Rainy weddingday

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Private Video on Vimeo

About a month ago I had my first wedding where it almost rained the entire day, started to poor out of the skies around noon and didn't stop anymore, lot's of small and big problems throughout the day, my biggest frustration was the DJ, he cut all lights at the couples first entrance and 5 seconds later flooded everything with light, as I was on the steadicam I had to stop and adjust exposure to when all was dark to get a overexposed shot when he changed the light intensity again.

Worst problem was I had a tascam dr40 connected to his mixer, levels where checked, the first 2 speeches I monitor sound, all was ok so I leave it running for the rest of the evening to find out a month later in post the idiot has cut off the feed as well, from the 3rd speech soundlevel are suddenly so low there is hardly any signal and then there is only silence up until the last speech in the evening where the sound returns. So mr DJ found it necessary for whatever reason to play with the levels. Luckily I had a zoom h1 backup in front of the speaker which saved the day.

The photog was a friend of the family, he was a nice guy but had no wedding experience, the main problem he caused me was that he was talking a lot which took away a lot of natural moments and important voice recordings from family members because I had to cut out his talking. He also dragged along a big flash umbrella on a large lightstand and with a big and heavy battery to power the thing, during the photoshoot it was practically impossible to keep it out of my frame.

My rx10 also screwed up, it was at the back shooting along the aisle towards the altar and I had manually set and locked focus to find out during ceremony the focus had shifted from back to front resulting in totally out of focus images, this caused me to loose some important parts which I could take from my other 2 running camera's but not always in a optimal angle. That rx10 of mine is leading it's own life ever since I got it. By far the most unreliable camera out of my gearbag.

Then during the vows the priest surprised me by placing the couple against the altar and he was standing in front of them on the side blocking the view from my camera pointed at the groom, sigh...

The bride gave me a seat at a family table in the venue where I could eat with the rest of the guests, I had put my blackbird with the gh3/12mm right next to me, then a guest passes me, there is like 5 meters room yet he walks so close to me his foot hooks behind the blackbirds bottom bar (which was positioned on it kickstand) and steadicam and camera smash to the ground and slide meters further to stop in the middle of the dancefloor. My heart stops for a while but can't find any visual damage and all functions fine, phew...

Other then that all went fine :) with some editing wizardry I managed to hide any issues.

Some technical info; almost everything was shot handheld, with exception of the ceremonies where each time camera where on a tripod but one was used handheld as well. I don't use any rig with my gh4/rx10, only the camera without any accessories.

In the church I used a ax100 pointed at altar and lenctern so I could crop to reframe in post, I used one cx730 handheld and a rx10 on a tripod which was of no use for at least half of the church footage because of it's focus problem.

Steadicam footage is gh3 with a 12mm f2.0, the part between 00:23 and 00:57 was shot on the day prior to the wedding with a gh4 and a 12-35mm with the steadicam footage of the building and the couple driving off on their bicycles with the rattling cans attached was done with a 9-18mm olympus.

The images coming out of that camera can look so nice but it's such a hard camera to deal with during run and gun, I much prefer the ease of use of my rx10 here.

If anyone wants to know something more specific, just let me know.

[Chris Harding]

Perfect as usual Noa .. I'm always amazed how you can have everything go wrong yet still produce an amazing video highlight!

That RX10 certainly seems to have issues doesn't it!! Maybe time to upgrade it ??

Despite the rain, the exit shot looked really cool with all the umbrellas!! but I see the DJ or venue decided on those terrible red and blue LED lighting ..they just kill the camera!!

[James Manford]

It's a shame your clients don't know how much you struggle but still end up creating an amazing video.

[Noa Put]

Thx :) it's not as "perfect" as I like it to be but with weddings you have to take it like it comes, I"m not planning to upgrade the rx10, it works well as long as I control it but once I let it run on it's own then mine wants to do other things on it's own. Maybe next year when the price of the mark II has come down I might consider it but for the time being it has it's place and I slowly start to learn where not to use it.

Those awefull led lights are at every wedding now, this particular venue though is worse then others because you never know what to expect, light intensity and color change constantly, just awefull to shoot under these conditions.

It's a shame your clients don't know how much you struggle but still end up creating an amazing video.

I actually do :) When we first meet I always tell them that I will do whatever I can to get the best out of a situation but that I remain depended on the cooperation of other people, I also tell them that almost everyone working for them has their own agenda and being cooperative is way down their priority list. I also give them some examples of things that can go wrong and what I do about that so they get an idea how I try to deal with that. It's often an eyeopener for them because they didn't realize what obstacles I often need to overcome to deliver a film like I show them.

[Clive McLaughlin]

Transition at 2:04 is super nice Noa - Do you shoot for that transition? Yea?

[Noa Put]

Yes, I always try to shoot the details with the editing in mind, that particular transition is very easy to achieve, once you start from the object and pan right and on the other object you turn left and in post you reverse speed on the second clip, cut halfway teh panning move and place both clips against eachother and apply a dissolve.

[Peter Rush]

Noa I've seen before in your films that some shots seem to have end-to-end sharpness such as the woman holding the doll at 1:46, I would assume a small aperture but on looking it looks like a low light situation, so you'd need a wider aperture but then you would not have the deep DOF? I'm guessing you don;t use a light?

Very nice work as always!

Pete

[Noa Put]

That particular shot at 01:46 was done with a sony rx10 but not sure what the aperture was, it could have been f2.8 because with that camera shallow dof only starts to show when I zoom in or when I focus to a object really close. At this wedding no additional light was used.

[James Manford]

Was wondering... your B roll footage are the majority of them handheld? How do you keep it so steady even during the motion?

[Noa Put]

The only time I use a tripod is in ceremony, in the trailer it's the camera pointed towards the reader like the very first shot untill 00:06 and back from 00:09 which is actually from a unmanned ax100 and I cropped the first shot in post and then showed the actual wide shot at 00:09. I use a monopod for a very short time during brideprep, mainly to shoot the jewelry. All the rest is handheld with either a cx730, rx10 or a gh4 with a 25mm or a 42,5mm and I didn't use any rigs, just the camerabody. I Always try to find something to lean against or just sit in a chair, I also shoot wide when I can and if I zoom in I take the jitter out in post with edius stabiliser plugin.

[Peter Rush]

Noa what is your mic of choice for mounting on DSLR?

Pete

[Noa Put]

I don't have any external mike on my camera's, only use internal sound, the only exception I make is for my gh3 which sit's on a steadicam all evening, the internal sound on that camera is realy bad and I have a little tascam tm-2x which brings the sound to the same level as the internal mikes from my gh4.