THE GOOD

We liked that the main vocals were miked well - minister, couple, toasts. Overall, this was done technically well as far as exposure and focus. The main events were all covered and we were particularly impressed on the exit coverage. Difficult lighting conditions, dozens of guests milling around, yet cameras were in the right places at the right times and got the right shots. DVD authoring was good and customized for the couple.

The contrasty conditions at the ceremony, were handled well and exposed for the main subject areas. DV just doesn't have the lattitude of film, and bright windows can cause terrible glare conditions, yet the camera operators handled all this quite well, considering the difficult conditions.

THE NOT-SO-GOOD

I don't think anyone can cover a live event like a wedding and reception and not have things for us to write in this "not-so-good" category, and this, though certainly a decent wedding video that makes the "professional cut" and that pleased the bride immensely, is no exception.

Audio - First and foremost, are audio issues. Ceremony and dance music was not captured well. We realize that this was in a chapel where they usually won't let you tap the sound system, but a mic near a speaker would have been nice. Overall, audio volume was uneven. We'd recommend using Left and Right Fill options (if using Premiere Pro) to get those mono feeds into both channels and Dynamic compression to bring up the lower volumes while preventing clipping. It would have been nice to get the DJ announcing the couple with cleaner sound. This often means leaving the after-ceremony photo session a bit early to tap his sound board or mic him - something I call, "The race to the reception!".

Shot timing - Some shots just weren't held long enough. A shot that only runs a second and a half or one that involves pans or tilts and runs much less than three seconds can seem a bit jarring and out of place when all the other shots are held so much longer. If, for instance, the operator didn't get more than two seconds of a crowd pan, sometimes extending the clip to three or four seconds, by time-stretching can save it.

Music seemed to end a bit early, after the photo session and there was no music for the credits. This can sometimes be effective after a super-dramatic movie, perhaps, but we were mostly a little uncomfortable in this instance, feeling that one of the following options might have been better -

We liked the couple of creative things you did with audio, but would have liked even more creativity. This led to a discussion about changing our scoring system. Two of us wanted to give you a point or two for creativity, but we all agreed it didn't deserve the ten point bonus. Look for us to change the Creativity Bonus scoring to one-to-ten instead of ten or nothing.

The video might have moved along better if some of the milling around during lead-up to events had been cut out. These parts of scenes didn't seem to add anything to the video except to make it run a bit longer.

No points were deducted for this, but most of us felt that the parent dances could have been cut down. They seemed to go on forever. We liked that lots of shots of guests were mixed in here, but we were still caught yawning after several minutes. We understand that some brides may demand leaving 100% of these in the video though.

One of your three cameras did not color balance very well with the others. A little work in post might have helped this issue.

We were uncomfortable with the ceremony coverage from the left side (facing stage), and would have preferred a view that included the officiant's face when the shots were medium to full.

I thought the mother's gum-chewing was distracting, but at least the couple and wedding party weren't chewing during the ceremony, so I didn't hold this against you. I get teased a bit on the gum issue - is it just me, or do others agree that this doesn't look good in a wedding video?

SUMMARY

All-in-all, you've shown that you understand the basics of videography and you've given your client a wedding video she was thrilled with. You certainly belong in the ranks of professional wedding videographers and we're proud to issue your certification.

What do you other wedding videographers think about this critique? Many of the problems I identify here are common ones that we see over and over in other wedding videos. Sometimes they're serious enough to prevent us from certifying the videographer, sometimes not - but they are very common.