Hello from Guam!
 

Just signed up recently to the forums and I'm throughly impressed with the amount of information here... thanks!

I recently started working again after a really long break. My new job is as a video NLE editor and I have to say that after years of dreaming of doing this kind of work I'm truely loving what I do.

The company I work for hired me based on some home movies I shot with a Sony TVR-730 and edited on Premiere, atleast I assume that's the reason since my boss is Japanese and doesn't speak much english. Our company mainly does weddings for Japanese tourists, which is fine with me since all the weddings go in the same order and the editing is super easy. We use Canopus Storm1 which I found so much easier to learn then Premiere.

I'm still learning a lot about videography and I try to take in as much info on the matter as I can. Thanks for allowing me to join this forum I only hope I can contribute something.

Jess

Jesse,
welcome to DVinfo. I can relate to your work. One of my jobs is doing wedding videos here in Japan for a wedding hall. What do you guys use to shoot with?

I'm using an XL-1 and editing with FCP, recently started making DVD's for the wedding hall also. 3 hours max and the whole thing is over, gotta love the Japanese style weddings.

Have fun hanging around here, lots of cool people and good info here, enjoy.

Rick,

Thanks for saying hello :)

Our company actually shoot small Christian style weddings running on average of only 30mins which is amazing. The Camera we use are from Sony's DSR line I think it's the 390L and I edit with Conopus DVStrom1 which is prefect as we don't use a lot of FX... mainly disolves, slo-mo, and a little color correction from time to time. I'm finding that program is perfect to use for the type of videos we produce and it's all realtime. Canopus runs very well on the duel P4 1.7 machines we have too. We also produce DvDs, but I'm afraid it's a straight play DvD with no extra features at all... I'm assuming it's all due in part to keeping costs down as it would take me an additional hour or so to make it with menus and chapter selection.... even longer since I don't have a templet set up at all for DvD features.

I'm very interested in buying a Canon XL1-S... do you feel the quality of that camera is on par with the Sony camera my company uses? I just have this feeling that the Sony camera we use is way too much camera for such a small production. Plus I'm looking into starting my own buisness shooting local weddings here on the Island.

Thanks again for saying hi!

Jess

Jesse,
just checked out that camera on the net, pretty nice camera but yeah, I think it's way too much camera for that kind of work. The end product will be seen on a TV so a good 3 chip digital camera would be fine. I recommend you get the XL-1s, it's been a great camera for the wedding stuff I've been doing, plus it looks very professional.

Too bad you can't make a more custom DVD, they are worth it. I film the rehearsal, scenes of the B & G walking to the next place for photos, them joking around, and put it into a special features secton, sort of a making of video. The style here in Japan is a 15 min. ceremony, followed by a photo session (10 min) and then a 2 hour dinner/reception. I have about 2 weeks to edit it down to 2 hours, 1 month if they get the DVD.

Good luck in setting up your own video business, take what you learn at this job and add a more personal touch to it when you start your own wedding video business.

Rik,

Thanks for giving me the tips! I really appreciate it. I wish I had the amount of time you have to make your videos; I have to be finished with my video by 5pm the next day or heads will roll hehe. I usually spend about 2hours editing each wedding though. Even though I don't get to add neat menus and other DvD extras I still play around with the software available to create a DvD the way I think it whould go. I try and do that when ever possible. I think that the nicest part about my job is that it's freelance work, I only get 20 bucks a video I do and since my company can average about 70-100 or so weddings a month that's pretty good money I suppose. I'm really in it for the experience anyway... though more money is always nice :)

Jess


ps.

Sorry about the name misspell :)