My First Wedding Report
 

Last night I filmed my first wedding, well it was just the ceremony anyway. It was a freebie arranged through a friend.

The wedding was at night and outside. The lighting was mood \ ambient and what you'd call 'low' I took the advice of users on this forum and cranked down the chroma on my DVC30's scene file settings. Setting a custom white balance helped produce decent colour too, much better than leaving it on auto.

The night before I took some test footage at the location and decided that to avoid having to use to much Gain I would go for 1/25s and use less. Reviewing my footage this morning, it looks like it was a good move. The footage is still dark and with grain but not TOO dark and not TOO much grain, so far I think I got the balance right. The footage seems to be a accurate representation of the lighting as it was albeit not crystal sharp and lit like a studio.

I placed one Iriver with GS mic on the groom and another on a seat near the mini orchestra. The wind was up last night but both have provided decent clear audio. A lot better than relying on my camera mounted Rode VM.

My assistance was at the back with my 1ccd capturing tripod steady wide backup footage. This doesnt actually look as bad as I thought it might. Very well might include some of it after some After Effects processing.

A good aspect of this venue was that I had 360 degree access around the altar \ couple and could vary my angles alot. The downside of this was that during re-locating myself, I missed some shots that would have been good.

A positive was the photographer, we had a brief chat before hand and showed one another courtesy while getting our material during the event. He even reminded once to setup for what was coming next.

I did have a tripod setup near the alter but only used it for a couple of minutes as I had my pick of angles and wanted it varied. Not using any kind of stabiliser though seems to have paid a price with most of my footage having an element of shake. That's a dissapointment and one I hope doesnt negate too much from the final result.

In conclusion, for the future, I think I'll invest in another DVC30 and lock it off wide somewhere to fill in the parts when I'm moving about. Second, I'll think about some kind of stabiliser, I could of course get a second shoulder mounted machine and lock off my existing DVC30 but then I'd have matching problems..

Anyway, thanks for listening!