Guitar player during wedding
 

Hi,
I will be shooting a wedding where the bride's son will be playing the guitar as she walks down the aisle. This is one of the most important parts of the wedding for her.

Do you have suggestions for sound (I have a shotgun mic and 2 iRivers) and maybe the best way to shoot the event of him playing?

Do I keep focus on him even after the bride walk's past?

I will be using two camera's for the event...one manned and one on a tripod unmanned.

Thanks for your suggestions,
Jeff

Guitar player
 

I would think an IRiver on the guitar player or on the sound system if they have him miked. He will probably start playing before she begins her walk, focus on him then. Then switch focus to her procession as she is walking. You could change focus during the walk if you wanted using footage from the unmanned camera to cover the switches.

is it an acoustic or electric? if its acoustic and you have some lavs clip one in front of him or even in the soundhole to work as a pickup.. definately something you want to try out in advance. the shotgun mic would work well too.

aslo if you want the best quality maybe meet with him beforehand to lay down the track. that way you wont have to worry on game day if its going to turn out allright. i think that would be your best bet

Best sound from a guitar...

Accoustic no pickup - Shotgun mic from about 1 foot away (test this of course) will give excelent sound.

Accoustic w pickup - Use a direct input to get sound into your camera. A decent DI can be had for $30 at most music or pro sound shops. But the guitarest may be plugged into the house system. If he is, just tie into that. If you cant get into the house system, then see above.

Electric - Mic the guitar amp. If you have the money, get a Shure Beta 58 (one of the best mics for the money) if not use some type of vocal mic to get a better sound.


Personally, I would probably just mic it myself just to make sure everything works my way. I did a gig where I pulled from a DI that was plugged staight into an accoustic -- it sounded great during a sound check, but when he played during the ceremony he turned the volume on his preamp way up which meant lots of distortion. Unfortunately, I was the one who got blamed.

Thank you
 

Thanks for the great advice...I am honored and humbled to call myself a colleague.

I think I will be using a lapel mic/iRiver set up as well as a stationary camera with shotgun mic to double up on the chance of getting good audio and footage.

The wedding is outside on the beach so it will be all acoustiuc (unplugged in MTV terms)...

Thanks again,

Jeff

This might sound nuts at first, but you might consider a third camcorder (I assume you're shooting SD). Since you'll be outside (hopefully a good lighting situation without a ton of fore/background contrast), potentially you could setup a fairly inexpensive stationary consumer camcorder (like one of the Opturas or a TRV70 maybe), to stay on the bride's son throughout the entire ceremony (if you don't use your 2nd camera for that purpose). If that would be workable, and you have a Rode Videomic (or access to one), you could have your audio through that camera as well (you could also adapt XLR out to mini in, but that gets a little hairy). Potentially you could have great source for a PIP as the bride walks down the isle, in addition to reasonable quality footage to cut back and forth to from the other cams (options galore). Obviously, you'd have to work on the image acquisition control carefully to get a good match between cams (and maybe some tweaking in post for polish). You would also have to guage how the bride (and others) would react to seeing that sort of setup (might be a real good idea to explain well ahead of time). Some folks might be impressed by the ingenuity, while others might think it simply unprofessional.