My first trailer

[Bill Grant]

Hello All,
I don't post here much, but I just finished this preview style trailer for a bridal show we did. We had this running in our booth. I thought I might share this with you. I knew the other companies in our area would be running slow romantic highlights, so I tried to make something that would stand out a bit, and have more energy. The bride from this wedding was another vendor at the show, so I knew she would direct traffic to us to see her video. I think it went over pretty well. I welcome comments as I think I'm going to start doing more of these, it was very fun to put together.
Thanks
Bill
Grant Photo & Video

www.grantphotovideo.com/trailer.wmv

[Michael Nistler]

Greeting Bill,

Cudos on your trailer, wild Bill! Tikal was an excellent selection, however you might want to cut out half of the initial 16 beats (sixteen is a LOT of cuts for a wedding lead-in). Anyway, excellent editing - especially the requisite filtering when the bride enters the church. BTW, your camera work was also well done.

For the version of the trailer at the bridal show and your website demo, I recommend branding the trailer with you company name at the bottom of the entire clip (normally I'd also suggest the logo, but yours seems to consume too much real estate and might distract from the great video).

Again, fantastic job and thanks for sharing.

Warm Regards, Michael

[Bill Grant]

Thanks Micheal, I havent decided about posting this on the website, but I do need to add the logo. I can do one that fits in the screen. I appreciate the comments. Hopefully I'll have more to post later.
Bill

[Chris David]

Great trailer! I have seen the growing popularity of these. My only question is....Where do you get the music? The audio track makes these trailers! I just can not seem where to find the high action suspensful music.

Any ideas?

CD

[Michael Pulcinella]

I like that a lot! The music makes it different, as does the faster cutting. Well done. Good demo.

And now my nit picking comments:

The climax of the piece, when the bride and father approach the altar and the music crescendos and the image smears toward us could have been more powerful if the shot that followed it wasn't so similar. A completely different view of the room, for instance, or cut to the couple leaving the chuch. Such a big buildup needs a big change after it, IMO.

As Michael Nistler said, I wouldn't put a cut on each one of those musical hits at the beginning. I think that's Mickey Mouse-ing it a bit. I'd let a shot or two roll through a hit here and there.

My strongest objection is to the use of black and white. Why do wedding videographers do this?? What does it MEAN?

Editing is a language. Suddenly shifting to b/w has a meaning in the grammar of film/video. It seems meaningless to me in the context of a wedding video and is used arbitrarily most of the time. I don't mean to pick on your trailer because I did like it very much, but that's one wedding vid cliche I would reccommend eliminating.

[Bill Grant]

Thanks everyone for the comments. The b & w here is actually being used to cover light, and color issues here. The back hall of that church was very dark, so the color from the sonys is not good at all. It was a choice of which problem to use. I may refine the editing a bit in the future. This is my first attempt at a piece like this. The music here is by E.S. Posthumus. I edited the 6 min song down to this 2 min peice. They have only 1 album that I know of and all tracks are kind of like this. Thanks again everyone for the comments.
Bill

[Michael Pulcinella]

Originally Posted by Bill Grant

Thanks everyone for the comments. The b & w here is actually being used to cover light, and color issues here. The back hall of that church was very dark, so the color from the sonys is not good at all.
Bill

I hear you! Dark churches and halls are such a pain. In that case I think the b/w worked well to cover your color problems. Can you brighten them up a bit or add some contrast maybe? On my screen they looked a little muddy. But that could just be my screen.

[Bill Grant]

Yeah, they could probably use a little brightness, but the Windows media compression is pretty horrible too, so... who knows...
Bill

[Stelios Christofides]

Bill that was excellent! I loved the music and the editing. What program did you use so you could synchronise the shots with the music? Is it easy?

Stelios

[Bill Grant]

Hey Stelios,
I use Sony Vegas and just manually slide the clips to match with the wave on the audio track. The peaks & vallleys of the wave are easy to identify, and then you just line them up. Thanks fro the kudos.
Bill

[Jason Robinson]

I have used B & W twice in my 5 finished wedding videos (so in other words, I'm still a huge rookie).

First was to cover an incredibly dark reception. I applied some B & W and the colorized and stylized the heck out of the reception dancing so that it looked fun and not dark. It also helped that I shot with a cheaper Sony single CCD which had the "Night Shot" feature. I got decent greenish footage at a fast enough frame rate so that I could use the footage in B & W. Color footage would have been useless from almost any camera under $5000 because it was so dark.

The second time I started the entire film in B & W and didn't fade to colors until showing a bright flower arrangement. That made the contrast that much more obvious and I loved the effect. The bride also loved it so I might try it again.

jason

[Mark Morikawa]

i'm not getting it. the music and editing seems inappropriate for a wedding.