The Digital Video Information Network - Wedding / Event Videography Techniques

Detroit Economy

Tom Sessions — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:26:56 GMT

Just wondering what effect a 15% unemployment rate has on wedding videography sales.
Have you had to cut your prices to the bone or what?
What are the average prices in that area. Have they gone down over the last couple of years?

Bride and Groom staying on Wedding night at the reception venue?

Colin McDonald — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:14:22 GMT

Right all you guys and gals who do dozens of weddings a year, do you happen to know what proportion of newlyweds choose to stay their first night at the reception venue? I find this a idea a bit bizarre, especially if there are other wedding guests staying on as well. The idea of meeting over breakfast, well it seems a bit "Wicker Man" to me - like some old fishing village ritual where the whole population witness the consummation. OK, maybe that's a bit OTT but you get my drift.

In my day, the B & G changed into their going-away stuff and drove away, often with silly (and noisy) things done to the car. It was always a closely guarded secret where the couple went on their honeymoon. After the B&G left, the guests got to relax a bit more and the Bridesmaids and Best Man could consider themselves "off duty" and could unwind.

Am I totally out of touch?

Not Marketing - Honest Opinions Wanted

Mark Hendren — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:26:14 GMT

Hey folks,

We just launched a new website with a new logo. I would love to hear any feedback about it that you can give. I'm not trying to market to folks here, I just want to give my clients the best possible site and the best possible product I can.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Mark

"I don't need a mic"

Asvaldur Kristjansson — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:25:38 GMT

Filming speakers at weddings and meetings I have had this comment about placing a mic on them, "I don't need a mic, my voice is loud enough". I have had sometime during lecture that I mic the speaker and he wears it during the main talk but rip it off then it comes to andswering questions from the audience. And on other occation the speaker promise to stay put by the podium mic but wanders off and even goes in front of the podium. This is mainly if the venu is small and no need to amplify.

Now I say that I NEED them to wear a mic no matter what.

dealing with wind

Paul Mailath — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:05:45 GMT

I often make the mistake of having curry the night before a wedding shoot... no, not that kind of wind.

I do a lot of outside weddings and I've just finished a marathon effort trying to get rid of the wind on a really bad gusty day. How to I prevent or minimise the problems?

I use 3 seperate sources of audio and I still have problems. it's a pain in the butt - like the other kind of wind.

3D Same Day Edit Picture PROOF

Michael Gebben — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:56:47 GMT

So I don't have the video online yet but at the last wedding of this year my buddy shot in 3D and we showed an SDE in 3D at the end of the night. We also did another completely different SDE also. I will post more details and the video later. I don't know all the answers so I'll have to ask my friend. In the meantime we have been shooting 3D for awhile check out our 3D wedding demo

3D Wedding Demo! on Vimeo

But here is a picture from the wedding :)

Attached Thumbnails

Music for PSA

Tom Sessions — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:45:57 GMT

I want to use a song by Sarah McLachlan for a PSA. If the video is used for a non-profit women's organization, do I still need to get permission to use it so they can use it on their website?

Also, how would I go about getting the permission? Anyone have contact info to do this?

Here is the video if you want to see how it is used:

www.bluestarvideo.com/videos/WPSA.wmv

Bridezilla Tales

Jim Snow — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:16:30 GMT

The television show "Bridezilla" is entertaining but is obviously very scripted. I would like to hear true experiences that you have encountered with real-life Bridezillas. How did you deal with it? Few things are more stressful than a wedding and some people just don't handle it very well which can result in some strange behavior.

In a related vein, have you had any clients get cold feet and cancel the wedding on the day of it?

Dance concert in progressive?

John Mitchell — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:22:46 GMT

Hi all - I only shoot a couple of concerts a year and in the past i've always shot them SD but this year I won't have that option as a couple of the cams I'll be shooting only shoot in HD. (JVCHM700's - the other cameras JVC101E's which will shoot standard def)

The only common format to all 4 cameras is 720P25 - I'm wondering if this will work with how fast dance concerts can move or whether I'll see too much progressive "stutter" - I'm assuming that if I do it this way I'll shoot 720P25 with 1/50th shutter.

My other option would be to shoot the two older cameras in SD and shoot the newer cams in 1080i50 and downconvert in post.

The other question is just simply how to then get the best results downconverting to SD-DVD? I use Avid and ProCoder and have CS3, BorisRED etc... so plenty of options.

SDEs have changed my business..going to SDE ONLY $$$$ and NO BACKLOG

Michael Gebben — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 07:21:12 GMT

I LOVE SDEs so much that for the most part that is all we are pushing. Next year we already have 12 weddings booked for $3500 (also about 8 others ones booked with other stuff ;( and all they will get as a final product is a SDE like the one we just did

Erin & Adam- Same Day Edit on Vimeo

and one camera angle of the ceremony and reception. We will film it with multiple angles but those will only be used for the SDE. NO MORE BACKLOG YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Almost 99% of my bookings come from referrels from SDEs. I just love so much the gratification a SDE gives me. It also really pushes me to do my BEST!

Some little tid bits about that recent SDE.

Shot with the canon 7D and 5D.
Lenses used 50 1.4, 24-105 f4, 70-200 f4, 16-35 2.8
Edited in Sony Vegas
Cineform Neo Scene used to convert the files.
Glidecam 2000 used for flying :)
Cinevate Pegasus
Bogen monopod to keep things stable....

Real problem with DVD burning....

Kelsey Emuss — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 01:47:12 GMT

I'm going to pull my hair out!!!!!!!!!!!!

I use Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 for all my editing. And I use Cyberlink DVD for my DVD authoring.

One time (out of 35+ weddings) I noticed that the Guest Comments on a clients DVD had no audio when I played the DVD. The files were fine but burned to the DVD with no audio.

I started the process over and the audio was present the second time. I thought no more about it.

The current wedding that I'm working on is making me crazy...I cannot get the audio in the Guest Comments section to play on the DVD AT ALL! The avi files work fine but when I render them to an actual DVD there is no audio (just for G Comments again which tells me it must be related to how it's captured?) in playback on TV.

I capture audio with an Azden microphone if that matters

Oh and I did a test where I burned to DVD a previous weddings Guest Comments that gave me no problems at the time and guess what...it burned without audio now as well!

I might cry soon I'm getting so frustrated :(

Indian Wedding available. (Chicago area)

Yang Wen — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:08:31 GMT

Don't know if this allowed here but I have a couple I've been speaking to this week about an 2010 Indian wedding in the Chicago area. I'm out of their budget but I figured I'd post their information here to any interested shooters. They have my permission to share their e-mail.

-Friday morning May 7th 2010 2 camera's 2 people same location in downers grove, IL 10:00am -12:00pm
-Friday eve Waterford banquets for raas garba from about 6:00pm-11:00pm
-Saturday May 8th for wedding and reception at the Westin in Lombard, IL.

Budget is $3000. Bride's e-mail is ami.vaidya(at)gmail

Thanks guys.
Yang

7d

Dror Levi — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:22:27 GMT

I posted it over here and not in the 7D section just because it is more wedding related question.

I hear people using fast lenses like f1.8 and 1.4 and I wander how they manage to get things in focus. What I understand is the smaller the F stop, less focus area you have.
so what do you use it for and in what situations?

Mayad studio shooting my wedding !!!!!??????

Susanto Widjaja — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:52:32 GMT

Are you kidding me??? YES IT IS FOR REAL!!! HAHAHA

Hi guys!

I've been a regular in this forum and have learned a great deal from this place, not to mention the fun and laughter I got as well.

I'm actually having my wedding this coming 6th December in Jakarta, Indonesia and guess what..??? MAYAD STUDIO IS SHOOTING OUR WEDDING!!!

HIP HIP........... HOORRRAAAYYY!!!

Mayad Studio was one of the few wedding studio that I came across and fallen in love with when I first started filming weddings.. and boy.. my dream has come true for them to shoot my wedding!!!

hahaha.. so I just want to ask you guys to kindly give your support to Fiel and the team at Mayad (and also to give them some pressure :P ) as all of us are regulars in this forum as well.

Sorry Fiel, I just had to do this, I've been planning to do this ever since I booked you months ago... :P

Ian Salim also knows about this and I'd like to invite him to my wedding (if he's not filming) Apparently 6th December is one of the busiest day in wedding business in Jakarta... so hard to find good vendors that are available...

Ian, just trying my luck here, are you filming on the day?

Anyhow... the video is the second aspect that I look forward the most.. the first is marrying my bride of course.. :P and I can't wait to see how fiel and the gang work their magic on my wedding day... I'll try not to keep on looking on what they're doing every once in a while :P It would be hard.. but I'll try my best hahaha..

Thanks guys!!!

Santo
(The happy wedding videographer)

Event Shoot - How to structure your edit

Ben Hall — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:41:12 GMT

Hey guys,

So, I'm doing more and more small event shoots - a single camera, get footage type deal.

In most cases, I'm not trying to document the entire event and then just put it on DVD, I'm usually doing some kinda of edit with the best bits, set to music, to give memories and flavour and highlights of the day.

With this in mind, for you guys doing similar things - how are you structuring your final movie? I haven't found as yet some kind of formula as to what to do, and as such I always struggle at the beginning, once I've captured my footage, with where to go from there. It always feels like starting from scratch, and takes some effort to get some kind of structure. I always get to something that works in the end, but I'd like to streamline my process a bit for the smaller jobs, if possible.

For something that's a quick turnaround, what kind of products are you guys offering? Yes, I could just do a bunch of random clips set to music, but don't feel that is particularly satisfying to watch, and in most cases, I'd be wanting to make something more like 10-30 minutes (and sometimes more) as five minutes worth just doesn't seem to be satisfying for the client.

So, any tips here?