Guest greetings sample for your perusal...
 

This was taken from a wedding in April. I try to make these things humorous rather than sappy whenever possible, and this is my best one yet. The groom was British, and his family/friends provided much comic relief.

http://newhavenfootball.net/greetings_demo.wmv

13 meg file, broadband recommended.

You can also look at newhavenfootball.net to see a trailer for the high school football movie a friend and I made last year.

that was fun!

a bit dark, and the mic audio was a bit hissy, but it was fun. i'm sure the couple will enjoy it. the fun music in the background was a good touch.

the guy making fun of michael jackson was the best!

Yeah, it was dark because I was using my backup cam, a consumer Panasonic 3CCD, and I was the secondary man on a 2-cam shoot (primary shooter had the *good* cam). The audio is hissy especially where the guests don't hold the mic close - I had to juice it up in my wave editor and filter out as much noise as I could. (I record the audio for these straight to my Fostex and sync it at home.)

The groom e-mailed me last week - he converted the whole thing to PAL to send to his family in the UK, and their favorite bit is also the Jacko comment. That guy, an Irishman, MADE that whole segment. I thought the "We're drunk" guy was pretty classy, too... ;)

Which consumer Panny were you using? GS400?

It's a PV-GS120 - fantastic camera for the money, but there's only so much it can do in low light. The wedding & reception were held in a 1920s mansion in Rochester, Michigan (Meadow Brook Hall at Oakland University) which, while beautiful, isn't exactly the most colorful place around.

I should post the ending where the bride & groom got their surprise wedding gift. When they walked out at the end of the night, someone pulled up in a beautiful white 1964 Pontiac GTO convertible for them. Naturally, they got in back and let someone sober do the driving, and the video ends with them riding off into the night in this car. Guess what song I used...c'mon, guess!

Okay, I'll play the straight man: Let's see, a 1964 GTO?
Hmmm. WAG, the 1964 top ten hit, "GTO" by Ronny and the Daytonas?

That footage looks pretty good for just a GS120. It looks like you used a tripod, right?

very VERY slick cuts and highly entertaining! Have u ever done vox pop work? lol

were you running a light with the cam? A lil bit of lux does wonders with these cameras, my MX500 performs in a simialr manner if stuck with too many shadows, but once you throw on a 50w candle, it usually performs quite well.
Lighting is prolly one of the cheapest ways to get better footage.
The content was great, awesome actually.. lol only marred by the limitation of the equipment used.

good stuff, keep up the good work!

Very fun!!! The Bride and Groom should really enjoy it! I love Brits, most I've met just seem so much more open and fun. As a un-written rule we Americans tend to be a bit on the reserved side. Good job on the clip, as for lighting I cannot agree more with the use of a camera mounted light it should help out in almost every situation!

Indeed I did; I mount it on a dolly. That little camera looks kinda funny on that big tripod/dolly combo. The GS120 makes for a very good backup/secondary cam; I've shot entire weddings with it and had no complaints. Heck, I've shot a wedding with nothing more than a JVC GR-DVL120U, which was my first DV cam, and it turned out all right. Nothing I'd want to post as a demo, but it did the job and the client was satisfied.

I usually use an old Sony VX1000 for my shoots. It belongs to the company I do most of my work for, and it was just completely overhauled in April. The battery life on the VX1000 is just abysmal; a fully charged battery will barely get you through a tape, and they don't make the batteries any more - my boss just bought what were probably the last three batteries for this thing in the Detroit area. I will be purchasing my own VX2100 soon, possibly by the end of this month. Can't wait!