"Same Day"Wedding Edits

J

JRAnderson

Well-known member
Hi all,

I'm thinking about doing a same-day edit for an upcoming wedding that I'll be shooting.

I'd be capturing directly to two notebooks (one per camera) with about three hours in between the ceremony and reception to transer and merge the footage onto one laptop and get, I'm thinking, 5-10 minutes worth of editing on the timeline.

The idea is show the video during the reception, probably towards the end of dinner, along with the couple's love story. Probably not enough time to render, so I would just project straight from the Vegas timeline through a camera-preview connection.

Anyone here done this kind of thing in Vegas before? Am eager for any words of advice, tips or suggestions.
 
if you can preview flawlessly then you probably have the power to render... I'd be worried about Vegas bogging down and dropping framerate during the preview... sounds a bit scare but I guess it could work though

I'd say just plan ahead so when you start cutting you know what will work and you have a decent cut right away

try to get the fastest computer you can there...

that's all I could say about that, sounds a bit crazy but the fun kind of crazy :)
 
If you're going to preview straight out, you need to do some testing first -- you're going to need to make sure that the audio and video will be synched (look at the offset in the preview settings).

In any case, three hours should be plenty of time to do a 5-10 minute edit and render it.

I'm just not sure why you're going to show the ceremony again at the reception.
 
JRAnderson-

Good luck with this. It can be very stressful but have an impact. Why are you doing this? seems like they already have some good entertainment with the love story, but hey, if you want to really wow them, this is a good piece.

keep it short. 5 minutes OR LESS.
hire an extra person to help, you will need it. you can do without, but it will make you crazier and give you a few more grey hairs.

get the music you want to use Before you start and have that stuff in the timeline beforehand as well as the graphics.

David Jimerson said:
I'm just not sure why you're going to show the ceremony again at the reception.
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may seem mind boggling to you, but people love that stuff. the B&G are the focus of the day and even if they saw them smooch in church a few hours prior, they wanna see it again.

i don't do same day edit because i find it too much to do. but some people do this really well and excel at it. i almost did it once to try it out, a throw in on the day of, but I backed out last minute because i was so involved and we had someone new working that day.

oh yes, I also remember I was shooting on a hardrive and the FW connection was, well, not waht I wanted it to be that day.

alexa
 
It is interesting this post came up as I was pasted up on a wedding I was asked to do after they found out I was not willing to provide the couple a 'rough' cut DVD before they left on their honeymoon.

While I only would have had one camera and one laptop to concern myself with, I probably could have done it but decided against it for a couple of reasons;

1. I didn't want to put myself into a big rush to try and get something out and maybe short sight myself from doing the whole wedding and reception the best I could have and normally do.

2. I didn't like the idea of giving the couple any of my raw footage becuase when I would have produced the final real product for them and it say didn't include the raw footage of the brides favorite uncle, I didn't want to be seconded guessed as to what I choose to put into the fional product.

The couple in question are good friends of mind and we all know how things can go when we do business with good friends.......

Just my 2 cents worth!

Jeff
 
Thanks for the responses guys.

As for the why question, I guess my answer is two-fold...

1. Fun -- Coming from a journalism background I enjoy the pressure of a here-and-now deadline. I miss the rush of having to beat the clock.

2. Wow-factor and guerrilla marketing. My sense from reading posts from others who are doing this (click here for a great discussion on the topic at DVInfo.net) is that it's simply the best marketing tool available. Where else could you get such a large pool of potential clients to sit and watch a real-time reel? This is assuming, of course, I can pull it off and do it well.


Alexa, thanks for the advice on keeping it under five minutes. I'm thinking one song's worth should be plenty.
 
JRAnderson said:
2. Wow-factor and guerrilla marketing. My sense from reading posts from others who are doing this (click here for a great discussion on the topic at DVInfo.net) is that it's simply the best marketing tool available. Where else could you get such a large pool of potential clients to sit and watch a real-time reel? This is assuming, of course, I can pull it off and do it well.
Click to expand...

There's certainly something to be said for that . . .
 
I would love the rush aspect of it, heheh... didn't say that cause I thought it would be a stupid thing to say, but I guess it was stupid to think that, hehe... it would have a big impact on people on terms of your image to them... and I do belive it would work on terms of the ceremony... I can see the 5min mark being a good target, possibly shorter, but no less than 3 min and 5min with a nice love story that were pre-edited...

I am quite scared by it, especially if you have two cameras, but I guess it isn't that hard if you have experience... I'd be nervous as crap if this were something I agreed to provide, but I would probably try to pull it off as a surprise if I had a wedding to try it with... can't hurt...

is the reception far from the ceremony? if so you really need someone to drive you... and better not be someone who gets car-sick, lol

what laptop are you cutting it on? SD of course right?
 
Same day edits seem to be very tough.

I think a firestore or something like it would really help. Instant editing instead of real-time capture.

I hope to do a same-day edit one day.
 
Can't be that hard. How long can it take to cut a ~5minute programme?

The only thing is the logistics- shooting direct to disk is obviously essential, and you need to know exactly how long you need to render. I'd render, unless your machine is powerful (and clean) enough to breeze through the footage (including transitions ....?)
 
If you already have a template in place, and especially if your clips are already on hard drives, a same-day edit won't take long at all.
 
yea... I agree... but I would probably second guess myself a few times on regards to the cut... you guys can do this easily...

if you are still contemplating previewing it then perhaps do clean cuts for the same-day footage and drop a rendered love-story project into the timeline with nice transitions and effects... that way those won't lagg down your fps and you will still have cool effects in the project... perhaps you want to do nice CC to a shot or two of the same day stuff... then render those individually and drop back on the timeline like with the love story clip...

but it does sound like one of you more experienced editors could cut and render in the time frame if already in HDDs, if SD and if it is on a nice laptop...
 
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