DV Info Net - Wedding at The Legendary Breakers Hotel

Hey Chad,

Some quick thoughts...

* Liked the way shots flowed. Thought it was great that, quite often, after a series of moving shots, there's a series of static shots.

* A number of truly epic shots! Let me list a few.

-- Opening drone shot. I like the clouds, the way the hotel stands out because of brightness, the complexity of the surrounding landscape leading up to the hotel, the simplicity of the sea behind it, the level horizon.

-- 0:53: epic slider shot through the windows. The shadows on the floor are very striking. It adds to production value not only because it's a great shot in itself but because it feels like, "Whoa. These guys got shots from everywhere." One critical comment though: perhaps, in terms of its position in the edit, it doesn't do that much, since it doesn't add much new information -- the hotel is already established.

-- 1:02: dress shot: love the placement, think the exposure is good (you don't lose background entirely, and you see enough details in dress), and loved the execution of the actual move -- very smooth

-- 1:38: couple in silhouette, centre frame -- awesome

-- 1:49: low angle slide with mirror at reception is great

-- 3:02: epic rotational shot of ceiling (glad you showed it off), before landing on couple.

* Main issue with the video (hopefully easily fixed): some audio dodge. Possibly music overpowers groom's words at the start. Bride audio/priest audio sounds kind of dodgy, because the noise on the bride's audio cuts in and out suddenly. Audio of applause at the end after the couple are announced also seems to cut in suddenly. Wondering if some of these issues could be fixed with cross fades. In the case of the difference between clean priest audio and dirty bride audio, maybe a solution is to make the priest's audio dirty as well with an ambience track.

* Main thing I think you could improve on for future shoots... Well, nothing really! But I think the shots could be finessed even more, which is a really hard thing under wedding conditions. What I mean is that you've established an aesthetic of perfectly smooth, stable, well-executed shots, so it's more noticeable whenever anything doesn't meet perfection. Eg, things like: fountain slide at 0:11 -- possibly too much sky, and not level; 0:15: figures holding fountain up -- see if you can get rid of camera shake; 0:16 -- steadicam: see if you can get the couple to behave in a non-photoshoot manner, and see if the shot is stabilisable (you probably had wind problems); 2:12 -- focus feels like it should be on bride, but is on groom (of course, nailing focus in low light is a nightmare); cake cutting at 3:47 -- couple have been given a haircut. These are, of course, all very minor things that, frankly, a bride would be unlikely to notice.

* One more thing I wanted to comment on: three-shot of couple and priest at 1:31. An interesting image. Some photographers aim for this sort of effect, where it's as if the couple are plastered against the background (partly because (a) you cut their lower halves off, removing gravity, and (b) there's apparently a big difference between foreground and background). At 1:31, the composition is off (too much headroom). But the shot at 3:50 explains it: composition looks better when minister is on higher step, and is thrown off when minister moves to lower. He must have been moving around a lot, or else this must have been an unmanned camera.