Wedding in 24p

steveandbelinda

steveandbelinda

Active member
I have a wedding to do on the 20th, and wondering, is there much difference in shooting normal (60i) compared to 24p? And what demands or different is it in editing? I use Vegas Pro 8.
Also can I ask, others that do weddings, do you somehow backup your audio by using an Edirol, or Zoom digital recorder?
Steve
Digital Video Designers
 
For the most part, I've shot weddings using 60i just because of the lighting factor -- 24p generally requires a little more light to look good, and a lot of the churches and halls I've shot in were pretty low lit. I assisted someone else with a wedding shoot, and they shot in 24p and told me that they always did.

My advice would be to shoot it in 60i unless the client asks for 24p, and then make them aware that certain lighting situations may not produce the best results in that format.

Never backed up the audio -- always ran it straight to the DVX from the sound board of where we were shooting or from a camera mounted mic for when I'd go mobile.
 
Is there an easy way to tell me how to do that? I usually mic the groom for the vows, and use the DVX100B onboard mic for sound, then switch over to wireless mic on groom durning the vows , then switch back when vows are done, but there's a glitch in the audio when you switch back and forth, which doesn't sound too professional. Probably really need to know how to hook to churches soundboard, like you said, just don't know how.
Steve
 
There are pro's on here that probably have a much better way of doing things than I do it.

It depends on the set up of where you're at. For example, next Saturday I'm shooting a wedding in a brand new church with a nice new audio system and everything in the place is already miced -- there are mics where the vows will be made, etc. and its al geared so everyone can hear what's going on. I just run an XLR cable from their soundboard to the camera and I'm done -- I get the vows, the readings, and everything else going on with the ceremony.

Now, if they don't have a sound system or it's an outside wedding, I typically mic the minister, not the groom, and I place the mic a little lower than you normally would if you were just trying to hear one person. Reason for this is that the minister is in the middle, and with the mic a little lower it will hopefully be about equal distance from the bride, the goom, and the minister's mouth. It usually sounds pretty good, but you have to raise the levels a little to compensate for the lower mic and so if there's any background noise (which there usually isn't at weddings, but I've had some experiences where something or another happened) you might pick it up.

I wouldn't use the built-in mic. Get a good directional mic -- I like the Octava hyper-cardoid for interviews, etc, because you can get it close enough to drop the levels and get some good sound without a lot of background noise. For the toasts, again it depends on the setup -- if they're going through a sound system I try to patch into it and take it from their system, otherwise I try to use a shotgun mounted on the camera (and a few times I've had my assistant sneak close up with one of our mics).

For the dances (first dance, father/daughter, son/mother, etc.) I run it with any of the mics -- doesn't matter much because in editing I get a copy of the actual song and lay it over the video -- usually I'll blend it with the room noise and what the actual mic is hearing of the song in the vey beginning and then fade that out as I fade in the good copy of the song, then do the reverse at the end of the song so you get the applause, etc.
 
LandfillBrian said:
It depends on the set up of where you're at. For example, next Saturday I'm shooting a wedding in a brand new church with a nice new audio system and everything in the place is already miced -- there are mics where the vows will be made, etc. and its al geared so everyone can hear what's going on. I just run an XLR cable from their soundboard to the camera and I'm done -- I get the vows, the readings, and everything else going on with the ceremony.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that can work really well, if the church has a good mixer. Pick up a long Male XLR to TRS (20 ft) since every mixer has a TRS headphone out. Use the headphone out, it'll give you a separate volume control out, and that should be about 3/4 the way cranked.

LandfillBrian said:
Now, if they don't have a sound system or it's an outside wedding, I typically mic the minister, not the groom, and I place the mic a little lower than you normally would if you were just trying to hear one person. Reason for this is that the minister is in the middle, and with the mic a little lower it will hopefully be about equal distance from the bride, the goom, and the minister's mouth. It usually sounds pretty good, but you have to raise the levels a little to compensate for the lower mic and so if there's any background noise (which there usually isn't at weddings, but I've had some experiences where something or another happened) you might pick it up.
Click to expand...

Sound travels down, so I would actually place a directional mic (like a cardioid condenser facing up from the ground. Maybe get a table top mic stand and place it on the ground maybe on a lower step than the altar, and face it up to head height in the center of the bride, groom, and minister.

LandfillBrian said:
I wouldn't use the built-in mic. Get a good directional mic -- I like the Octava hyper-cardoid for interviews, etc, because you can get it close enough to drop the levels and get some good sound without a lot of background noise. For the toasts, again it depends on the setup -- if they're going through a sound system I try to patch into it and take it from their system, otherwise I try to use a shotgun mounted on the camera (and a few times I've had my assistant sneak close up with one of our mics).
Click to expand...

Agreed...150%: don't use the built in mic.

LandfillBrian said:
For the dances (first dance, father/daughter, son/mother, etc.) I run it with any of the mics -- doesn't matter much because in editing I get a copy of the actual song and lay it over the video -- usually I'll blend it with the room noise and what the actual mic is hearing of the song in the vey beginning and then fade that out as I fade in the good copy of the song, then do the reverse at the end of the song so you get the applause, etc.
Click to expand...

Again, agreed. Thats actually how music videos and concert videos are shot. I shot a concert, and the applause was actually part of the cd recording, but you don't have that luxury, so fading back during the last few measures of the song will work great for you.
 
I shot one wedding as a gift to our nephew back in 06' & shot it in 24p. I did the dance in 60i due to low lighting. I edited it all in 60i timeline & everything looked great.

The lighting in the church was fine but if you are concerned just up your iris a bit then brighten a little more in post if you need to.

As far as sound is concerned, your on board mic is great for ambient, but thats about it.

You'll have to mic the groom & if thats not possible, see if you can jack into the ministers system,(make sure you have plenty of cable).

Steve
 
If you're in a church, mics will be hooked up to speakers and will probably be pretty loud. You could get a shotgun and place it by a speaker or you could put it in a discrete place near the bride, groom and minister facing up. Just tape down the cord because last time someone tripped on mine and ruined the vows...
 
Yea, it is in church. I have already talked to the priest, and sounds like he and the groom will be mic'd so everyone hears the vows over the sound system, so I guess I need to figure out where their sound board is, and how long a cord I need. So since I haven't done the sound board thing before, I just hook the XLR cord into the "Input 1 on camera, and other end to soundboards headphone jack?
If this is the case I won't need to mic the groom, which will eliminate the switching back and forth from camera mic to wireless mic.
 
I would hook it up to input 2 so for the actual ceremony, you can have that source on your L and R and then after, you can immediately switch both channels to the built in mic.
 
I've only done a little bit of wedding work in 24P and it looked very nice. Normally I do 60i for the lighting and simplicity of mixing with any of my subs that might not have a 24P option. It's a good look though. Low light is only an issue during the ceremony...I run an on-camera light during the reception.

I never run out of the board...I'm sure many people have had good experiences with that, but from my experience, the people running sound at an average church are volunteers, and often don't really know anything about audio. So my levels come out hot, or they do something that cuts the audio....or something.

I use a Zoom H4n and get it in front of the house speakers to capture officiant, scripture readers, music, etc. For the groom, I use the wireless and get bride/groom/officiant there as well. And then I also run a shotgun mic on the camera, but that's seldom used with all my other options running. More of a backup really.

For the reception, I can ask the DJ to plug my H4n to the board for music, toasts, etc. I do dance montages to cut time (open dancing, not the main dances), and this gives me the best music reproduction. I'll mix the on-board shotgun in to get a little bit of room reverb and sounds of the guests. If the DJ is too limited or dumb, or it happens to be an iPod DJ, I will just set the H4n on a small boom arm near the speakers and get house sound that way.
 
LandfillBrian said:
Now, if they don't have a sound system or it's an outside wedding, I typically mic the minister, not the groom, and I place the mic a little lower than you normally would if you were just trying to hear one person. Reason for this is that the minister is in the middle, and with the mic a little lower it will hopefully be about equal distance from the bride, the goom, and the minister's mouth. It usually sounds pretty good, but you have to raise the levels a little to compensate for the lower mic and so if there's any background noise (which there usually isn't at weddings, but I've had some experiences where something or another happened) you might pick it up.
Click to expand...

JCal11379 said:
Sound travels down, so I would actually place a directional mic (like a cardioid condenser facing up from the ground. Maybe get a table top mic stand and place it on the ground maybe on a lower step than the altar, and face it up to head height in the center of the bride, groom, and minister.
Click to expand...

Another technique that I've used, even with a sound system, is a "boundary" mic placed on the altar, the communion rail, or somewhere else near where the pastor and the couple will be.

JCal11379 said:
Yeah, that can work really well, if the church has a good mixer. Pick up a long Male XLR to TRS (20 ft) since every mixer has a TRS headphone out. Use the headphone out, it'll give you a separate volume control out, and that should be about 3/4 the way cranked.
Click to expand...

"Every" may be a bit of an exaggeration here; certainly most good mixers do, but a lot of churches have chosen to go in a more, shall we say, "inexpensive" direction. I've seen entire churches run off a Peavey 70V mixer/amp, and you're not going to get anything useful out of that.

Plus, even on a good mixer, the headphone is not always getting the same mix that's going to the speakers. If the church's sound guy used the headphones to do a monitor mix last Sunday, or if nobody's ever used the headphones and one or two of the "PFL" buttons have been pushed... you're not going to get anything useful there, either.

Not saying that this would never work, but it's not exactly bulletproof.
 
steveandbelinda said:
I usually mic the groom for the vows, and use the DVX100B onboard mic for sound, then switch over to wireless mic on groom durning the vows , then switch back when vows are done, but there's a glitch in the audio when you switch back and forth, which doesn't sound too professional.
Click to expand...

Just noticed this post. I did this exactly once, on the spur of the moment when something was thrown at me that i wasn't prepared for, and doing it that once cured me of ever doing it again. :) The "proper" way to do this would be to record the internal mic to one track and the wireless to another (although I would agree with those who have suggested to not use the built-in mic), and then mix the tracks in the editing process.

Honestly, in my experience, even that wireless on the groom (assuming it's a decent quality omnidirectional) is going to pick up what's going on in the church at least as well as the built-in on the camera, so I personally would go with that all the way through rather than switch. (Obviously, you run the risk here of picking up something that the couple doesn't want immortalized for the ages :D, so it's good to have something else to go to.)
 
That's why I am torn between the onboard mic for the whole service, except for the vows, then switch off grooms mic after vows, and back to camera mic. The wireless is Sennhieser (or however it is spelled) I just don't like the switching noise that is created. I believe the priest said that him and the groom was going to be mic'd with the church's wireless, I just have to check to make sure that is what he said. I probably will go down to the church Thursday and check out the sound system to see what is there.
 
I guess I'm not sure why you have to switch off the groom's mic at all....? Assuming you only need the onboard mic and the wireless mic, just use your switches on the camera and set each channel to each mic and leave it alone. You can split the channels and manage your audio in post.

Once I put the wireless on the groom, I leave it turned on. Also a good way to know as quickly as possible if the groom has removed or moved his mic since I put it on. A lot people start hugging each other and messing around in the 30 minutes before a wedding, so it's not completely unusual to have that mic get messed up in the process.
 
I guess I am just not sure what to set the switches at, to do it that way, and if I could get myself in a real jam in the editing process (doing the audio a different way than I am used to)
I don't seperate the audio from the video, as some have told me they do. I edit them together. Other reason I switch the groom on and off at the camera is that I don't want audio of him moving around, talking to his buddies etc. prior to coming in the sancuary . I just want to get it right, and using a sound board is something that I haven't done, and setting up audio different than I am used to is kind of scarry if it should come out bad, and I don't have another backup source for the audio.
 
Let's assume you have just two mics....your on-board mic on the camera, and a wireless unit. You have two channels of switchable audio available to you. On the left channel, you can have internal (left) audio, OR input 1 (XLR) OR input 2 (XLR). On the right side, you can have internal (left) audio, OR input 2 (XLR).

So just plug your wireless mic (the groom's mic) into input 2, select the right side channel audio to "input 2" and then leave the left side channel set to "internal" (left). That way, your internal mic is always capturing whatever sounds there are hitting your camera's mic, and the groom's mic is always capturing whatever he (or the bride, or the officiant) has to say.

In editing, it is usually quite easy to split the audio channels so that you can select the groom's audio track ONLY when his speech is required (hey, most grooms learn early on just to shut up until they're called upon, right?). I could show you explicit instructions on how to do this in Premiere Pro if that is your editor, but regardless of your NLE software, there is an easy way to do this.

Regarding your fears.......honestly, I would be more scared that I would FORGET to turn on the groom's mic, thereby missing the audio altogether (I did it once, forgetting to turn it on until about halfway through...now I just set my channels accordingly and record the groom from the moment I put the mic on). So in my opinion, if you really just want to get it right, then you probably want to eliminate as many steps from your procedure as possible - such as making sure your brain remembers to turn audio on and off while you're also trying to focus on framing, focus, zoom, positioning, etc.

And remember that fear usually just indicates some sort of inexperience. Confidence springs from practice, repetition, and usually a handful of successful attempts. You never know what you can do until you try....and this audio scenario is really so simple that you will probably find yourself asking why you ever tried to do it any other way.
 
I really appreciate your feedback. You're right, fear can be sometimes from inexperience. I have done 3 weddings, and still not real confident. Although my son is getting married in Oct. and he said that some of the videographers that they talked to didn't have as good of a product after finished as I have had. Ego booster. I use Vegas Pro 8 as my editor, and Adobe Encore as my authoring choice. I have assumed that you needed both channels of audio to be the same for the stereo sound. I guess I should have not assumed again. I have to get batteries for the wireless, then I will try it here at the house, and put the clips into Vegas to see what you are talking about in the way of splitting the audio. I know that in Vegas I can put an audio envelope on the wireless channel (or track) and turn the volume for that track down to nothing, till the vows are taken, then turn the volume up. Oh, but the audio track is one track, and the volume envelope pertains to that one track, unless I can make two tracks of audio. I will check Vegas and see if that is possible, I'm sure that it probably is.
 
You might have a look down in the Vegas forums for some hints on how to "mix" the audio tracks in post; I'm pretty sure it's possible but have never done it myself.
 
Haven't used vegas in a looooong time...but yeah, it can be done.

As for wedding video quality...yeah, there are a lot of really crummy videographers out there, but they are the exception. As with any profession, you'll find that a few rotten apples can ruin the bunch. I feel like I have to fight for a wedding contract sometimes, but once people see my work (and then their finished product), they tend to be quite surprised. Their expectations are so low because of all the bad videos they've seen.

To be honest, I've heard more wedding photo horror stories than I have videographer horror stories (but then, the photography is generally much more important as well).

And I'll just say it now....I never do the slo-motion "dreamy" effect with the soft piano music in ANY wedding videos I produce. I've seen it WAY too much and it does nothing for me. Just lulls me to sleep.....

Sorry if I'm stepping on any toes, but for me, it's way too cliche nowadays.
 
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