"Scenes From A Christening" Teaser

Well, this was a difficult one, and it continues to be! The church was up in a mountain which is positive because you get some amazing view, but you have to walk your way up carrying your equipment! After that (it wasn't pleasant), we discovered that two more christenings were before ours. Problem if you want to setup and capture imagery for our particular christening. A few minutes later, a woman fell on the stairs and hit her head, pretty hard I think. Luckily there was a doctor there. Then, when we began setting up, the priest demanded that no lights should be set into the church (which is built into a rock and it's pretty dark)!

But we survived the day successfully (this is what happening when you're telling jokes about religion too often) and today we decided to upload a teaser. The last 10 hours, I have uploaded the video over 15 times because Vimeo refuses playing it without showing some serious blocks and artifacts (on PC and Youtube it plays fine). After many helpless tries, I decided to uploaded in SD and it worked. Which is a shame because it was shot with 7D at 50fps and it had some amazing quality.

Any comments about our "cursed" video are welcome! :)

"Scenes From A Christening" Teaser on Vimeo

[Stephen J. Williams]

Dimtris..

That was awesome... I know you mentioned that there were some obstacles but you couldn't tell by watching this clip. Completly cinematic, and this is the look I strive for in my work. Thanks for sharring this one with us.
I also dig the the letterbox...

Steve

[Kren Barnes]

Dimitris,

All i can say is WOW! never seen a christening filmed/edited like that before..we use to shoot christenings all the time but have since stop due to our wedding schedule..great job my friend..a thrill to watch...

[Dimitris Mantalias]

Thanks guys for your comments! This was a parallel shooting, I was shooting the event (christening + scenes for the highlights video) and my brother took the 7D and shot and edited for the teaser you watched. Of course the final product will have the combined footage.

Kren, I had the impression that photo-video coverage for christenings was a Greek-only thing. I haven't found any christening videos from US and Canada and I'd really love to see how you do things over there. If you ever have time to upload, I'd be very interested in watching the ceremonial and all things related.

[Jawad Mir]

Love the opening shot and enjoyed the whole thing as one piece.

One critical comment I will give is that we see people mingling and talking and climbing up the stairs for at least 1 minute. I know you were trying to build atmosphere but in my opinion 30 secs would have been sufficient.

Thanks for sharing :)

[Dimitris Mantalias]

Thanks for the feedback Jawad. Maybe you're right. One minute of similar stuff is too much for a 2 minute video. I will keep that in mind. :)

[Kren Barnes]

Originally Posted by Dimitris Mantalias

Thanks guys for your comments! This was a parallel shooting, I was shooting the event (christening + scenes for the highlights video) and my brother took the 7D and shot and edited for the teaser you watched. Of course the final product will have the combined footage.

Kren, I had the impression that photo-video coverage for christenings was a Greek-only thing. I haven't found any christening videos from US and Canada and I'd really love to see how you do things over there. If you ever have time to upload, I'd be very interested in watching the ceremonial and all things related.

Given our affinity for religion and celebration, we, filipinos , photograph/videotape everything from baptism, communion,confirmation up to weddings (sometimes even funerals but we don't touch those ones).

I'll try to dig my archives but they are really not as wonderful as yours..

Cheers