woolbrig
Novice
May 5, 2008, 9:26 AM
Post #1 of 12
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First Wedding - Results
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Sorry for the long post...
We managed to make it through our first wedding shoot. Boy, does everything move fast! Saturday night after the wedding, I wasn't sure how much useful footage we had. Sunday as I was capturing the tapes I felt a little better as I saw we actually did have some decent footage. However, it could have gone much smoother...
I arrived at the venue about 2 hours prior to the ceremony to shoot establishing shots and setup my cameras & audio. Only to find out that the chairs hadn't even been setup yet. This was an outdoor ceremony at a local park under an oversized gazebo. They finally started setting up chairs about an hour prior to the ceremony. Once setup, the entire wedding party was only about 10' from the first row of seats. The bride & groom were standing at the very front with a 3' wall behind them. I did manage to find a spot to squeeze in by the 2nd row of seats.
My wife was shooting from the back. We had picked out a good place for her at the rehearsal, but it was no longer available as chairs had been placed there. (During the rehearsal the indication was no chairs would be there.) She ended up just finding the best place she could and had to move a couple of time to get coverage of the ceremony.
We did setup a 3rd camera on a 10' light stand with a wide angle lens. This turned out to be a life-saver as we both ended up have to adjust our positions a little through the ceremony and at least we can cut to this camera during these moves.
I went to all of the trouble to hook into the output from the portable sound system, using wireless then forgot to turn it on before the ceremony! Fortunately, I had set our 3rd camera up to capture ambient audio. I had also wired the groom with a wireless and the minister with a voice recorder. The audio for these turned out great.
The photo session went off without incident. I got some good shots during this time. One thing I noticed is that the photographer grabbed the couple from the time they got to the venue and directed everything they did up until the ceremony. After the ceremony, he met them at the back row of chairs and hurried them off to shoot more photos. He didn't even give them a chance to talk to each other! I would hope this isn't normal. He didn't relinquish control of them until the reception. Even then he directed them in the cake cutting. During the ceremony, he even asked my wife to move so he could shoot from there. Being new, she moved (I probably would have too) but looking back, it won't happen again. I was under impressed with his professionalism.
The reception went ok. We did have a couple of goofs though. During the 1st dance my wife forgot to start her camera. Once again the 3rd camera saved us. The high angle will give us something to cut to since I shot strictly close ups. Later I did the same thing for the 1st guest interview I did.
The DJ was great to work with, he let me hook up to his board so I got great audio from him. He met me as I walked in introduced himself and gave me a run down of the events planned for the evening. He even gave us a 5 minute warning before each event.
Overall, we did come away with some good footage. All of the important events were captured and between the 3 cameras we will be able to provide good quality production.
Without the information available on VU, I think we would have been much less successful. I do have a question or two, but I’ll ask these in another thread. I want to thank the entire VU community for the great information provided in the forum.
Joe
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(Sometimes, it's one of those churches where you know you'll get attacked by a church lady if you step out for a second to get the bride coming up the aisle.) 
I, too, send my congratulations for a first job well done! The good news is, as you gain more experience there will be less of these missteps. The bad news is, no matter how good you get, or experienced you become... there will always be at least one slip at every wedding.