Newbies First attempt - would love feeback. Be kind - rewind

A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I were asked to film a religious event at a temple. It was a last minute thing but was great for us to actually get some experience. It's a Fire Ceremony celebrating some important event in the hindu religion.

I have a Canon XHA1 and used my husband's 5D as the second camera. This highlight is done with footage only from my XHA1. I'm still just playing around with everything that I can do with the footage. But I wanted to share with the group who's helped me out so much with the suggestions, advice, and know-how that's been passed on.

Since this is my very first amatuerish attempt, I would love feedback. Thanks

Fire Ritual at Hindu Temple on Vimeo

[Wayne Faulkner]

I thought the light levels were a bit low, but you might have intruded had you suggested adding lighting to the ceremony, maybe you could have edited sections of the footage to brighten things up a bit. Some may suggest that one or other of the cameras would have been better in low light.

You may not have had room or time to use a tripod as the ceremony was a live event, but rather than holding the camera without support, you may have got steady framing using a monopole.

I'm also an Amateur, and wouldn't film such events, my interest is in anything rugby related, including live events, so you should take my observations with a pinch of salt, particularly as you have better camera equipment than I do.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Raji

Posting video of ritual ceremonies probably doesn't mean very much to non-Hindu people so the only comments you might get here would be "technical" ones. If you make this into a short documentary for Western viewer to watch it would greatly enhance the reason why you are shooting a particular sequence and what relevance it has on the ceremony at hand. I'm sure people would want to know what is happening and why and would be fascinated to know more.

From a technical POV yes you probably would have benefitted from using a monopod and also make sure that shots are sequential...ie a wide shot of the ritual followed by a closeup to give the viewer some extra visual information. Maybe a touch extra light would have helped but as Wayne says that would spoil the ambience if you flooded the scene with light. Every video you make needs a story..even a highlight video unless you were purely assembling a sequence of images for technical consideration....consider people entering the temple (with an establishing shot of the temple too) and then move to the ritual in the sequence it happens and end with the conclusion of the ceremony so you have a concise story of the events from start to finish.

Just my 2 cents worth of course!!

Chris

[Raji Ahmed]

Thanks guys. Yeah, adding light wouldn't have been a good idea at that event, but I see what you guys mean. I'm not even Hindu, so I didn't have much knowledge of what was taking place and what would be next. Unfortunately this is the only live event I've shot so far, so that's all I had to post up here. Chris, great points about the storytelling of the event, will keep that in mind. Filming may seem easy to most people but only now am I learning how so much detail goes into every scene.

As always, you guys are very helpful. Thanks.