First wedding advice
 

I'm shooting my first wedding Saturday night. It's a favor to the bride (i.e. free). I don't know what she's expecting, but I know what I want to deliver. I've been reading this forum for a few weeks now, and viewing a lot of your clips. I appreciate all of the information everyone shares here.

I'm not sure what I'm looking for, and I don't really know what to ask. I tried to plan out different possible camera positions, etc., but tonight was the rehearsal and all those plans got thrown out the window when I saw the church. It's long. Very long. So long in fact that the pews are divided into two groups with a horizontal aisle and doors in the middle of the church. The ladies (and bride) will walk the entire length of the church, meeting their groomsmen at this mid-way split. So I plan to have a stationary camera behind the first group of pews trained on the back of the church to capture the ladies, but wide enough to also capture the guys joining them. I'll be all the way up front, so I can capture from that point on myself.

Then I hope to have an opportunity to leave my camera long enough to reposition the stationary one to the very back of the church, shooting the entire length of the church up the center aisle to capture the readers, the singer, and the bride and groom exiting the church.

The bridal party will have their back to the congregation almost the entire ceremony (which upset the parents a bit), but luckily I will be on the other side with them facing me. But in order to be up there, I have to remain stationary and as hidden as possible (but I can sneak out for the rear camera switch).

And since I'm an extremely technical kind of guy, here's a nifty diagram I drew of the church, the bridal party, their paths, and my camera placements. The green dots are my cameras, with the yellow dot showing where I hope to be able to move the middle camera mid-ceremony.

http://sonanfiles.home.insightbb.com/images/wedding.gif

So any advice or simply well wishes are greatly appreciated.

Kevin -sounds like you've done your homework and have a good vantage point for your main camera. Be sure to let the photographers know where you'll be setting up your second camera so they can avoid getting in front of it. Good luck!

Art

Congrats and have fun. I shot my first full cinematic wedding in March and while it was very heavy day and not everything went as planned, it was a lot of fun (and the final video turned out very nice IMO).

You've started out right, by researching here and showing up at the rehearsal. Some things I learned:

I did exactly what you did and drew a diagram of the ceremony area based on the info that I had, and planned where I was going to be at the different times. Just be flexible, as things won't go exactly as you plan. And remember that people will stand when the bride comes out. Consider that when you place the camera at the rear of the ceremony area.

Try to always have that "bail out" shot (the camera at the rear) available to you so that if you are caught out of position on your main camera (as may happen when things don't go exactly as planned), you always have a usable shot. If you need to set up the wide shot at the rear to start with and leave it for the whole ceremony, so be it. I was caught with at least one "dead" shot that I didn't have covered for a few seconds. I had to find another section of video that I could splice in place of it in a manner that no one would notice (and they didn't).

Be careful of "artsy" shots unless they are planned, you are confident you can pull it off, and you have the bail out shot available in case it doesn't work out.

Mic both the groom and the officiant if possible, in addition to a shotgun mic on the camera (again, if possible). My wedding took place outside with gusty winds (REALLY gusty at times, the bride had to hold her veil on, it was ridiculous) and I had to switch audio tracks several times in post between the two depending which way the groom/minister were facing in order to get a reasonable audio track. Its always good to have multiple audio tracks to choose from. Also, there was a groomsman who read a scripture and was much farther away than was represented to me at the rehearsal. Unfortunately, I did not pick up usable audio of it.

Get plenty of cutaways. Shoot face shots of the fathers and mothers, etc., and the bride. You can plug them in should you encounter a section that you did not get good coverage. I did not do this well enough. Fortunately, I always had the bail out shot but would like to have had more cutaways for added creative options in post.

Be extra careful around the important stuff, i.e. the vows, the rings, etc. Get two angles and don't count on the other camera getting the shot. Make sure you are in position to get usable coverage from both cameras. Thankfully I did, as the photographer (who was otherwise great to work with) put himself right between my main camera and the couple during an important section as I was checking my B-Roll camera. If I had been in transition and not in position with the other camera, big problems.......

Try not to run through the shot. I caught myself twice on camera trying to get around to the back of the ceremony and it looked obvious. Fortunately, I was able to edit myself out, but I learned from it.

I enjoyed reading about other's first time experiences, so hopefully you can learn from the mistakes I made at my first wedding shoot (also the things that I found went well). Some of them I didn't realize until the editing started. I have many more, but these are what stood out. Make sure to come back here and post a report.

Thanks for the quick replies!

I spoke with him last night. We actually collaborated on each others' plans a bit and even discussed techniques for dealing with the troublesome lighting. He was really nice. But he did say he would have an assistant covering the back half of the church, so I'm fully expecting her to step out in front of my rear camera a time or two. But since the bride is actually paying for the photographer, I'd rather they get good shots even if it means I have to do a little creative editing.

My original plan was to keep the unmanned camera at the rear the whole time, but neither of my tripods were tall enough to see over standing guests. I didn't want a camera peeking out into the aisle for the processional, as I didn't want it visible to everyone (and the photographer) as the bride entered. But once I move it, I plan to have it in the aisle because it shouldn't matter anymore. I also have already taken (and plan to continue taking) shots of random things in the church, like all the stained glass windows, and the candles, and guests, to use as filler.

Since I'm doing this for free, I'm limited to equipment I already have (which I realize I haven't shared yet). I do have a shotgun mic on my main camera, and I also have a unidirectional lapel mic, but not a good recorder that I can use with it. My best option is a 16khz voice recorder (good for dictation; bad for weddings). I may set it up near where they will be standing, but I'm not going to bother having the groom wear it. I really don't think the audio will be usable, and I don't want to give the false impression that they'll have good, clear audio of the vows. Fortunately, at least the bride will be facing me during the vows, so the shotgun mic should suffice.

Even if I get the main camera repositioned before these events take place, it will be such a wide angle that I don't think the footage will be nearly detailed enough. But if having to choose between it and some random filler shots, I'd obviously choose it. I just hope I always have an angle from up front. I'm not supposed to move (a condition of being up front), but I may have to "lean" a litle or something. ;) The good news is, the photographer isn't allowed up front during the ceremony (since he'd obviously have to move around a lot).

Thanks again for the advice so far. I'll definitely share my story once it's all said and done.

I put together in my blog on shooting for weddings. Hope it helps.

L.A. Color Shop | Online Photo/Video Gear Shop

One note on shotguns, they will pick up less than you think and more than you think. They will pick up less of the people you think they will, and more of the surrounding noise that you think they won't. If there are any AC motors (fans / AC units, organ pumps) they will be picked up by the shotgun. Unless you are within 6 feet of the bride, don't expect the shotgun to do much good.

6 feet is generous, most shotguns are good for 2 feet. if I didn't have wireless I would definately use a zoom or something like it for the vows. i would put it on the grrom and let the rest go, the vows are (imho the single most important thing in a wedding and if they can't hear them why bother)
regardless of whether the couple is paying or not I would want to produce the best product I could based on the gear I have at that time especially if i wanted to continue on and try to make a living doing weddings.

Thanks for the additional replies. Taky, I read your blog a while back from the Canon Vixia forums. Thanks again for that. And Jason and Don, thanks for the warning about shotgun mics. Even if I decided to invest in a better audio solution, it's too late now. It's wedding day!

My brother just announced that he's getting married, possibly as early as September. So I may be back with another challenge later this Summer, in trying to video a wedding with two unmanned cameras, as I'm guessing I'd be a part of the ceremony! But otherwise, I don't expect to turn this into a career.

Well, I'm off to help with decorations and maybe get some more establishing / filler shots. I'll check the forums one last time this afternoon when I come back home to get ready.

Wow. That's all I can say. What an experience it was to video my first wedding. I think the thing that surprises me the most is just how much work it was. I was so worried about planning for the ceremony, but it turned out that the hardest part was being in the right place at the right time for everything else. By the end of the night, I felt like I had run a marathon!

I take that back. The hardest part was filming the father / daughter dance and glancing down to see my own daughter (7) looking up at me with puppy dog eyes. I caved and put the camera down.

The ceremony went fairly well. I had the best vantage point for the most important stuff (better than most guests). But unfortunately, the bride ended up directly in line with a very bright stained glass window. Otherwise, it went better than I expected, especially given my restrictions on moving around. I was so worried the bride would end up blocked by the officiant. His book did block their hands for the rings and the knot tying. But overall I'm pretty happy with the footage I was able to capture.

Same goes for the reception. I got tons of good footage. Probably more than I should have, because now I have to go through it all! I had good vantage points for everything but the cake cutting (they turned last minute, so I got stuck filming from the side). But they were "nice" to each other, so I didn't really miss anything. I found it odd how differently people treated me. Some people were very careful not to step in front of me, while others didn't seem to care at all. And when I was going table to table, some people tried to ignore me while others waved and wished the B&G well.

Anyway, thanks again for all the advice, and I may be able to share a clip later this week.

Congrats Kevin! Are you turning into a professional wedding videographer now? hehe good luck with the editing and BluRay/DVD authoring

We all started with one wedding and look where we are now :)

We used to walk away with 8 hours of footage for each camera. Now we get 3 hours each "YES!" wayyyy easier to edit.

Looking forward to the clip.

I've got the ceremony rendered and ready for DVD, and I learned a lot about aspect ratios in the process! I had to mix HD video with SD 16:9 video and render it to NTSC wide. Aparently, HD video is slightly narrower, even though mathematically it should be the same. I'll have to do some research on that, but I had to slightly crop my HD footage to fit the SD 16:9 video and the NTSC wide output aspect ratio.

But after that, it was just a matter of choosing the best footage and balancing out the shots. I'm happy with the flow of the ceremony feature, although the HD footage really stands out above the SD footage. I did what I could to match them up, through color correction, unsharp mask, levels, etc. But short of reducing the quality of the HD footage, there's nothing else I can think of to try.

Part of the reason I did the ceremony first was to get the SD footage out of the way. Now I can move on to the reception and highlights features using just the HD footage. I still need to render it down to NTSC wide for the DVD, but at least I can put together some 720p footage for uploading to Vimeo.

hehehehe.

Nice one Art!

Good luck indeed!

Oh yeah, I meant to share a story about that. I had my stationary camera directly behind the first section of pews aimed down the aisle to get the procession into the church. And my wife was nice enough to turn it around and position it just in front of the second section of pews aimed up the aisle for the rest of the ceremony. As soon as she did, the photographer set up shop directly in front of it! So half of the footage from that camera was of his back side. I was still able to use some of the footage, including the most important shot when the bride and groom walked out.

He was a nice guy, and I feel for him because he said he dropped both of his cameras earlier that day on the pavement while trying to get some shots of the church. I don't think he intentionally blocked my camera. Maybe he thought my wife was just moving it out of his way!

I think you have everything covered. Whenever I shoot I always like to make sure my camera bags are close by incase of an emergency I can swap out a battery or tape/Card. I also learned that light is always an issue when shooting a wedding. You may have to scrap camera angles at the last minute because of the lighting has changed in the church due to the time of day. You can always grab some good B-roll shots during the service when people are walking to the alter to speak or if someone is singing. Also during the vows keep and eye out for parents, this is a key part for mom or dad to shed a tear, as long as you have the backup shot rolling I would grab a shot of the parents for sure.If you are covering the preps, I like to pay more attention to detail with tighter shots and steady as I can get it. Its also a great time to catch some important sound bites so make sure you are getting good sound levels. I hope I was a help.

I'm a little embarrassed to share this clip, given how much better everyone else's looks. But I won't get any better if I don't share my work and receive criticism and advice. I especially need help figuring out how to properly clean up my footage, particularly the shots in the church and at the reception. It was just so dark, and all of my attempts to lighten the footage just wash it out. I'm using Vegas Movie Studio.

Mike and Amber Wedding Highlights

You got burned by a force from the evil empire called "auto". The backlight from the windows caused your camera to adjust the exposure for the windows instead of the subjects in front of the windows. Select manual mode and set your camera to 0db and 1/60th shutter speed. Adjust your iris as needed. If you don't have enough light, go to 1/30th shutter speed. As a last resort, increase the gain but try to not go above 6 to 9db or you will get a lot of grain. A friend who is a wedding pro advised me to set the exposure for the faces. If a window or even the white wedding gown is overexposed; so be it - get the faces right.

In your footage, the lighting in the ceremony was good enough for 0db and 1/60th sec. shutter speed. The reception bit you with the gain on your camera. You have quite a bit of grain in those shots. The auto mode caused the gain on your camera to go up too high - +12db or perhaps more.

Fortunately your footage is quite fixable. As for adjusting the underexposed foorage, when you increase brightness, the contrast washes out. You usually have to adjust contrast when you adjust brightness. You will find Mike Crash's Auto Levels very useful Mike Crash Homepage - Downloads although I don't know if it will work with Vegas Movie Studio. If you like Vegas, I encourage you to move up to Vegas Pro. It has many more tools plus multicam editing.

You can remove almost all of the grain in your reception shots with Neat Video Neat Video - best noise reduction for digital video It isn't free but it does a great job.

If you want to reduce the shaking in your handheld and tripod shots, you can use Mercalli proDAD - Mercalli -- Video Stabilizer It also is not free but is a very useful tool. It will help you a lot to invest in a good tripod with a smooth fluid head.

Both Neat Video and Mercalli will substantially increase your rendering time but the ability to rescue footage can make it a worthwhile price to pay.

Thanks for the info Jim. I had spent some time prior to the wedding figuring out what settings I should probably use. But to be honest, I was so busy trying to make sure I didn't miss any shots, I decided to just let the camera choose the settings. But now I'm learning that maybe the camera settings should take precedence. Hopefully some of the filters from the site you directed me to will help.

I'd love to upgrade to Vegas Pro, but that's a little above my budget for this hobby. However, Neat Video sounds like it may be worth the expense. I already use Neat Image for my still photography, and it's worth every penny. And I've got a good tripod on the top of my list of future purchases (probably the next thing I buy). I'm tired of trying to pan and having it stutter.

Number of things to have in mind when shooting/editing:

1. Get peoples reaction also
2. Mix closeups between wideangle shoots, faces, hands, rings
3. Rather zoom out than in
4. Plan the cameramovement

I think your video was rather good since it was your first wedding video. But there was too many clips from a similar angle in the church that needed closeup between them.

Thanks for the pointers, Asvaldur. It was for all intents and purposes a single camera shoot from a stationary position, with a secondary, unmanned SD camera that produced barely-usable filler footage (none of which I included in the highlights). Hopefully if I do another wedding, I won't be so restricted on where I shoot from and will be able to move around.

I just downloaded and tried out these filters, and I learned something very important. I suck at levels and color correction. Auto Levels did so much better, and with almost no effort on my part. And the smooth filter also helped a lot with the noise. I use a similar technique with median applied to a mask in still image processing.

Thank you for directing me to these filters. I'm re-rendering the highlights video now with all my attempts replaced with auto levels. The vimeo video should be updated within the hour.

Hey Kevin, not bad at all. You got some nice creative pan shots. It's too bad your wife couldn't have moved the back camera up to one of the sides of the pews and zoomed in a bit to give you a 2nd angle. That's probably the hardest thing for single person shoots.. a 2nd video person would give much better flexibility in the footage to transition to.

I liked the other guys comments about zoom out and not in, and putting wide shots, then close ups in between each other.. I'll have to practice that myself as I am learning still..haven't done an official first wedding yet.

I noticed the color shift on the zoom out as well when they were walking up the pew. I read a while ago to turn all auto settings off on video cameras and it's worked out ok for me just farting around with stuff.. although to be fair I haven't learned how to white balance a camera and how often I should. I think that may hurt my cheap JVC DV cam (got a little Everio 30GB model).

I also notice that you do a number of pans of the whole wedding party. I am curious what others say about this.. I have done something like this (at my brothers wedding.. wasn't an official shoot.. I was part of the party but did some shooting anyway) and most videos I see don't ever have wide panning shots like this. I should say.. not wide.. zoomed in a bit but panning around several people to get them in. I've mostly seen it where the pans are subtle and are wide..zoomed out. Anyone care to comment on that? Is that a "dont do this" rule of thumb?

I liked the end where you shifted the color to b/w a bit and faded the outer in. Nice. Depending on the software you are using, I think you could have added a slow mo or two in there to add a little more dramatic effect.. but I say that with a grain of salt.. I like how that looks if it doesn't mess up the video. I find the Adobe CS4 AE with Pixel Motion does an incredible job. Not sure about other software.

Did you get any footage of them preparing, shots of the rings before hand, her dress, the grooms hanging out, people coming in and sitting, etc? I know this is a highlight so you probably did, but I find some of those shots to be really nice in a highlight as well.

Great stuff. What cameras did you use btw? What audio gear?

I'm not sure it's possible to maintain proper white balance straight out of the camera all the time unless it's completely stationary or the venue has really good, consistent lighting. This church most definitely did not. The back half was illuminated by both yellow-tinted hanging lights and stained glass windows, while the front half was lit by various types of flood lights and windows. Perhaps it would have been easier to color correct my footage had I locked in a particular white balance rather than letting the camera try to adjust, especially since the camera didn't do a very good job. The auto levels filter Jim Snow suggested did an excellent job of fixing the white balance in most cases, but I think I need to turn it off for the part where the B&G walk to the very front of the church. As they pass the stained glass windows, the colors bounce all over the place.

Unfortunately, the best I have is Vegas Movie Studio. There is actually some "slow motion" in there though. Some of the pans of the bride at the beginning are slowed down some, mainly because I was using a monopod and didn't keep it steady enough. So I took the usable parts of my clips and stretched them out a bit. But I know what you mean.

I actually didn't get much of that stuff. I did get a lot of shots of the bridesmaids and groomsmen during their individual photo sessions with the photographer, but I wanted the highlight clip to really focus on the B&G. Maybe I'll throw together a "Meet the Wedding Party" feature or something for the DVD. I do have complete coverage of the ceremony, including guests entering and exiting, but my vantage point wasn't the best due to the layout of the church.

The camera used for all shots in the highlight clip is a Canon Vixia HF10 with a Raynox 6600 WA adapter and a BM-100 shotgun mic (set to 90 degree stereo). The other, stationary camera is an old Sony DCR-TRV520 Digital8 SD camera (in 16:9 mode). The difference in IQ between the two is night and day. It's hard to believe I used to be so impressed with the Sony's quality! I didn't have a dedicated audio feed. The best I could come up with was a voice recorder with external, unidirectional mic, which I placed in the choir area right near where the B&G stood. But the voice recorder's quality was terrible; not designed for this sort of thing, so I didn't use the audio at all. I did, however, mix in a bit of the Sony's audio in a few places.

Thanks for the all the feedback.

It's a good idea to cut your video so that you can apply filters as needed to each segment. Place your cuts so that each segment is appropriate for the filters that you use. It's not a good idea to apply a filter to the whole track if there are scene differences that need different correction.

I admire the way you have approached this. Your open mind will serve you well. You will be producing some class results if you keep it up.

Thanks Jim.

By the way, after reading of J.J. Kim's music licensing troubles, I've decided to password protect this video, just in case. I'm glad I was able to share it and get some valuable feedback, but now I'm afraid only the B&G will have access to it.