Weddings+
 

Filming Weddings is what I really film now but I started out capturing Skateboarders throughout the New York City streets in the early to mid 90's and learned a TON about capturing motion. It also helped, to some degree, that I've been a photographer for 17 years too and learned that capturing a subject off on an angle is actually okay. I'd like to hear how you actually worked your way into Wedding Videography. Your History I guess. To those who are new or even those who are veterans... its good to have some idea of the many different roads one travelled before getting to this one.

:)

-Louis Torres
http://www.ForeverPlatinum.com
New York

cool thread.

For me...I was and still am a pro skydiver and freefall cameraman(about 7,500 camera jumps and 9,000 jumps all together). I started shooting camera some years before my skydiving career....but the first time I made a skydive, I knew I had to fly the camera, so I did many many times.....moved to California to pursue shooting for hollywood/television. To this day, I have shot for national tv commercial ads, tv series and more cable networks than I can count, I still work in television.

Now moving forward to weddings.....well, i was asked by a producer who I have shot and edited various documentaries for....he wanted me and my partner to produce his wedding vid....so we did, and it turned out awesome. To this day, we still use our first wedding as one of our samples. we bring all of our skills from the tv world to our wedding vids.

After that wedding.....knowing how much we enjoyed it, we decided to build our wedding video co. from scratch. our company snowballed very fast....first year shooting over 30 weddings, all by word of mouth. this is rare I think for a first year in business but all was good and we feel fortunate to have clients who refer us so often. even though we shoot a lot of weddings each year.....we leave enough time to still work in television and produce corporate content as well.

this is my story in a nutshell.

we'll be here all night if i start with this..

okies, quickly..
Audio engineering since i was still at school, started doing DJ and producitonw ork on teh audio side of things whichi was still at school..
Roll forward 6 years...
working clubs and around europe doing preprod mixes for various "techno" acts and bands, one predominant outfit in israel, which was quite a trip, let me tell u..
ended up coming back to aus with nothing to do, so started designing sounds for Yamaha (FS1, RM1x, RS7000). From there, i ended up doing some audio post prod wirk for some commercial outfits here, ended up having to reshoot certain scenes as they jsut didnt feel right for teh kinda vibe they wanted.
From the sporadic shooting, came full propositions with regard to shooting full projects and audio so i took the opportunity.. worked out quite well... from there, hooked up with afew corp clients, and ended up doing afew of these client's weddings. From there, i hooked up with an outfit here, who specialise in distribution and retail of equipment and NLE's. Awesome but too many hours trying to sell to the competition, and training the competition ended up being a conflict of interest for my own business interests.. pay was pretty crap, but i was in tehre before anyone and i had access to truckloads of gear. problem was the outfit itself was slightly mismanaged and out of focus from the big picture... so i ended up focusing on my own business..
From there I been doin this full time now for about 3.5 years.. all up id say since the begining, its been about 13years..

theres alot ive left out, but these are the significant factors

I worked my way through college doing concert load-in/outs and being the all around technician at local dinner theatres. Got my MA in scenic design in '76 and was ready to hit the big time. Only it wasn't big time, just more of the same at better pay. Became involved in staging meetings and conventions in the early 80's. Got my first introduction to video then, and quite frankly thought it bothersome. However, video kept turning up on my work orders. I thought I had better learn something about video so it wouldn't be so much of a thorn in my side. When combined with my theatre knowledge and my photography hobby video started to not seem so bad after all. Still, I tended to look at it primarily as a revenue stream.

In 1989 a wedding video turned up on the work orders, and no one in the shop wanted to touch it. I took the task because I thought it might be a welcome change from my usual routines of trade shows and sales conferences. It was not only a welcome change, but a challenge and fun. I decided to take any other wedding videos that came in. I shot and edited maybe four weddings in the next eight years.

Well, the millenium is approaching and I am thinking about retiring. A friend and professional video producer shows me his new mini-dv camera. I like what I see, think about what to do after retirement, think about weddings, and decide it is time to start a wedding video business.