My first attempt at a film.

I was able to find some audio so I tried my hand at making a film.

Very challenging. I have so many areas to improve on! But I think the client will like it. She actually wanted highlights which is just a 3 minute music video for me. Hopefully this is better.

It was a struggle keeping it interesting. Kind of "meh" as it goes on. The original was almost 12 min but I trimmed out 2 min worth of clips at the reception to keep it short.

Sarah + Trent - Wedding Film on Vimeo

[Robert Benda]

I think she'll like it, too.

For my suggestions...

change up the music for the vows. Holly Maher's Perfect Day or Always Be are both excellent choices. I often blend the vocal and instrumental versions so I don't have vocals during the vows.

Usually I've got 3 or 4 songs for this type of film. One or two lead up to the key vows, then that slower emotional song, then the big fun one for the exit/recessional. I really like having something BIG for when the bride comes in.

Did you edit to the music? Once I get enough of my footage chosen, roughly in the order I want, I start picking songs, then do the final edit to the music. Shot changes happen on the beat, for instance, like when you're showing establishing shots at the start of the reception.

Also, no shot of the groom's face during vows? On purpose? Or limits by the pastor?

The reception could use some audio from speeches, even if its just a line or two.

Why show the buffet?

All I've got for now. Nice work.

[Kyle Root]

Robert,

Thanks for the feedback.

Regarding the music, I looked for hours trying to pick something out. I licensed it all last night for $200. I'll look up the ones you mentioned, and add them for the next round... but I'm not buying any more music for this one. lol

For the "church part" I used 2 tracks of the same song - the first 30 seconds or such has the words, and then I blend into the "Instrumental" version with no words, although it has some backing "oohs". There was a third version of that track that didn't have the "oohs" but the repetitive guitar part bothered me without those sounds in there.

No grooms face because the shot was super shaky and all over the place. I had to put that guy on a monopod and that didn't work out at all. The venue holds 300 people. There were 400 guests. The venue had to set up 2 extra chairs per row, plus back seating to accommodate. There were 5' wide aisles on both sides, but by the time they set up chairs, there were literally like 2' of space left and no where to put a tripod.

There were no speeches or toasts which is what made the reception hard to do.

[Robert Benda]

Well, that explains it.

Our setup has tripods up front on either outside. The left side (where bride stands) has a clear view of groom's face for entrance and vows. I man the monopod on the aisle, then retreat after the entrance and take my camera to the other tripod (on right side... groom's back during vows). I'm on the same side of the aisle as the other camera, so its behind me/to my right.

I once had so little space I did a monopod the whole time except for an extra kick in the nuts, the groomsmen blocked my view. I had to hold the camera/monopod 3 feet up in the air for a solid 5 minutes to get bride's face during vows. Came out better than I hoped.

As for music, we seem to have similar tastes. I do theMusicBed's 5 uses license for $70 a pop, then milk it. Frequently my videos for the year will sound shockingly similar for the soundtrack...

Along with the songs you already found, and the two Holly Mahers I listed, check out...

Lights and Motion - Home (great for leading up to and including the processional)
Ryan Taubert - Soul Birds (good opener)
Graham Colton - Life so Beautiful (good energy for pre-ceremony)

[David Barnett]

Nice footage & overall very well put together. Only things that I noticed were at 4:55 I didn't like how the tripod of the camera was well in your shot. I felt 5:15-5;20ish could've mostly been cut out, and 6:10 I also didn't like the shot. You had your video team or photographers very much in the shot. While your slider & steadicam work is typically great I felt that scene was a bit unneeded. (Although I'm a single shooter with only 2 cameras at the most so it's possibly a pet peeve of mine to see my gear in the background). I liked the music however I agree I felt the receptions song was a little bit down. Band looked sorta eclectic, a couple shots of them would've been cool.

How many shooters do you shoot with? You get alot of slider, steadicam & drone shots in and quite good at it.

[Kyle Root]

Thanks for all the comments! I'm going to make some slight modifications to the Vimeo version based on comments I've received... as much as I can at least. Also ,I forgot to add the black bars at top and bottom, so I def want to correct that because I like that look. It was around midnight last night when I finished editing and started exporting and I was tired.

For this shoot, I had a 4 man team. Although, the one guy was 18 and he was mostly there to help me move my stuff around the facility (each building was very far apart so it required much moving throughout the day).

I did 80% of the filming, and then I had the drone pilot come in for a bit, and then I had another shooter who covered reception shots while we were at the ceremony. He also did all the slider work.

I wasn't happy at all at the way the ceremony worked out. But it is what it is.

Also, I don't know what it is, but in my 15 years... I've only had literally like 5 weddings where there were speeches and toasts at the reception, and those were all 10+ years ago. No one in this area seems to ever do them. So that really makes it challenging.

The bride emailed me and she absolutely loved the film, so that was a good thing. Haha.

[Roger Gunkel]

Hi Kyle,

Just a couple of comments, firstly that the production was very well put together with some lovely shots, so only a couple of comments on the end product that are from my own viewpoint.

I am probablaly in the minority in really not liking shallow DOF shots for wedding video and I felt that a number of shots would have been considerably enhanced by being able to see reactions from those watching, particularly during the ceremony entrances. The one shot though that I really felt was spoiled by shallow DOF was Dad seeing his Daughter in her dress for the first time. Although she was in focus continuously, Dad was not only in very poor light, but was also completely out of focus for almost the whole sequence, which completely removed the point of it in my opinion. As it was also filmed from behind the bride, there was no way to see the initial facial reactions of either of them.

On a different aspect, you mentioned that 80% of the filming was done by you, out of a shooting crew of 4, one of whom was brought in for drone and slider shots lasting a few seconds. So my point is that 3 other crew taking less than 7% of the shoot each, seems like a massive underuse of what must be a considerable extra filming cost. I also noticed that additionally, two cameras were unmanned on a tripod during the ceremony. I am of course looking at it from the perspective of a mainly solo shooter, but didn't see anything particularly that that couldn't have been covered by one extra shooter.

Roger

[Chris Harding]

Hi Kyle

I guessing that you are looking for criticism not compliments? Anyone can say "Wow Kyle, that awesome" but it doesn't help you do things better next time!

Ok I didn't like the fact that your crew continually filmed in a backlit situation ..Was that just how things happened or did you purposely do it ...Exposure was spot on in those shots but because it blows out the entire background most places it also tends to make the whole image very bright and de-saturated too!

Remember these are my comments so you can ignore them too..just my two cents but looking from a bride's perspective.

The whole clip is nicely put together of course but to me (and me alone) it still appears that you are showing off your skills with camera moves and shallow DOF instead of showing off the bride, groom and guests .... my feeling is that the fancy effects (lot's of white flash transitions especially) are just there to make it "cinematic" whereas a little more discretion and attention to what is being filmed rather than how it was filmed (which the bride doesn't care about) would have been better!

Overall though a nice job and well documented too

[Kyle Root]

Everyone - I really appreciate the comments and criticisms as I'm definitely want to improve on this! Originally, I didn't think I had any audio to do a "story" with, so my initial setup was to do a music video for her highlights. But, as I dug in and began finding stuff, it morphed into this 10 minute film.


Roger - You are right about the father daughter first look, I had a second shooter in the room who was covering the dad, but he was having a hard time getting/keeping focus, and I didn't want that to be in there, so I went with the shot I had instead. We were also locked up in rather small area with junk all in the floor, bed in the way and the photographer being beside me.

The shallow DOF is definitely risky and a liability, which is why I'm looking to move back to traditional style cameras like the new Sony NX100 which to me looks like it strikes a nice balance between allowing subject isolation, while not being as significant as shooting with a Full Frame sensor camera.

Regarding all the extra shooters, my fear is always having a card go bad or camera die and an inopportune time. Total outlay for my help that day was $500. The bride paid me $3,500, so it was worth it to me to have the extra bodies on site getting b, c, and d roll footage. It's more for my peace of mind than anything else. In the doc edit, which is around 1-hour, I use the other shooters stuff a lot more.

The other reason I wanted to make sure and have extra people on hand was the action was spread out so much that it was literally hundreds of feet between bride area, groom area, ceremony area, and reception area. We actually had to drive from building to building, even though it was all on the same campus.

The ceremony was shot using 7 cameras. 3 manned, 4 unmanned. But that's normally how I do it now.


Chris - regarding backlighting - Most of that was done on purpose, (Except for the ceremony footage, my shooter got locked in behind the groomsman and could not move out when the ceremony started because he was on a tripod and couldn't get through them and around the grandpiano without being a major distraction)

The purpose of the film was two-fold, naturally mainly something for the bride for Facebook, but also for the venue in a sense to show off on their page.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Kyle

There is one thing to learn from posting a clip here. Not one single bride will look at it ..only us tech heads who will make technical comments and suggestions which in my opinion is of no use to me!

Post it on a bridal forum and then you are getting somewhere! You don't sell wedding videos to videographers, you sell them to brides and if they love them to bits then you are getting somewhere. I really cannot see any point in putting clips here so they are pulled to bits by forum members so I have never posted a clip here. I simply tried to comment on what I thought a bride might think about the shots. Us guys can look at a cool shallow focus of the bride and love it but a bride might tell you "Why is my husbands face all fuzzy?" I think that brides look at wedding video completely differently to the way we look at them so just bear in mind that my comments were an attempt to view your footage from a bride's point of view!

[Steve Burkett]

Reading Roger and Chris' dissection of your video Kyle, I was expecting something quite different. 10 minutes of dof, slider shots, jib shots, aerial shots - style over substance. I'm not sure what they were watching, but I saw plenty of shots of the Bride, Groom and Guests. I admit the dof in the Bride's meeting with Dad was poorly staged, but mostly that's down to his being in the shadows and the focus being on the Bride. As you say a 2nd shooter on the Father was to have given his reaction - sometimes having another person there means you rely on them for the shot when if you shoot alone, you get use to yours being the only take.

That said, your shots of the venues were well staged and added a touch of wow factor to the video and were tastefully distributed between other personal shots without dominating the focus of the video. Its hard for Roger and Chris, who grew up in the dark days of Wedding Videography to appreciate that such shots can be equally appreciated by the Bride. I certainly didn't have issues with your use of dof, it wasn't over done and as for the entrance, having paused on one shot, I don't think Guests reactions were all there that to focus on them rather than those entering would be an improvement.

Overall I liked the video and found it well made - okay it seemed quite bright in places, a consequence of the back lighting, but then that's personal taste. Your aerial shots are magnificent and I'm pretty jealous of those. If only as you have the space to show off the venues; mine are usually hidden in trees, towns or just plain boring.

[Steve Burkett]

Originally Posted by Chris Harding

I simply tried to comment on what I thought a bride might think about the shots. Us guys can look at a cool shallow focus of the bride and love it but a bride might tell you "Why is my husbands face all fuzzy?" I think that brides look at wedding video completely differently to the way we look at them so just bear in mind that my comments were an attempt to view your footage from a bride's point of view!

If your attempt was to emulate a Bride Chris, you failed. No comments on make up, hats and shoes. Talk on back lighting, no Bride ever mentions back lighting to me.

But what is a Bride's point of view. Is there 1 point of view or many. FYI I have had several Brides pick up positively on depth of field; one called it blurring, the other the blur effect. In both cases they loved those types of shots; they didn't understand the technical details, but they could see they liked the shot. DOF like any technique can be done badly, but lets not discount it for that alone or we can ban virtually all camera techniques full stop.

[Kyle Root]

I love getting input from other video folks on this one. I'm all about getting ideas for things to try in the future. I knew immediately there were mishaps with shooting the day and tried to work around as best I could. I actually had a lot of nice glidecam shots... they looked in focus.. but upon review 80% were not focused at all, so that sucked. lol

The bride's FB page has comments from her friends along the lines of "best video I've ever seen", "that was so amazing", "It had me crying"... that makes me happy to know that the common person likes it. I've already gotten a inquiry for a 2016 wedding off of it.

For me, this is a personal quest to expand the creative side of my brain. I'm a mechanical engineer by day, so I'm not overly creative or artistic and that's why I use a lot of those kinds of shots because I'm constantly practicing and trying to force myself on the day to think outside the box a bit for shots and how to use foreground and all that jazz.

I'm loving this challenge!

[Steve Burkett]

Don't apologise Kyle for your style or way of work. There's a lot of creativity in your shots and yes when shooting a live event, things don't always swing your way, but as you say you got a great reaction on FB.

I disagree with Chris' view on posting here. A Bride cares only about her video and is somewhat biased, but has little interest in your Business as a whole and where you wish to take it. When I post Trailers, I am mindful that they are seen by friends and family, some as per your case, hire you based on that video. I'm always mindful that my Trailer must impress the friends as much as the couple, so shots I include are tailored to advertise me and my services as much as to give the couple something special. If posting here helps you build your Business and deliver better videos, it can only be to your benefit.

[Robert Benda]

Originally Posted by Chris Harding

Hi Kyle

There is one thing to learn from posting a clip here. Not one single bride will look at it ..only us tech heads who will make technical comments and suggestions which in my opinion is of no use to me!

I think you're forgetting that the technical leads to the emotional.

I asked, for instance, about the music, cues, and pacing tied to the editing because I know the impact it will end up having on the finished videos emotional gravitas.

Same as why we don't see the groom's face. Good tight shots of each during the vows can make it *feel* like they're the only people in the world, and the tight shot gives it intimacy.

So a bride's feedback can point out where their eyes go, or what they notice, but its our feedback that can point out how to 'fix' that.