Highlights Critique
 

Ok. Long time listener...first time poster :) This is a wedding we did recently, and one of the first we have done that actually made money. Looking for comments, direction, anything to make us better. I have read tons on here and continue to learn. Thanks to everyone that makes this a wonderful place for information!

http://www.viddler.com/explore/onefineday/videos/4/

Thank in advance!

Mike Sholar

I think in terms of early work, this is probably not awful, but I do notice some real exposure issues, sometimes it's way under, sometimes it's way over, outside you are not handling the dress very well.. where you exposing manually or automatically?

We were exposing automatically. Looking back I see exactly what you are talking about. Using the manual controls is something we are working on, but don't quite have mastered. Thank you for the reply!

mike

Hi Mike,

Greetings from the other end of NC.

What grabbed by attention right from the start was the wedding dress hanging from the ceiling fan. I literally hit the stop button and replayed that part to make sure what I thought I saw was what I really saw. It probably was a good place for the bride to keep the dress fluffy rather than the closet, but it looked cheezy on video.

The brief scene where the bride is out of focus, then in focus... When I do scenes like that, I have something to focus on initially. For example, if the horse drawn wagon was somewhere back there, I'd start with the wagon in focus then transition to the bride. That gives the viewer a clue that you're doing this on purpose. The way you did it looks to me like an ooops.

I thought there were several scenes that could have been edited a lot tighter, especially since this is a highlights video.

Overall it was okay and it looks as though you did a good job of capturing all the primary events.

Would you mind elaborating?

The ceiling fan...I know...She didn't want the dress moved, so we went with what we could. I guess I could leave it out entirely. Thank you for the reply and suggestions.

Mike

Well, two scenes that come to mind right away are the small girls, first holding hands and twisting, then later standing side by side with the flower baskets. Cute, but both seemed to me a bit longish.

Where the bride is standing by the barn, then the groomsmen are superimposed to the side... Technically interesting, but that whole bit seemed to drag on, probably because I couldn't figure out what the story was. Did you simply want to show all of them concurrently in that setting? Were the bride & flowergirls on one side of the barn and the groom & groomsmen on the other? Why weren't the bridesmaids with the bride same as the groomsmen were with the groom? And then the bride turns & starts walking away. What's so significant about the walking away that it wasn't cut out? Don't bother answering -- those were just questions bouncing around in my brain as I watched that part. To the B&G and everyone else present, this is probably a great sequence that captures the essence of the moment.

My style of editing highlights, altho nowhere near as excellent, is kind of like the sample in Patrick Moreau's thread "Tilt-Shifting Same-Day-Edit" currently on this board within a post of two of this one. It's like a slide show of video clips that are only a few seconds long. So my comment that your editing could have been a lot tighter is only because I would do it differently, not necessarily better than you did.

Hey, you made a profit, and if the B&G are happy, you're on track for the main reason to do this work in the first place.

Tom,

Thanks again for the direction. I see exactly what you are talking about now. I get trapped into thinking I need to capture all the events from almost a documentary perspective, I forget at times that there is a creative side to this as well. Watching clips on here, I am constantly reminded of how great work is supposed to look. The B&G are happy, so I will mark this down as a successful learning experience :)

Mike