their own recording system and we simply ran a line out into our zoom h4n, which turned out very well for us. We just sync our 2 camera's up with that uninterrupted audio and cut back and forth based on which shot we like more etc. As far as angles, we had our A cam locked down on a tripod on the front left of the stage/alter to the side so that we could see the bride and groom's faces throughout the ceremony as the safety shot. Then the B cam was on a simple shoulder rig and walked around getting whatever interesting shots it could find throughout the ceremony. From reaction shots to reverse angle, to wide shots of the couple plus the priest, etc.

Hopefully that is helpful. If I didnt answer something there just let me know.
 
Ok so here is what I am gonna end up doing:
First of all, I can't get the HMC150, so I think I am going to have my DVX in the back and I will get close-ups of the bride, groom, pastor, etc... Then, I will stream my 7D to my MacBook via USB and use the EOS Utility to capture a wide shot of the stage. Then, my second cameraman will be up front with his T2i most likely on a tripod...

For audio, I still need to figure this one out... I got both G2 lav's so I am going to mic the bride and groom (this is an outdoor wedding so no sound system to get into...) But the problem is, I would like to have my shotgun mic on my DVX for nat sound, audio from the crowd, etc... I don't have a field mixer or access to anything like that. Would the audio quality be bad if I were to buy an XLR splitter and plug in both wireless receivers and then the shotgun in my second cam xlr port? I understand that the levels would have to be the same which could pose a potential problem... Any thoughts?
 
Very nice! I really like your style, it is very close to mine. What slider are you using and what is the music you used? Good job!
 
I think I got audio squared away now... I am also borrowing an HVX to replace the DVX so now I can have both lav's go to the HVX and my shotgun go to the DVX.
 
Good to hear you have your angles and audio all worked out andy. It sounds like you are at the point where you just need to shoot the thing, heh.

Thanks for the nice comment Gladiator. The slider is just the cheapo indi-slider(it works fine for only $100, but its nothing special) and the song is the intro song from Finding Nemo, which I think fits the occasion quite nicely.
 
excellent shooting and editing! exposures were well done and like your blowing out (bride) on a few scenes.

very professional looking, congrats!

if this is only your first then your off to an amazing start!

david
www.davidprobst.com
 
Thanks david. I really liked the look of the bride being really blown out in a few shots. It seemed to set a fitting tone. Hopefully its a solid starting point. I was also excited that I got all of those shots except for 1 without forcing the couple to pose at all. I enjoy capturing sincere moments a great deal, but I couldn't resist the urge to pose them together for the shot where he is beyond her shoulder in the window.
 
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