When you cover your entire state, as we do, the prospect of shooting a wedding at your state capitol can get the pulse rate rising. Being so busy with editing, weekend weddings and weekday corporate and event shoots, it was only while setting our GPS for the rehearsal locale that I realized what was coming.
"I'd told you twice, that this one was at the capitol!", my wife said, using the same tone of voice she's used at home regarding our dogs - "I told you to watch where you step!"
"Hmm..looks like we might be making a sample video we'll want to use for awhile.", I replied, thinking about how we've just been sending whatever the last video off the burners happened to be.
The ceremony would be held on the fourth floor of the rotunda building. Surrounded with marble walls and floor and huge, beautiful paintings, it had terrible acoustics, but the fifth floor provided balconeys to shoot from, giving us a nearly 360º view.
There were rules and security precautions, of course. Our wagon, loaded with camera crane, five tripods, five cameras with accessories and wireless sets, etc., would have to enter through the freight entrance and everything would have to be x-ray'd..
This was a military wedding on a U.S. Army base, held in a small chapel and officiated by the Army Chaplain. It was the first time I'd ever heard words like "bastard" utterred by an officiant during a wedding ceremony! (And we thought that sailors were the rough language kings!)
But don't get the wrong idea, these were the nicest, most polite people and the reception was fun, yet dignified. I left feeling even more proud of our military officers than ever. But I'm getting ahead of myself..
During the rehearsal, we saw that the confines of the small chapel coupled with the large pillars, would present problems. Toss in a soloist, tall groomsmen, three photographers, pianist, unknown floral arrangements/locations and we knew we would want to arrive early the next day.
The ceremony was to start at 5:30...no, make that 17:30 hours! The bridal preps were to start at 15:30 hours. We decided we wanted to get to the chapel a little after two (14:00), but first we had to check out the reception venue and setup our camera crane. That would mean getting on base just before 13:00hrs, so we started looking for a place to eat lunch around noon.
It's a tough decision with a lot riding on it.. You've figured you have thirteen hundred dollars budgeted to wireless mics for your new wedding videography business. Depending on quantity and models, you can have as many as five wireless sets or, going with the "top" models, you can buy one and save up another hundred dollars for the second.
There are a lot of variations on this theme, of course. Maybe you're already in the business and have just figured out that your current inventory of two wireless sets won't cut it for doc-style wedding videography and you quickly need four more sets. What can you afford to buy now? What level of quality must you adhere to? What quality difference is there really, between the $150 and $350 sets; between the $350 and $700 sets?
This article holds the answer for you! Minutes ago, I hooked up four wireless sets - each a different model, around a solid Shure XLR mic (which I inadvertently called a Sennheiser in the audio test!), positioned myself about one foot from the mics and read off the test.
I wanted to get my wife in on this, so there would be both male and female voices, but she was too busy watching Larry King!
