What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

I'm sure it has happened to everyone at least once, so don't be embarrassed again and share your story! ;)

Mine was when I had to stop speeches at a reception just to change tapes; I knew that everyone of the 250 guests was looking at me in total silence for 10 seconds!!!

I didn't have any alternative because they went over 60mins and the bride wanted to edit the wedding herself, so I had to keep everything....


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Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

Mine was when I was trying to follow the bride down the isle backwards with my Glidecam and 7d, and I tripped landing straight on my back. Everybody started laughing. It also didn't help that the pastor said, "Oooh, that's gotta hurt!" Then when I quickly got back to my feet, he also said, "And he's okay everybody!" The crowd got up and started cheering for me. I felt mortified!!!!

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

Mine was when the reception was dragging on and on and nobody was prompting the couple to get up and do the first dance (to iPod). Utterly incompetent MC. I went over and mentioned to him it was 10pm and the dance was scheduled for 8:30pm. Next minute, he's yelling over the microphone....

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE VIDEOGRAPHER HAS REQUESTED THAT SALLY AND DAVID NOW DO THE DANCE. THIS IS SO THE VIDEOGRAPHER CAN FINISH UP FOR THE EVENING. COULD EVERYONE GATHER AROUND THE DANCEFLOOR SO THE VIDEOGRAPHER CAN FILM THE FIRST DANCE.

B**STARD! I could have crawled into a hole and died.

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

Wow John, that was embarrassign...I think he said that because it was funny especially after couple of drinks...

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

Ah!!! MC's, the great organisers of the reception and keeping everything on track!!

In February I really needed a toilet break so, as normal I asked the MC when the bride would be tossing the bouquet..."Around midnight.. just before she leaves" was the response so off I go to find the Gents and I'm standing there quietly enjoying a moment of peace when I hear the DJ playing the "Single Girl" song which only means ONE thing ...they were going to do the bouquet ....2 hours early.

Now, there is no way you can stop your current activity and rush back so I just had to complete the task at hand and on my return (probably a total return trip of less than 2 minutes) the bouquet was already lying on the table at the seat of the girl who caught it and it was all over. Seriously they must have done the entire thing in under 30 seconds!!!

The bouquet toss was not in the final DVD, of course, and the bride also said nothing about it's omission!!

Still pretty embarassing to actually miss a complete event!!!

Chris

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

It seems the most embarrassing moments are the direct result of a breakdown in communication. This was the case with me in one of my first weddings.

The wedding was held in a posh officers club on a local Army barracks. Taking the time and care to make sure of all the details, I scheduled an hour and a half lead for the time stated for the ceremony. It was a simple civil ceremony held outside the club. The problems arose when I entered the army base and was told to identify myself and the reason for being there. I clearly stated my purpose as a wedding videographer for a wedding held at the club, gave my identification, and a list of the equipment I had with me. The guard on duty, who was a really kind guy, acknowledged that he did indeed know about the wedding , but did not see my name on the entry list for the guests. Apparently that detail had been overlooked by the mother of the bride. To complicated the situation, both the mother of the bride, the bride and groom both had their cellular phones off. After an hour of time, and repeated tries to get ahold of them, we finally were able to call the mother. She informed us that she had just received the guards repeated messages when she turned on her phone after the ceremony.

Needless to say, I arrived after the ceremony had already taken place. Even as the situation had been explained to the bride and groom, it was rather difficult being "that guy" in a room of people who had very clearly noticed your absence at the ceremony.

The remainder of the night went off without a hitch, and the resulting film was very well received by the family. However, since then, I always arrive 2 hours early of the mentioned time, and shy away from weddings that require passing guards with M16s.

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

Mine was saying "you must be the mom" to an older Bridesmaid.

I'm so frickin careful now. lol

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

Well, I have several funny (read embarrasing) stories, including ripped slacks, non-sense addressing from a band leader in front of everybody or a priest pushing me on the processional.

But the most embarrasing moment must be one almost 18 years ago, on a wedding. During the grand entrance I´ve noted that all the venue lights were on, so I called a waiter and asked if the lights may be dimmed or turned off during the first dance to get a little romantic atmosphere.

The boy agreed and went to the circuit box to switch off the lights. As he was taking too much time, I went there to see what was going on. Just as I approached him, he turned off the breakers feeding the entire band!!! Absolute silence followed and everyone and I mean EVERYONE peeled their eyes at me like if I was the one who pulled the cord off.

Only thing I came with was to point speechless at the waiter, who also was paralized in terror, with his fingers still on the switches. Everyone laughed then.

Luckily the couple was so happy that they just waited smiling until the band leader turned all of his equipment back on to dance their first song, and from there it was smooth sailing.

I hope someone here tops this one.

Cheers!

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

WOW. That's seriously uncalled for behavior by the MC. Also highly inconsiderate of many other people who have probably been there forever waiting for the main events to take place.

I luckily haven't had one yet that was really bad. I try to communicate with the MC and other important peeps before the services happen. From there I really am hands off and let things happen as it happens just so, as far as liability is concerned, that I don't interfere with anything that doesn't have anything to do with my part of the job in the evening.

I've definitely had MCs run late, but not too horrible. They've been fairly responsible.

The only embarrassing thing I could think of was something that happened to a couple I was filming while they were cutting the cake. They went over to a home made multi-tiered cake held up by columns and I don't know why they went to cut the cake near one of the columns, but I guess you can figure out what happened in that the other tiers fell over. Others rushed to save the 2 top tiers and it was okay.

It was a very small wedding though and their MC didn't even show up, so they were using a boom box. They won a contest at a Wedding show for free DJ services and the guy didn't even show up. I think that was seriously crummy.

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

I was freelancing for a local company. Use his equipment. It's older stuff, but i'm used to dealing with the drawbacks.

Two bars on the battery indicator went to dead in two minutes.Battery died down during the processional. It was a one man shoot with no b-roll.
I was able to pop a battery in, but lost the mother giving away the bride..I felt so awful.

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

I was setting up my projector at a reception right before everyone arrived. As I taped down my cables, my pants ripped from front to back at the crotch! I called my wife and asked her to bring me an extra pair of pants ASAP. I stood calmly against the wall, unable to do anything as the breeze blew my backside.....

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

Oh yeah Warren...

I had that happen to me too....Man, sometimes you forget the stuff...

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

About 15 years ago, I was playing back a SDE at a large reception. My audio system was plugged into the wall. A water fountain for the buffet was also plugged into the same circuit. As I was playing back the SDE, the water fountain would turn on every 15 seconds. For some reason, whenever the fountain went on, it would shut off my audio system for a few seconds! Realizing what the problem was in mid playback, I scurried in the dark to pull the plug of the water fountain. I tripped over the leg of my projection cart, which spun the projector. So now I had a picture being projected on the wall instead of the screen, no sound, and 400 people looking at me, wondering what the heck was going on....

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

Freelancing for a big box studio, had to do a photo montage at the reception... Set everything up as normal, popped the dvd in the player to find out said studio gave me the WRONG COUPLES SLIDESHOW!! Totally different couple came on the projector screen.. Awesome... Bride in tears, groom wants to kill me, brides mother wants to kill me, I'm on the phone completely unloading on the owner of the company and video manager for being so stupid and to try to do something to unf*ck the situation. That was fun!

Another day, where I decided to wear grey slacks instead of my usual black ones I spilled an entire cup of steaming hot coffee down the front of my slacks while opening the door to the hotel to shoot the gals getting ready... Had to greet everyone looking like I just peed myself and completely stinking of coffee..

Ha, done the "You must be the mother" to the older bridesmaid too.....

Moral of story, always check dvd of projection when working for another company prior to showing and keep a spare change of clothes in the car too! Also, even if your sure it's mom, she's always one of the bridesmaids ;)

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

Actually my father told me a very embarrassing moment he experienced, he films weddings for almost 30 years now (he's 70 years old) and 2 years ago he got a call from a couple who wanted to hire him, they had no time to meet first as their wedding was only 4 weeks away but they had seen work from him and they trusted it would be ok. The day of the wedding my father shows up and sees the bride for the first time wearing her wedding dress, he looks down at her belly noticing it was "bigger" then normal and the first thing he says was: "you better hurry up" with a big grin on his face thinking she was almost ready to pop when the bride said: "what do you mean?" :D

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

You win.

Mine was one of my first weddings years ago. I was madly taping a first dance, going crazy getting interesting angles and nice moving shots, etc. At the end of the dance, I realized I had mis-pressed the record button, and the camera wasn't even rolling. I felt like such a fool...

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

Hey Vito

Welcome to the "Double Pressed Record" club.... I once hit the record button twice after the bridal party had come in and was waiting for the bride (with the cam shooting the floor!!) As she was announced I hit record (putting the cam into pause) and carefully followed her to her seat.

It's not a good feeling at all!!!! However not as bad as one of my associates on his first wedding who was so nervous he double pressed record and filmed the entire ceremony (one camera shoot) in pause.....that would have been mortifying enough for anyone BUT he did it again with the FOB's speech!!!!

Chris

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

Here's my embarrasing moment. Studio called me last minute to shoot an 18th Birthday, gave me the location, went there, shot some details, shot interviews with the Cotillion entourage, shot the entourage practicing their dance routine. Everything was going smoothly, until another team of videographer arrived. Turns out there were 2 18th Birthday happening that day and I was at the wrong one.

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

Ditto on the double-record. Missed the bridesmaids' entrances (NOT the bride, fortunately!).
Grabbed all the bridesmaids right after the ceremony, told them I wanted to get their processional "in better light" hmm hmmm, hmm, hmm, and had them process one by one again (shot close up so no one could see the empty church!). Edited the close-ups into the missed record and no one knew what hit them.

Sometimes the embarrassing moments work out and are learning experiences.

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

Yep, I'm with you, Tim. I immediately fessed up to the bride and groom, got them to dance together again at the next slow song, used a lot of close ups to frame out the other dancers, and filled in the gaps in the video using photos supplied to me of the real first dance from the professional photogs.

Worked out great, and the couple loved it. To this day, I'm not sure if they forgot that I screwed it up...

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

Mines is pretty much the same (our second wedding). Normally we have 2 camera filming the 1st dance but we had decided to do a few interviews with b-camera. As the dance finished I pressed the button to stop recording and it started recording. The bride and groom were cool and did the dance again. The Mc let everyone know it was for my benefit. oops....

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

We trialed a freelance once, after the bride and groom took their seats at the reception, he approached the MC and said he wanted to take the bride and groom entries again because he wasnt happy with the shot.

So the MC announced that the VIDEO GUYS MISSED THE ENTRANCES SO WE ARE GOING TO HAVE TO DO THEM ALL AGAIN!

Thank God I wasn't there and my business partner got stuck with the egg on his face :)

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

Hey Daniel

I was try a lady out and she seems fine so I decided to give her a real simple job. Go to the bride's house and film the limo arriving ..film the bride in her dress but don't wait for her to leave ..come down to the ceremony at least 20 minutes before her so you can film her arriving there. Gosh I figured with a 20 minute start (the ceremony was only 5 minutes away) she would get there so we could set up and wait for the bride.

Firstly she missed the limo arrival at the house...she filmed the bride from probably 50' away and even though the bride was nearly 30 minutes late she managed to get there 10 minutes after her!!!!

That was also her last ever shoot with me!!!!

Chris

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

My worst was a couple years ago - traveled about 4 hours for a wedding and completely forgot to bring my tripod. There was a Best Buy in the neighborhood so I bought their most expensive tripod but it was completely horrible. Never want to do that again!

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

here are my favorite two:

One:
setting up in the balcony, single camera shoot. set up the tripod and jvc x3 camera. realize the tripod plate is back at the office on the copy stand. had been capturing photos for a montage and forgot to put the plate back on the camera. took several 9 volt batteries and filled in the gap between the bottom of the camera and top of the tripod plate and duct taped the camera to the tripod. usually i never sit down during a wedding, however after the stress of rigging together a heavy svhs camera to the tripod i decided during the homily to sit down in the balcony near the camera. when i stood back up to adjust the camera i noticed it was not recording, with all the excitement i had forgotten to switch from battery to power supply, the battery had run down and turned off the camera. i decided honesty is the best policy and during the photo session following the ceremony told the mother of the bride i did not record all of the homily. She said good, i met to tell you in advance we did not need all of it recorded.

Two:
at the reception the photographer has time alone with the bride and groom for photos at the golf course.
i have my cell phone in my shirt pocket and want to check the time to confirm when the photo session concludes. as i reach in the pocket to remove the phone my car keys also come out of the pocket and i watch them (almost in slow motion) fly from my shirt, through the air and fall into the storm drain. the photographer, wedding party and many others also watched the video guy drop his keys into the storm drain. of course, most of my gear was still locked in the van and that was the only set of keys.
fortunately it had not rained and i could see the keys at the bottom of the drain, the opening on the grate was wide enough one of the workers at the golf course was able to retrieve them. all ended well.

bonus:
showed up at the wrong church, the street and city names were interchangeable and both streets have a Methodist church. of course the church i went to had no wedding that day.

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

I've had some "oh !@#$" moments, but I think the most cringe worthy for me personally was a few years ago we arrived at the reception and we had two DVDs to play during the course of the night. We brought our projection system but this hall had big multiple screens all around the room that came down from the ceiling and therefore it would be much better. We had been to this hall before no problem, but I guess they had just "upgraded" their system.

We popped in an engagement video right before the B&G came in for intros and the video seemed to pause for a minute at the beginning but I thought nothing of it. Later in the night we had to play a montage of the bride and groom growing up (nicely done, no cheesy slideshow) and the video started skipping and pausing and getting blocky and as the video progressed it got worse and worse while over 300 people watched on and I died a little in my seat.

It turns out while the hall spent a lot of money on the projection system they neglected to buy a DVD player that was worth more than $20. It was one of those extremely cheap DVD players that always act up. We had tested it before hand but we didn't play it all the way through which was our mistake.

We will use systems like these still if they are available but I refuse to use any hall DVD players and will only use the ones we bring because we know they will be rock solid...however last summer I had a situation where I used a hall projector and it fell asleep during introductions so right before the B&G come in we had to play this quick montage so I start playing the video...and we get sound from the DJ feed...but no video, just black.

Both of our cameras are still running while I'm trying to signal to the DJ up on the balcony to stop the music while I turned the projector back on to warm up, totally killing the flow of everything, while taking cracks from wiseguys in the audience.

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

Wow! I thought I was the only one who ever did a "double punch" on the record button...or tore my pants...or...well, you get the picture. Thanks everyone for sharing! I've figured out that if you're in this business long enough, all this stuff will happen to you, too. However, I've been doing this long enough, that now I don't get embarrassed, I just roll with it..... Throughout my carrer, when something has happened, I've tried to make it a learning experience. That's why my gig bag has a sewing kit, a "Tide" pen, safety pins, cold medicine, toothpicks, etc, etc...and I always have a change of clothes and extra bottles of water in the car!

...and no, I didn't contribute an embarrassing moment...yet...I'll wait until I get something original... :-)

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

Imagine the scene....halfway through the ceremony, the quiet ambience is shattered by the voice of Elaine from 'Seinfeld' screeching ...."a dingo ate your baby!!!"....not once but twice. It was a mobile phone ring tone apparently.
This was told to me a few weeks ago by the photographer I was working alongside. Wish I could have seen the video of that.

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

The most embarrassing incident for me, was a technical failure, not of equipment but my clothing. I was wearing a suit that I had bought before I put on a little bit of weight. While bending over at the front of the church taking a low shot of the register signing with my back to the congregation, I heard a lot of giggling from behind. I thought my shirt had come untucked as was hanging out until a bridesmaid tapped me on the shoulder and said rather uncomfortably: "You've split your trousers and everyone can see your underpants".

Sure enough they were split from waistband to crotch and I was mortified. Luckily a guest had a pair of Chinos in his car which he dashed out and got while the Vicar delayed the walk down the aisle until I had changed. As I came back into the church, I got loud cheers and applause from the congregation and the rest of the day was great fun. The fact that the chinos were two sizes too big prompted a number of comments from young ladies of "Nice trousers!!".

Roger

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

I think, so far, most people have interpreted "most embarrassing moment" in terms of videographer stuff-ups. But there's plenty of other times I've felt an emotion I think could be described as embarrassment. Eg:

-- Walking in on bridesmaid in her underwear.
-- Arabic-speaking father of groom yelling at and manhandling me for not providing real-time projector screen display of bridal party entry at reception. This wasn't my fault at all (no-one had mentioned that this was required), but it was a socially mortifying/awkward position to be in.
-- Getting into arguments with security guards about your right to record / where you're allowed to stand (happened at least four or five times).
-- Having male guests dance against me in a sexually suggestive manner.
-- Getting into arguments with guests about myself or a crew member recording things they deemed inappropriate (eg people fainting).

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

I remember unlocking the lever that is on the assembly sleeve of the legs of my manfrotto tripod and then I held the tripod vertically so all feet would slide out to their full length, one assembly sleeve holding the bottom leg got loose in that way (probably over time) and one leg came off and flew over the church floor with a loud rattling sound. The ceremony was about to start but the church was full and the only thing I can remember was everyone looking at me and I still hear the people laughing. :)

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

I had this back-yard wedding which I was assigned to, and had never met the bride and groom before, thus did not know what they looked like. So they're arriving and I'm getting a shot of the bride as she comes from the car and through to the yard. Only it was one of the bridesmaids. The (older) bride was still coming, and I managed to get just a bit of her as she walked through. Managed to get away with it in the final edit.

The other event (which was at this same wedding) that I think I have written about on these forums, is that at the very moment that the couple are saying their vows, one of the neighbours was tossing his 'empties' (beer and wine bottles) in to the bin. Ka-tink a-chink a-chink etc! I could distinctly hear it with my headphones on, though thankfully it wasn't picked up in the audio part of the recording.

They loved their finished video, BTW.

Andrew

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

I too fell backwards when walking the B&G out of an outdoor wedding. It was a short row of seats, myb 15 rows. Anyway, I forgot at the end were 2 or 3 small stone steps. Walking backwards, totally did not a header, but I suppose an Asser. The B&G chuckled and photog asked if I was ok but my emotions went aside & just stood back up as soon as I could and kept shooting.

I'll see if I still have the video file. Other than that one time my battery didn't seem to charge fully & I replaced the battery before the intros. Had about 90 minutes but I use a Z5U with MRC card adaptor which I've found can cause shutoff with 40-50 minutes left. Anyway, sure enough it was one of those where each couple in the bridal party had to do their own dance, skit etc... Then the first dance. Then the maid of honors speech literally went on for prolly 10 minutes. I was down to about 65 minutes when it was the best mans turn. I went over to the DJ & asked if he could stall it for a minute while I changed the battery back. I quickly changed it, but felt pretty embarrased. Sure enough, the best mans speech was something like 3 minutes anyway.

Re: What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?
 

Turned up at a wedding to realise they'd spent more on the video than the rest of the wedding put together, just because he was English, she was Chinese and they wanted to show the wedding to the family in China.

They spent £50 on the photographer, very little on the dress, almost nothing on the food by the looks of it and I was left polishing the proverbial turd to make it look good.