Shooting Without Needing To Edit

A

andybiz_2005

Well-known member
Hi All,

I just like to share my experience of shooting a full-day (10 1/2 hour) wedding video & not having to edit any of the footage, in post.

What was required of me was to shoot a full-day wedding for a couple on a really shoe-string budget. They could not even afford to pay me for editing the raw footage captured on miniDV into a full-length wedding video complete with transitions. Therefore, I had to be very precise with what scenes I shoot & not record scenes that need to be taken out in post later in an NLE. Everything captured on the miniDV tape had to be uploaded directly into Adobe Premiere Pro & rendered as is, without any touch-ups, etc.

I also threw in an extra challenge for myself. To shoot 10 1/2 hours worth of video in just one 60min miniDV tape. That meant that I had to be extremely, extremely selective when I press the record button & know when to stop recording. This was because I had to give the miniDV tape to the couple after the their DVD was done. All these video shots also had to be in the correct, logical sequence from beginning to end so that there is no need to edit/arrange the clips in post.

I started in the afternoon around 12:00 noon at the brides house. I took some extablishing shots of the house exterior, flower decos. in the living/dining room, bride getting dressed, group video of family, bridesmaids, groom arrival at bride's house, somemore group video of family & friends, prayers & bridal car leaving house for the church where the solemnization was held. Servicre started at 3:00pm sharp. When I arrived at church, I took establishing shots of church exterior, inside where the altar was, floral decos. in the sanctuary, guest arriving, etc. Then I took the bridal march in with the bride & her father walking down the aisle. And the groom receiving the bride from the father near the altar. I videoshot the best scenes of the marriage ceremony from the exchange of vows, to the exchange of rings, the bride & groom kiss, the marriage registration, the lighting of the Unity candle, some songs being sung by the chior & congregation, & the bridal march out of the church.

After this was another session of group video shots of family, relatives & friends. Last was when I shot bride & groom get into bridal car & being shuttled off in a grand vintage Jaguar out of the church. Guess how many minutes the wedding ceremony took up in my miniDV tape? Only 12 min, 35 sec. & 4 frames. I made sure that all scenes were recorded in logical sequence & each rec. start rec. stop lasted for only 3-5 seconds. In essence, I was capturing the essence, the main moments of the wedding ceremony. That meant that I had approx. 47 mins & 25 secs in my miniDV tape for the dinner.

Here comes the dinner. Arrived at the hotel & took a few establishing shots of wonderful greenary surrounding hotel, then shot establishing shots of ballroom, cake, champagne glasses, table settings, flower decorations, etc. Next came arrival of guests into the ballroom & took some group videos of bridal couple with friends. When guests were seated, I videoshot bride & groom enter ballroom, cut the cake & pour the champagne into the champagne glasses & take their seats. Took more candid shots of couple & family members seated at table. Shot food presentation & live band performances plus a speech given by groom's parents. I also videoshot the toasting & towards the end of the dinner, even managed to shoot candid shots of wedding couple take to the dance floor with many other guests joining in to dance too. I managed to successfully capture both the morning & evening wedding shoot in a 60min miniDV tape & still have 15 mins 4 sec. to spare.

After uploading the entire sequence into my NLE (Adobe Premiere), I just hit the "Render To DVD" button & got a really nice DVD produced. Plus the colors & contrast came out just right as I had ensured all my video footage were white balanced properly & the exposure just right. As a result, I did not have to do ANY post editting. This was my first attempt & I managed to succeed :) Yes! :)

Would invite feedback & comments from you all. Thanks.

Andrew
 
It's called an in-camera edit. If you get reasonably good at it, you can make some decent hourly money on the low-end of the business. But forget those 11 hour gigs, and focus on the ones that are under 4 hours and $500. The down sides of these is that a lot is missed and they can be hard to watch, but they do end up with some memories like moving photographs for not very much money.
 
Yep, Galt,

That's true.....the couple paid 500 for this job.....but by sheer luck & a wee bit of shooting skills, the overall full-length video came out surprisingly quite OK, except when a person's head suddenly got into the camera view & I had to quickly hit the "Record Stop" button, compose my shots from a better angle & hit the "Record" button again....sigh! :( Well, that's how it goes.
 
Sounds like a good learning experience. I've worked in film before. The film world is still very traditional. They're not as open to technology as the rest of the industry. They would demand that we edit the footage by hand. That meant hours of splicing footage together. Needless, to say I started making lengthy shot lists like crazy, I would even time the seconds out on my shot list. I tried to do as much in camera editing so i wouldn't have to spend too much time in the lab cutting and splicing film. I think everyone should do a few projects like that. Do they have contests on this website? Maybe they can have an in camera editing contest. Then we could all post our versions in a thread. Although, there would be no way to make sure no one cheated.
 
Editing in camera is a valuable skill. Especially when it means you can help someone meet their budget specifics and still put money in your own pocket.

When I was first starting out as a news photographer in Oklahoma, we used to see who could shoot an entire two minute story with the least amount of tape.

You have to be very alert to do what you attempted. It sounds like you succeeded too! Well done. Editing in the camera will help you with other projects. It makes you more aware of what you do and don't need. There is nothing worse than wasting time and tape capturing something of no value to the final product. There are times you do have to go "fishing" by shooting a lot of extra tape to captrue a certain moment but...it doesn't always have to be that way.

In the end, being able to edit in the camera as you shoot will save you time and money plus make give your clients more options when they are trying to decide how much they can or can not spend.
 
Strangely, I have a couple of jobs coming up where I may have to edit in camera. I normally like to shot as much as possible then edit out the junk. That way you don't miss anything important (hopefully). My next 2 clients though are more concerned with price than quality. Your post is very timely. Thanks.:cool:
 
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