Wedding Montage

MrGlory

MrGlory

Active member
I shot a wedding (last minute, wasn't supposed to be in town) for an Army Buddy that returned home from Iraq 2 months ago.

As such, I didn't have a tripod with me, and had to borrow a terrible cheap setup, but it worked.

Wedding Montage - 45MB H.264 @ 931kb/sec 480x270 [It's setup to stream, but I'm hosting this on my unit's server so I might have to yank it if the bandwidth gets hit too hard.]

First cut, no CC yet (except for a section of the reception that is obvious if you watch that far, it was getting really dark and the footage was showing it, so I used DFT 55MM "Overexpose"). Camera was at Cinelike D, Master Ped -4.

I'd love to hear any thoughts, critiques, especially on adapting to the different lighting scenarios present.
 
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Your shot composition is great, the footage looks very nice... I think the intro titles and music is a wee bit corporate for weddings... I'm being ultra picky, but I'm sure the clients will love it...

chris
 
Nice.

I wasn't exactly blown away by your compositions but this is a wedding and customers tend to want simple stuff rather than anything really interesting.

I think you might want to saturate your colors a bit more though given it's a wedding and you want a warm feeling. You can pull that off fine in CC though especially since you got 4:2:2 colorspace to play with.

My curiosity actually is what were you shooting with? Must be a firestore since all those slow mo shots means you'd burn through P2's like no one's business.
 
Nice work. I liked mcuh of the framing. I thought the colors looked nice and natural outside. I'm sure your clients will absolutely love it. The need for light is very apparent in the indoor shots. I felt the opening credits were too grandiose and out of preportion for a wedding video, no big deal there but there was one problem I had and it goes for many many other owners of the hvx: ENOUGH WITH THE F...ING SLOW MOTION. I'm sorry but it's driving me nuts. I know it's so cool to finally have a camera that can do it, and when and if I get mine I'll go nuts with it as well, but using it for two thirds of the video? In just about every type of film or video ever done, what percentage of it is in slow motion? I"m sure it's less than a one percent. With all of the out of control hvx owners a future critique of a clips might read, something like . . . "Nice footage, just curious, the little clip near the end, how did you justify using normal speed for it?"
 
Very sweet looking wedding vid. Compared to a DV wedding this is lightyear's ahead in quality and look... It just plain looks expensive... those shots popping in and out of the trees is the money.. Loved that. Low-light looks passable and I can understand the filtering that you did to hide that... not a favorite look of mine but might be better than the camera source... so all's good there. Also, The opening text does seem out of place and grandiose is the perfect word for it.. Also I have really enjoyed the ability to use slow motion in a more subtle way... on a 24 frame rate.. 26 or 28 looks sweet and just adds a little bit of more impact without drawing too much attention to the effect...


But overall there can't be enough slow-motion... I know people are doing it online and we maybe hypersensitive to this as it's a NEW feature.. and everyone is doing it... but so is madison avenue.. and everything on TV. Watch one hour .. or for that matter, watch one stretch of TV adds adn I can guarantee you'll see atleast one if not more commercials completely done from beginning to end in slow-motion... I think that probably a good percentage of every hour has something so overdone... but frankly.. I like it when it's done and edited, and paced well.


thanks for sharing and keep it up....
 
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Oh, I think there can be WAY more than enough slow motion. It just gets tedious. However, that's an artistic thing. The sad fact is that the people who pay us to do weddings love all the slow motion and probably would want an obscene amount of it because it's a new feature and it looks cool. When you're shooting stuff like this, you have to resign yourself to the fact that you're doing stuff for a client how may not have the best taste in the world.
 
Don't get me wrong fellas. I love slow motion. The dramatic enhancement it can give a moment is obvious. I do quite a bit of directing for the stage and in half the plays I have directed I have had my actors do a slow motion moment but when it's overdone it looses its effect. I'm sure the guy who marrys a nymphomaniac is very happy for the first six months but . . .
 
Hey guys, thanks for the feedback. I know what you mean about the slowmo, my "excuse" is the single camera. It made it a lot easier to cut to different looking scenes by letting you soak in a moment via slowmo without having another angle. Especially in this wedding's case, the ceremony was so short I probably could've edited it real time in the same length. For weddings I'm sure there will be more slow than less for the epic effect of a few short moments in life.

DavidBeier said:
I wasn't exactly blown away by your compositions but this is a wedding and customers tend to want simple stuff rather than anything really interesting.
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What kind of interesting shots do you mean, anything in particular? I've seen a LOT of really lame wedding videos, but nothing has ever stood out as an interesting shot either. I didn't get paid for this so I am honestly interested in what you would think sets a good wedding video apart, should a paying opportunity present itself. I think a lot has to do with the "run&gun" aspect while having to be invisible too.
 
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It's hard to quite articulate what makes a good shot. One can spend a lifetime trying to figure it out. Please don't think that I meant to claim that this was a "lame wedding video." I think it was very competant and a large use of slow motion mixed with a lot of relativly simple shots is most likely what will make your clients happiest.

Anyway, interesting shots, to me at least and it's something that is very subjective, tend to be ones that remind me of a good painting. Ones where the power of the composition, ususally using interesting perspectives, allowing some objects to be large in the frame with others small and shots the force your eye to move accross them and accentuate things in complex ways (not through shallow focus which I'm not a fan of).
 
PLEASE CHOOSE DIFFERENT SONGS!!! I felt like I was watching the opening of a trade convention. Something more romantic.

Also, it might be a good idea to remove your company's name and logo in the beginning. Remember, it's the couple's time to shine, not your company's.

I would like to have seen more closeups of people's faces. That's where you really see their emotions. Weren't there any impromptu moments? Someone crying? Someone laughing. Someone making a fool of themself? These are the kind of things people look for when they rewatch videos.

Anyways, good effort. Good luck with your next project.
 
you can use tons of slow motion on wedding work... just make more cuts... back in the day :) lol when I did weddings... I would at times average around 4 seconds a slow motion shot durring the intro, photo session, and vignettes...

I closed down my wedding business about 3 years ago to move to LA... I actually finished shooting weddings over 2 years ago, but here's a couple of my old demos as for example... sorry about the small size they where compressed a while back... even though these are demos... my intros and photosessions look comprable to the demos perhaps shorter so you could still get an idea from this...

http://www.pulsecinemamedia.com/DM/

regards,

chris
 
menchifus said:
PLEASE CHOOSE DIFFERENT SONGS!!! I felt like I was watching the opening of a trade convention. Something more romantic.
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Wow, now that's all I think of when reviewing it. You're right, I was using those remixes of "Clocks" based on their request for Coldplay without rehashing the most overplayed song in existence.

C-Mac, those demos were amazing, were you able to coordinate specific times alotted for you to film the couple exclusive of the ceremony? I've never seen such smooth use of motion in wedding videos like that.

The intro text/titles were just placeholders (my buddy does the formal title work), I'll be reworking the music now anyway ;).

As for the gear, I was using an 8gb and 4gb card along with the P2 store for a total of 25gb of footage in abut 4-5hours. I gotta say, not being able to shoulder the camera is going to take some getting used to. I haven't done anything unmounted with this camera yet, and when the bride passed behind the heads of the standing croud, I took the camera off the tripod and ran down in front of the crowd and kneeled only to realize there was no real way to hold the camera steady and focus (I'm used to the XL1's shoulder pad). Does anyone know of a shoulder mount/brace that can be attached and still allow the camera to be placed on a tripod?
 
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Thanks bro... I never really spent a lot of time, however some brides would ask for 15 minute video shoots giving up some of their photo shoots... mostly I would just ask to do a shot here and there during half time (photo session) I always mentioned it to clients pre booking... just noting if they liked certain things and I saw something great we could do at their wedding, I might ask... if they felt like time did not permit... no harm... everyone was very receptive to things I mentioned....


chris


MrGlory said:
Wow, now that's all I think of when reviewing it. You're right, I was using those remixes of "Clocks" based on their request for Coldplay without rehashing the most overplayed song in existence.

C-Mac, those demos were amazing, were you able to coordinate specific times alotted for you to film the couple exclusive of the ceremony? I've never seen such smooth use of motion in wedding videos like that.

The intro text/titles were just placeholders (my buddy does the formal title work), I'll be reworking the music now anyway ;).

As for the gear, I was using an 8gb and 4gb card along with the P2 store for a total of 25gb of footage in abut 4-5hours. I gotta say, not being able to shoulder the camera is going to take some getting used to. I haven't done anything unmounted with this camera yet, and when the bride passed behind the heads of the standing croud, I took the camera off the tripod and ran down in front of the crowd and kneeled only to realize there was no real way to hold the camera steady and focus (I'm used to the XL1's shoulder pad). Does anyone know of a shoulder mount/brace that can be attached and still allow the camera to be placed on a tripod?
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Those looked great c-mac. I've been thinking about doing some wedding videos myself to at least pay for my gear.

Can you give me an idea of your set up? Number of assistants, camera, lights, etc?

What is the average total running time of a wedding video? Are they usually just images set to music or do you have interviews and stuff in there?

Thanks.
 
Menchifus...

I used a combo of 4 cameras Sony PD150, 2 VX200s, and a TRV900, all camera are represented in the demos...

I used small tripods, Bogen 501 head attached to 3011BN sticks... I developed a style of shooting with the small sticks that I gave presentations on at WEVA... over time though I went to nearly all hand held... and would say my demo is 95% hand held work...

I used 2 wireless systems, and 2-3 mini disc recorders...

For lighting I use a tota bounced into an umbrella for the first dance and parent dances... use a dimmer so you don't have to pop the light on... After the big events we would break down the tota and simply shoot with Sony's 10/20 watt light... I placed diffusion under it's glass to soften it up...

A wide angle lens is needed... in fact I shot with a zoom through wide angle on the front of my camera 90% of the time...

I brought out one camera operator assistant... sometimes 2...

My average wedding was an hour and 10 minutes.... footage such as bridal prep, locations shots, and photo session... were edited to music... ceremonies where cut shorter with music under certain areas... dance footage trimmed but used to natural sound... toasts etc... natural sound, and a highlight cut to music...

no interviews for me... I did them when I first got started, but as my prices when up, I removed them all together...

chris
 
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