I Gotta Feeling I'm not a photographer!
 

So... a couple of fun topics.

We have had a ridiculous amount of entrance songs be "I Gotta Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas. I'm talking about 85-90% of our weddings. I can no longer stand this song!!!!! Just curious if others have had this happen?

Also, this is our first year using the Canon 5D Mark II and we love it, however, when we are taking video of people, they instantly freeze and pose for our "video camera." Just a minor annoyance. This happening to others? we have a Rode mic on top, and using the zacutto z-finder, and rapid fire, but still get mistaken for a photog.

I hope everyone's wedding season has been going smoothly!

We are a DJ and Video company and I do both so you can imagine how many times I've heard "I gotta feeling" Couples insist on using it so it gets played, or I should say played out.

Funny thing is I've had people, mostly older guests, stop and pose for my GL2 like it was a still camera.

Adam, that's so funny...A few months ago I was shooting a grandpa dancing with his granddaughter and when he saw me he stopped to pose and the granddaughter said, "Grandpa, that's a video camera!" It was my Canon GL2.

Andrew, our experience regarding songs is a slight twist on your experience. Most UK church weddings still have the traditional wedding music by Mendelssohn and Wagner, especially the Mendelssohn for the Recessional, our problem is the appalling standard of organ playing in churches.

It can't be that the music is unfamiliar nor that the organists don't have the chance to practice before the wedding; the only reason I can think of for the sound - which has more in keeping with Les Dawson (UK readers will know who and what I mean) than the grandeur of a wedding of a Duke and a Queen - is that they simply can't play well enough.

Most commercial recordings are played on huge cathedral organs which sound out of keeping with the confines of modest sized churches but we are fortunate in having a recording of the work on a small, though modern church organ in a famous church in France - and of knowing the organist personally. Provided the organ at the "real" wedding is reasonably in tune we're usually able to segue from the opening bars of the original event (which even a rhythmically-challenged monkey can play) to the decent recording by our friend. No-one's ever noticed!

Philip,
The guys are talking about the music played at the reception. Sometimes we all forget this is an international board and there are slight or not so slight differences in meanings of certain sayings we commonly use here in the USA and what they mean to folks in UK or other countries.
Yeah, most church weddings here still use the good standbys although some are a bit more liberal about the music used for the recessional. For instance I just did one where they used the music from the TV program "The Office" for the recessional. Do know why.

Anyway yes I am as tired of that song and most others as anyone and yeas even when I was shooting a fullsize rig people would see the camera and standstill while I "took their picture" (30 times a second) I finally got to the point that I just smile and nod to them and say "thank you" and move on. Sometimes you just can't win. ;-)

Don, thanks for sorting me out - another example of us being "divided by a common language"!

Yeah, I used to work with a guy from down under and once I got used to his accent which took me a while, he certainly had some expressions I had never heard before and it took me some time to get used to them. :-)

Don, I can't claim that as an original - written by George Barnard Shaw - an Irishman.

That song doesn't bother me as much as the song "Beyonce - Single Ladies"

People do pose infront of my 7D and it's great cause all I need is a few seconds and then the realize they are on a video camera then it's too late to be shy or embarrassed.

Intrigued wedding guests
 

I get inundated with Alicia Keys for some reason. And we get the issue with 'posing' as well, but the biggest issue for me are guests who are very intrigued by the filming on a stills camera and want to have a chat about it for ages. Makes it hard to do the actual filming.

A lot of the DJs I work with I have worked with for many years and many times this year. I know their playlists pretty well and I complain to them all the time about it, jokingly of course as they play what the majority of people want to hear/dance to so I set my levels and turn down the volume of my headphones. I am quite sick of hearing the same songs over and over and over and over and over and over....oh, excuse me, I had a scratch in my vinyl. :-)

Normally when in my car I listen to music of the 60s early 70s. That's MY music and a total turn about from the Single Ladies and I Got a Feeling I hear at every single wedding I do. Next year maybe it'll be something else. One can hope.

O|O
\--/

The thing that bothers me even more than overhearing some of the popular songs is the 'DJ Show'. On the top of the list is the scratching noise they make when they put their hand on their turntable and rapidly move it back and forth. Did you know that noise is the only reason they have their turntables now? There are no vinyl platters anymore! Did you ever notice how horrible that noise sounds when you play the recording of the event? I almost always use the original track when I decide to use a particular song in the video production. Virtually everything else they do erodes the sound as well. Much of what they do is just an 'entertaining' act (at great expense to the quality of the sound). In many cases, the only value in recording the dancing with the DJ 'officiating' is to have something to sync to when you replace the song(s) with unhacked up versions.

I gotta feeling
 

I realize that this song is played out, but it is one of the only songs I've heard that will get everyone out on the dance floor and they do some pretty silly things when they're dancing - good stuff for the video, IMO.
For me a big part of the video is the crowd having a great time dancing. This makes the couple happy to see that their friends had a good time.

Personally the song doesn't bother me and I look forward to it playing at the next wedding.

You would think putting a 7d/5d on a shoulder rig, mic, and always on light that people would think its a video camera. Nope I still have this happen nearly everytime I use the 7d.

lol that happens ALL the time, so we 'hide' the T2i/550D's and usually try to make it obvious we are shooting video by prominently and primarily shooting with the XH A1 rigs.