Our First SDE

(unless Travis snuck one in this year, or someone came in from out of state).

Lots of little things wrong today but it was an experiment to push myself artistically, advance my business, and most of all just a test to see if I could do it. Also, it would let me brag about doing the first SDE in Idaho here on DVInfo and at the wedding shows this winter (ugh . . . I need to set aside a few $K for that don't I..). The projection system (5'x7' rear projection screen with a 2k lumen projector) + the added assistant ran this experiment up to $300, but I think it was a very valuable experience and a smashing success. So any sales for this in the future will need to probably hit at least $500 to make business sense.

I passed the idea by the B&G after their rehearsal, and they were game. I was their number one vendor so they were up for virtually anything I suggested (especially since I also ran DJ services through my comany via a sub-contractor ... aka my audio technician for commercial shoots). All told, we cleared the most of any of my previous clients, even if you exclude the $700 for the DJ portion, so not bad. Although it would be super cool if the 3rd cam footage turned out because there was a LOT of people standing in the way.....

I spent the prep & ceremony splitting my head thinking of both SDE specific shots, and still trying to cover the day as I usually would. Packup to head out was at 10am, my projection system rental run was at 11am, my shooting started at 1:30pm, re-setup of the reception was 3pm (they put the 3 x 8' head tables on the stage where the DJs are always for this venue! crazy -venue was the Rose Room for the curious locals) ceremony was at 6pm, and reception started at 7:30. My hired assistant helped log footage at the reception while I shot the first dances. I started cutting once the reception was in full "dance party" mode. My assistant got his first try using the MultiRigPro in full on videOgrapher mode with LED light, shotgun, UHF receiver, and LANC controller. He mentions that it hurts his back a lot, and I can verify those feelings, but I'm a bit more used to it.

We switched out several times when the bride's sister would run over pointing out great uncles, nephews dancing, etc. All told, I think I put the 2min edit together in about 30 minutes. I obviously wimped out towards the end of it and opted for a longer nearly full presentation of one of the vows with a J-cut.

Rendered to uncompressed AVI, and thanks to very sparse CC work, some of the clips got to skip a render stage and did just straight file copies (thanks to a new feature in Vegas 8). We ended up fighting with the projector for 15 minutes trying to get the dual displays from my lappy to work AND so that windows media player would shot in full screen mode (stupid nvidia drivers had issues with video overlays on external monitors, even if cloning the displays).

But eventually I introduced the video and got to film one of the happiest 2 minutes of a bride I have ever seen. Talk about a rush. The guests were going crazy (well pretty crazy.... ok, they seemed to like it), and our crew got a ton of compliments from guests, bridal party members, and from Krystal & Jon (the B&G) for both our SDE work, for our video crew work, and for our all around kickassness of running of the party, (since like I said above, it was an ALL Idaho Digital Productions crew - minus catering & bar staff who were a royal PITA for the B&G unfortunately). I actually did some of the MC'ing since my DJ is pretty new, but I've seen dozens of the pros doing their job. So that was kind of funny to be introducing events while wearing my MultiRigPro.

Note to self..... you do NOT have an MC's voice; a bit to high pitched and not enough resonance in the lower end.

So there were high fives all around for my crew (well, at least behind the 5'x7' screen which served as a nice wall to help hide us and all our stuff). Big shout outs to Zach Galyen my DJ, Zach Donavan the hired gun, and most of all to my lovely wife Laurissa for putting up with a very tense and snippy husband for the first 1/2 of the reception.

I'll be cleaning up just a few things before I put this on the couple's DVD (the titles need fixing, a few scenes need stretching, the audio needs tweaking, and one or two other minor changes. I'll post a followup in this thread with detailed tech & logistic details of the SDE after I get some sleep (like . . . all of Sunday) and have a chance to recover from this 12hr shoot and 20hr day. Shot on GL2 cams with a WD58 for almost all the shots. Cut together with Vegas 8 on my trusty Alienware MJ12-m7700 P4HT3GHz system with a Shuttle Pro and a generic replacement mouse (my beloved Razor died this week).

The background info I will give about the clip is that both sides of the families are from Nevada, the grooms deceased father was a huge Elvis fan (and a vocal dead ringer for him), and the groom always has a different Elvis ring tone. Also, this has to be the hottest group of gals & guys I've ever had the privilege of shooting.

Thanks to Mark & Trish for planting the idea in my head and for Stillmotion & Jmag for providing unbelievably cool examples to further convince me that I need to see what all the fuss was about.

And if you made it this far, then you get to watch my first ever SDE!

[Stephen J. Williams]

Jason...

wow... you had a lot of content in that post. I'm glad that everything went well. I give you mad props for going beyond the comfort zone. So much room for error, you pulled it off... Congrats!
I liked the shot at 53 seconds... The dress was a little hard to make out since there was a lot of white in the background.

It must of have been pretty cool to see the reactions from everyone. Did you film it?

steve

[Jason Robinson]

Originally Posted by Stephen J. Williams

Jason...
wow... you had a lot of content in that post. I'm glad that everything went well. I give you mad props for going beyond the comfort zone. So much room for error, you pulled it off... Congrats!
I liked the shot at 53 seconds... The dress was a little hard to make out since there was a lot of white in the background.
It must of have been pretty cool to see the reactions from everyone. Did you film it?
steve

You bet I filmed it! That was the second most important thing on my list for the SDE! #1, get it done, and #2 to have my cam pointed at the bride for the whole show to catch her reactions.

Regarding the massive post . . . . heh, well I always like to give lots of information on my posts to hopefully answer most of the usual questions I expect to get. Also . . . it was a crazy day! A lot happened! I was still riding the rush of actually having done a SDE until I finally went to bed around 7am (yikes!).

I must admit that the shot 0:50-0:54 was staged, but only because her sister (the one lacing up the corset) just did that when I had the camera off so I said "oh common, you can't give a great shot like that with out me having it on film, do that one more time."

[Mark Von Lanken]

Hi Jason,

Good job. The first SDE is usally one of the hardest. A lot of it comes down to the fear of the unknown, but now that you have your first one under your belt, Idaho is ready for more.

You had a lot of guts to show it off the laptop instead of a DVD, especially with the dual screen projector setup.

I do have to say this...that is the first time I have heard an Elvis song on an SDE, but after reading your post, it was the perfect selection. Congratulations!

[Jason Robinson]

I should also say that me & Zach & Zac (the other two assistants) are all IT pros, so all of us could quickly go into the advanced nView setup panes and turn on / off cloning, dual view, etc.

Originally Posted by Mark Von Lanken

I do have to say this...that is the first time I have heard an Elvis song on an SDE, but after reading your post, it was the perfect selection. Congratulations!

And if I ever figure out what being "a man in a fuzzy tree" means from that song, then I'd live a more complete life. The lyrics are kooky, romantic, and classic. Exactly what the bride liked. Besides . . it is Elvis and most of both sides of the family were big Elvis fans.

Originally Posted by Mark Von Lanken

You had a lot of guts to show it off the laptop instead of a DVD, especially with the dual screen projector setup.

Yes I had backups for the backups. If my laptop had problems for the edit, then I had a Core 2 Duo (twice as fast I should add) custom built Shuttle PC as a backup edit system. I had two 19" LCDs: one as secondary display for the lappy and the other for the shuttle (which we also used to track the evenings event progress since as I mentioned, my company also ran the entire reception including DJing).

And as a third backup, my DJ had a mac book pro with parallels and XP with Vegas 6 should everything fail. Of course that system was needed to run the audio (which would be a higher priority than the experimental and un-paid SDE).

And for other backups, I hired an assistant to help cover shots while I edited. For the projection, If I couldn't get that dual screen projection to work, then I had two portable DVD players (they each have video in jacks, so I use them as video monitors for output from the GL2s).

So having lots of backups made me much more confident in my ability to pull it off. The real variables was if I had enough footage. I had a VERY hard time finding footage and I am so glad I had the second display because cramming the Vegas GUI into one screen just is not a good way to work.

Major lessons learned:
-if the bride is not organized you will have a harder time pulling off the SDE. The bride wasn't in her dress until 5min before the ceremony. I had virtually no time to get the glamorous shots of her before the ceremony. Heck, I wasn't even up at the top of the aisle until the 3rd set of bridesmaids / groomsmen (but I got the mics working flawlessly for pastor & groom...... that is why I shoot with 3 cams!).

-There simply has to be a time gap between the ceremony & reception of at least 2hrs. 1hr of that is photography, but that is when I get some of the best glamorous flying shots of the B&G / bridal party.

-It also would have helped if I had decided yes vs no on the SDE before the day of the wedding. :-)

-Try to plan out something in advance WRT the SDE. Since I only talked to the B&G at the rehearsal about it, I had very little time to find out song ideas, so I'm sure the edit suffered as a result of the lack of pre-planning.


The things I did absolutely correct were:
-Get contracts out to review name spellings. Nothing was spelled wrong, but I was so glad I brought the folder with me!

-Kept notepad in pocket for name spellings, requests, shot lists, notes, etc. The only way I was able to get the groom's father's name is because i casually asked a few groomsmen what his name was, and then quickly jotted it down.

-Had total control over the DJ so I can give thumbs up / down on if we are go no go; if I need help with something, etc. It was a lot more stress being responsible for running both services, but the overall control and the collaborative effort absolutely helped. It also helped that I was the one paying everyone so they helped out readily.

-Listened to the song constantly the night before. I had that song bouncing around in my head all day. I think that helped me visualize what shots might work, or at least the pacing. I also burned that song and a few others (ideas for songs borrowed from other SDEs post around) to play to the bride to get her feedback. The Elvis song was the immediate favorite.

-Had a burning desire to do it. I think the hunger to be a "first in Idaho" (in something!) and to do it as best as possible, contributed to the single minded focus and will to get it done.


Things we did wrong:
-Waited to log an entire tape till it was nearly full.
-Only had one capture camera (since the other two were still filming reception events) ... might consider getting another cheapo GS320 for capture and aisle wide cam.
-Had edit area right behind DJ speakers. It worked the best for collaboration, but meant I had to put ear budheadphones in my ears, crank the volume, and then put big studio style head phones on top just so I could hear the vocals. I relied a LOT on the volume meters to know if I was too loud, etc.

[Jason Robinson]

Originally Posted by Stephen J. Williams

The dress was a little hard to make out since there was a lot of white in the background.

The dress was hard to shoot. I looked for several minutes to find a good place to shoot it, but there wasn't anything near by and the bride was quite late. So I didn't want to hold anything up at all because I had ran off with the dress. I also didn't get a ring shot, again, things were too late and there wasn't time.

Looking back, I would say that my final edit production absolutely will be of lower quality due to the conflicting interests of SDE vs post type of production. And that is very unfortunate. If I do this again, I will have to have even more control over the pre-ceremony time and pre-reception time so that there is time built into the schedule for the edit & shooting.

I'm tired of the photographers always getting plenty of time to shoot the glamorous shots, where I have to sit on the sidelines when they do their thing oblivious to everything else.

But this client is one of the closest clients to the point of putting video first above the rest. Ever more so than the November clients I had last year that brought me up to Riggins. Eventually I'll get there. Heck I'm pretty sure Travis & his wife (and StillMotion, and all the other fusion services) have the best idea where both stills & video are in house and both are working together for the same company.

[Jason Robinson]

Thanks for the move Chris / Mods. I didn't notice the new sub-forum for W/E samples.

[Jason Robinson]

Bueler? Anyone else out there have comments / criticisms? I'm here to learn, not just show off (because if I was showing off, it would be a pretty crappy show-off piece).

May be they all fell asleep trying to read my post first. hehehehe.

[Travis Cossel]

First off, congrats on pulling off the SDE. They ARE definitely a challenge!

I hate to burst your bubble but I did my first SDE about 5 years ago. I also filmed a wedding in Twin Falls where another company came in and did an SDE (not a very good SDE, mind you). So even though you weren't the first in Idaho, it doesn't really matter. You tried it and succeeded. That's progress.

Personally, although I offer the SDE service, I price it so high that I rarely get any takers and that's fine with me. I find that having to pull off an SDE hurts my coverage of the rest of the day for the main video, so I actually prefer to not do an SDE.

As for your SDE, it's hard to give you a critique because it was your first, and the first is such a huge learning experience. One thing I would point out was that when the music started fading leading to the ceremony, I felt like the vows should have kicked in much sooner. It just got too quiet for too long I think. Really, though, I just congratulate you for accomplishing an SDE because they are such a challenge.

[Jason Robinson]

Awwwww nuts. Bubble busted. Now I have to ask Chris H. to change the title of the thread. (and I have to change my FB post, and my Twitter....... etc) :-)

the audio was the hardest thing to get right on this. I actually had some pastor VO in there, but didn't like the flow so I removed it . . . then I forgot to bump the soundtrack back up! (I fixed all those issues in this version of the SDE, which I'll have to call a SDE + post tweaks . . . huh doesn't quite have the same ring to it does it)

And I totally agree that I found my shooting negatively affected by the SDE aspects of the shoot (and because the bride was 1.5hrs behind because she had to fix a catering screwup). So there was no fancy glamor shots of the couple because they barely had any time to do that (and the photographers didn't bring any lighting so their shots were very cramped into the few places they could get the shots).

It is incredibly hard to shoot for a post focused production AND shoot for a SDE.

Thanks for checking it out. Now I have to go off and delete / edit a bunch of posts elsewhere.....

[Travis Cossel]

Yeah, I wasn't really sure how to break the news. You should be proud of the accomplishment, though.

Personally, I'm not really interested in the SDE train anymore. I'd rather have a less stressful day and get better footage for the final production.

[Jason Robinson]

Originally Posted by Travis Cossel

Yeah, I wasn't really sure how to break the news. You should be proud of the accomplishment, though.

Personally, I'm not really interested in the SDE train anymore. I'd rather have a less stressful day and get better footage for the final production.

Tell you what, assuming I get a bit more favorable circumstances next time (ie, not editing next to DJs speakers so I can't hear crap), then I'll do SDEs all day! You book them and I'll shoot them, or you book and hand me tapes and I cut. :-) Anything to eliminate the post-production process because.....

I really really loved the reaction it got from the guests. Especially because they were looking at this 7'x5' screen for 1/2 the reception wondering WTH it was for.

The edit crunch wasn't too bad actually. It was the interruptions for shot requests from the guests that made the edit hard. If I had 1hr with out interruptions in a even remotely quieter room, then it would have been MUCH easier.

[Travis Cossel]

Your post brings up an interesting discussion I had in my head a while ago. I started thinking about the reaction of the guests with an SDE versus the reaction of the B&G when they watch their video for the first time, and which reaction was more valuable to my business.

In the end, I couldn't really determine for sure, so I decided to err on the side of the reaction of the B&G. I guess I figure I'd rather blow them away and have them talking about their awesome video, than blow the guests away and have most of them forget about what they saw within a couple of days.

Ideally, I'd hire additional help for an SDE shoot, and that's why my pricing for one is now so high. But I just can't justify delivering a lesser product to the couple so that I can show off an SDE to the guests .. if that makes sense. It's more of a personal decision than a business decision.

If people around here were more willing to spend some decent money on wedding videography, I'd have a whole different philosophy. d;-)

[Jason Robinson]

Originally Posted by Travis Cossel

Ideally, I'd hire additional help for an SDE shoot, and that's why my pricing for one is now so high. But I just can't justify delivering a lesser product to the couple so that I can show off an SDE to the guests .. if that makes sense. It's more of a personal decision than a business decision.

If people around here were more willing to spend some decent money on wedding videography, I'd have a whole different philosophy. d;-)

right on target with that. That is why I hired an additional op (i've worked with him 2 prior times, but he is still new to camera ops in general). Ideally, I'd hire the editor so that _I_ could keep shooting. Because the shooting is where the real talent needs to be. Any dude with iMovie can string perfect money shots together and get a good SDE. :-) ok, may be not so simple (please don't take offense everyone).

Originally Posted by Travis Cossel

Yeah, I wasn't really sure how to break the news.

Kind of like having to tell a kid for the first time that Santa doesn't exist, eh? hehehe

[Jason Robinson]

Originally Posted by Travis Cossel

I also filmed a wedding in Twin Falls where another company came in and did an SDE (not a very good SDE, mind you).

The real question is how did mine stack up compared to theirs? :-)