The next best thing to reading a critique of your wedding video, is reading one on someone elses wedding video.  In fact, it's far easier on your ego, so here goes..

( I wrote this before reading his letter, telling us that a more experienced videographer shot the preps but didn’t work the rest of the wedding. )

We’ve just finished watching the second (reception) DVD (we watched the first one last night), so I’d prefer to critique it first since it is freshest in my memory.  Before I begin, let me say that your presentation materials (DVD cover; case & advertising card) just blew us away.  These are so professional!

After watching the opening (first DVD), as the ceremony began, we were impressed and nearly certain that this was going to qualify for certification.   Unfortunately, as the ceremony began, that opinion changed.

Some times we’ll review a video and not see any promising signs that there is a budding professional videographer who might soon blossom.  By the time the ceremony had begun, we’d already seen definite signs of real promise here.   Good technical skills and creativity were evident in this first part of the first DVD. 

OK, now for the critique of the reception DVD (transcribing from notes made during the video) –

We  felt that your openings (for both DVDs) should have sound – music, voice, something.  This lets viewers know that their sound is working and lets them adjust their volume so they can relax and enjoy the rest of the video.

We thought you overdid the music and copyright warnings a bit and discussed whether it was proper to put your company advertising before the video, rather than after.  There was some discussion over whether your DVD menus had too-small images and text and perhaps fewer choices per menu or a different style might be better.  All this was very subjective though and entirely based on personal preferences.

While there is no way to properly mic a Catholic wedding with three priests, a reader and a singer, with only two wireless and two shotguns, a better job could have and should have been done and there was no excuse for not miking the reception better.   The announcer, the toasts and most unfortunately, the songs by the couple, should have been miked properly.  You could have at least setup a lav draped about six inches out from the top of a loudspeaker between tweeter and woofer.  Set the auto-gain and put the receiver on a camera that will not be put on standby or on a digital recorder.  

In fact, you could do the same with the other loudspeaker and connect to a second camera, so you’d have backup sound.  A shotgun on a manned camera will only get clean house system sound when it is fairly close to a loudspeaker and pointing directly at it, which is rarely the case if on a manned camera.

We’re going to make a BIG DEAL about this because audio is at least half of the video, yet from what we can tell, only a small percent of your effort went toward sound issues.    The biggest differences between amateur video and professional video are –

• Sound
• Stable imagery
• Composition
• Technicals – focus, exposure, wt bal
• Story telling & timing

No live event video is ever perfect.  If there is impromptu speaking or singing that is not on the house sound, the best you can do is rush over and aim that shotgun mic right at the source.  Let the other camera cover reaction shots because this one must stay on the audio source.

Yes, you do need mobility during receptions.  But the camera that covers the seated couple (or any static subject) for any length of time, needs a tripod.  Not a shoulder mount, not a Glidecam, not a monopod – a tripod.Your composition varied widely. At times you had it nailed, but so often all the rules of composition were ignored and sometimes, for long periods of time. Subject looking out of a shot; too much headroom;  cut people off in awkward places, too much space behind subject, etc. 

As an example, the toasts had speakers framed so that they were looking out of the shot, and they remained that way during the entire toasts.

Now this next bit may be too subjective, but none of us liked any of the PIP scenes (toasts, etc. where you had a background image and two windows, one with toaster and one with couple).  For one thing, it made the images too small.  For another, it forces the viewer to do the editor’s job – decide where to look and when. 

And lastly, the camera on the seated couple was either handheld or monopodded and any attempt to view that tiny window for any length of time would require a good dose of Dramamine.  Which is another reason it would have been better to cut back and forth between the shots – you could then eliminate the shakiest shots.

The groom was chewing gum!  Yeah, I consider this the fault of the videographer.  I give a “sermon” at the end of each rehearsal where I tell everyone they will look terrible for photos and video if they are gum chewing and “you don’t want to spoil the couple’s wedding video, do you?”.  This nearly always ensures that no one in the wedding party will be chewing gum – especially not the couple.  So, if you didn’t give the gum sermon, then it’s your fault that the groom was chewing gum.  I don’t think he chewed for very long, but it did distract from a scene or two.

On some of the dance scenes, there was too much contrast.  My guess is they  were a tad over-exposed and you used your NLE controls to darken the clips.  When you do that, you increase the contrast, so you need to reduce contrast by roughly 50-60% of the percentage you changed brightness by.  The reverse goes when you’re lightening a scene.

Speaking of image quality, many shots looked like there were either a tad out of focus, shot with a cheap camera or rendered at low quality settings.  I know you lose some pixels when shooting wide with VX2100s, but they usually look better than this.  Check into it.

Here comes a pet peeve of mine – directional changes.  When doing pans, tilts or zooms, try to maintain a constant speed and direction.  If you must pan left after panning right or if you must wide out after zooming in, first cut to another camera (or B-roll), then cut back.

When doing dissolves between clips, remember this - often the reason for the cut is the first clip ends with a rough camera move.  OK, so you cut right before the rough move.   Fine, but then you add a dissolve transition.  What does that do?  It adds half a second (15 frames more or less depending on your transition settings) past your cut.  So as the transition is happening, we see the rough camera move that you were trying to cut out.

To avoid this, you have three choices.  My favorite, for live shoots, especially if there is no music, is a straight cut.  This is the preferred cut for movies and TV and hence, it is the type of cut your viewers are used to.  If you must do dissolves (you should have a reason – like maybe a romantic song is being sung, etc.) then either cut back fifteen frames before the end of the usable part, or cut before the last good frame and tell your NLE to hold on that frame, then stretch it to 15 frames or whatever you need for your dissolve.

For dance coverage, try to work a deal with the photog that you’ll all stay on the same side of the dance floor.  Then have your two video cameras ninety degrees from each other.  This way, when one camera gets the backs of heads, the other one has some face. When one camera is blocked by the #@!% photographer, the other one still has a shot, etc.For a lot of the reception, there didn’t appear to be adequate lighting.  Once, when we’d only had our VX2100s for a few months, I noticed that my wife got good exposure with her settings on “auto” while my manual settings got dingy, grainy images even though I’d manually opened the f-stop all the way and had 18db gain.  (Well, with the VX2100, if you have 18db, you automaticallly have full f-stop).  What was the difference?  The difference was that automatic exposure will kick down your shutter speed from 1/60 to 1/30 when needed.  It made a big difference!

So, if exposing manually, remember to kick that shutter speed down when the lights get dim.  And you should always have a 20/40 watt light ready to mount.There was a very abrupt scene change that went into the montage.  I would want to smooth that out.But then, we wouldn’t have even included the photo montage.  They have that on CD, right?  You don’t want to include 100% of the reception.  They could just setup a couple of security cameras, if they want that. 

You’re job is to tell a story.  When you tell a story, you don’t say, ”The couple got up to sing, they chatted a bit first, played with the mic, then the bride took a drink before starting her song…..”  You leave all that out and say, “The groom opened with a great guitar riff, then the bride belted out….”  Well, I think a wedding video should be thought of in the same way.  You’re telling the story of the wedding reception – not documenting it.

A three-hour wedding video is likely to be watched only once.  A one-hour wedding video is likely to be watched at least once or twice a year, throughout many years.  Which would you rather give your client?  So, when it comes to the dances, not the first dances, but the ones that come after – a couple minutes of fast dancing with a minute of slow dancing mixed in, is about enough.  Depending on the reception and the client’s wishes, you may want ten minutes of dancing or five, but not twenty-plus. 

When I have a bride complain that I didn’t give her all the dancing, I explain my opinion of three hour wedding videos and I offer to put them, mostly unedited, on a separate DVD for her.  This has always satisfied them, and we only get this request about one wedding in twenty.

A suggestion about dance audio -  when cutting within the same song, try not cutting the audio track.  Let the song continue naturally and just cut the video track.  You’ll rarely even need to shave a few frames to keep them in time with the beat.  It’ll be much easier to listen to and no one will notice.

When cutting between songs (from one song to another) try using audio crossfades.  It’ll be less jarring.  (Though sometimes you may want ‘jarring’).

We really liked your coverage of the cake cutting, even though it seemed to be one-camera only.  Nice mix of close-up and medium shots.  We liked the way you covered the guests and reaction shots too.  These are marks of someone who understands what makes good video.

The animated text was nice for the opening, would probably be nice for the ending, but it got old very quickly.  We hardly needed to be told that this was the Father-Daughter dance, then this one was the Mother-Son dance, etc., etc.  It would have been bad enough with normal title text, but with the animation taking so long on long titles, it actually got to be annoying.  If you feel really must have all these animated titles, you might at least consider doubling their speed, but generally using fancy animations is a way of saying, “my work is amateurish so I’ll try to wow you with these flashy animations”.

SUMMARY

It can be disappointing, reading so much critique, especially of a video you’re proud of.  We remember some of our early wedding videos.  We thought they were so good, we even made demos out of them and gave them out to prospective customers.  Today, someone could easily blackmail us by threatening to show them to people!     In fact, this saga played out year after year, our first three years back in the business.  Each year, we’d look back at videos we’d done a year earlier and they no longer looked nearly as good as they had before!   We’d laugh about how they “go bad” after a year and say we should have stored them in a “quality-tight” container.

They didn’t go bad, of course – we got better.  And as we got better, and understood more about what it took to make a good wedding video, our old work didn’t look so good anymore.

Today, our work has evened out so that this year doesn’t look any better than last year or the year before.   That doesn’t mean we’re “great”.  We’ve hit a plateau.  One that we’ll probably never get over, largely because I’m just not as creative as a lot of other wedding videographers are and at my age I’m not likely to improve much more.  You have the kind of creativity that can put you well above the plateau we’re at.  But you need to concentrate on the basics for awhile, until they become second nature.   You need more microphones, and you’ve got to put the same emphasis on sound that you put on video. 

When shooting, remember AFEW things.  (Audio; Focus; Exposure; Wt bal).  Stick a label on the back of your camera that says, “AFEW”.  Anything to keep it on your mind.

Study composition – first for art and/or photography, then move on to see what the dimension of time (i.e.: movement) does to what you’ve learned.  All movement should have a reason for being.  This includes camera movement; zooms; pans and tilts.  Now read the previous two sentences several times a day, every day for a long while.

After that, the most important thing you can do to improve is to edit more.  Cut, cut and cut some more.  If you haven’t cut out any parts that you liked, then you probably haven’t cut enough.  That may not sound right, but you’ll soon understand what I’m talking about.   And cut with a reason.  Mostly, we cut on action.  Sometimes we cut on audio.  But pay attention to the timing of the cut and to the length of the scene.  In the same way you should mix shots with close-ups, mediums and fulls, you should mix scenes with two or three second scenes; five; eight; etc.  And not just have a bunch of same-length scenes in a row.

Keep shooting – you’ve got a great future ahead of you!     

First DVD –

I don’t want to be redundant, and because most of what I’ve said about the second DVD also applies to the first, so this part will be short.The opening and preps was very good.  In fact, after watching this part, we were certain this would pass for certification.  Unfortunately, things changed as the ceremony began.Every person who speaks, sings or plays an instrument, must be miked.  That was not the case here.  There should have been wireless mics on all three priests, either on the reader & singer or attached to their mics, as well as the mic on the groom.  I also mic the FOB.  Then, I like to put a shotgun mic on the guests, and I put a mic in front of a loudspeaker and/or tap the sound board for backup audio.

For this ceremony, this would mean at least five wireless mics for priests, groom & fob; mics for the reader and singer, mic for a loudspeaker and a recorder for the sound board.   That’s likely more gear than you’ve got.  It’s one more wireless than I have, though I have enough mics & recorders for everything else.  Either I’d be sure that the fob will be near the groom and not looking away from groom when he gives his daughter away, and/or have the extra priests, reader and singer all do their thing from a miked podium or I’d borrow another wireless. 

If you can’t get enough gear to do the job right, turn  the job down.  When you charge people for your services, you are representing yourself as a professional.  It’s not good enough to merely try to give professional video, you must also do professional audio.  Unfortunately, most of your ceremony audio is no better than “Uncle Charile” might get from the front row with his $300 camcorder.After the entrance, we cover ceremonies with all cameras on tripods.  During the entrance, only one camera is not on a tripod.  I operate this with a shoulder mount.  All manned tripods should have good true-fluid heads.  The Monfrotto 503 is the least expensive decent head you can get for dependably smooth pans and tilts.  It is not cheap, but it is the least expensive. 

Your ceremony coverage was marred by unstable cameras and occasionally jerky pans.  Handheld or monopod cams are OK for moving subjects or if you’re moving around the subject, but not for static subjects like you have at wedding ceremonies.

It appears you may have failed to consider that guests usually stand for the bridal entrance.  The photographer was down in the center aisle and had a great angle on the entrance.  You could have been on the opposite side of that aisle and captured this important part of the wedding ceremony with a great view.  Instead, your shot was cut off as the guests rose.

Back to sound -One time, we covered a large Catholic ceremony.  At the rehearsal, the priest assured us that we would be able to tap the sound board.  The church rules were so strict and our cameras were kept so far back that we had to use telephoto lenses.   The sound guy didn’t arrive until ten minutes before the ceremony and he refused to let us tap the board.  The only loudspeakers were way up in the ceiling – entirely unreachable.  We would have no backup sound.  I quickly setup two shotgun mics on mic stands, aimed them at loudspeakers and connected them to my digital recorder.  They snuck a second priest in on us!  He walked around, far from the miked priest and the miked groom.  Without those shotgun mics, we’d have been sunk.  I still had to sweeten the audio, but it came out OK.When it comes to sound – things often go wrong.  You can’t just mic everyone – you have to have backup too.

This isn’t going to be a very linear critique because the above was from memory, now I’m looking through our ceremony notes and adding –

• Camera movements (handheld shakiness; pans; etc.) are too frequent and too distracting.  Camera movements should be purposeful and add to the story-telling, not distract.
• White fade in middle of The Kiss????  Why?  Nobody liked this.
• Too much camera movement!  (Yes, this is redundant, but so was the camera movement)
• Exposure issues (Yes, no live event shoot is ever perfect, but the exposure issues here were too frequent and too drastic)
• Awful sound
• A few (perhaps too few) good close-ups like the couple holding hands during ceremony.  Would have been even better if closer and if in focus.
• Composition. Please study composition
• Generally poor video quality (resolution-wise)
• Cuts made halfway into zooms.  Always complete movement first or have a reason and perhaps a long dissolve between the cuts.  Too distracting to cut in middle of a move.
• Several shots of singer from rear?  If you don’t have a shot at one subject, then find another.  A bad shot is a bad shot and shouldn’t  be used.
• When priest spoke about someone in the audience, you had a great shot of that person.  We liked it!  Many newbies would have missed that.
• There were times when the priest(s) were close to the goom, who was miked.  Why not use those pieces of better audio?
• Occasional good composition.  Good composition should not be considered “optional”.

Well, there you have it.  I don’t make many friends with these critiques and I don’t charge enough money for the time it takes (the equivalent of a full day, in this case), but if you put your feelings aside (hard for me to do sometimes too) and use this as a guide to plan some training and practice by, you can jump-start your quality by several years.    Why not keep that experienced videographer around awhile?  You can learn from him and he can help your videos. 

Watch our wedding video and you’ll see that we’re not perfect either.  Many times, things go wrong and we have to plug in some backup audio or cut to a static camera (those static cameras are often our best “cameramen”!)  Most of these problems get hidden when I edit.  Having multiple cameras and multiple audio sources means that we usually have something good to use.

Don’t just shoot at weddings.  Shoot around the house.  Go out and shoot local events.  Shoot wildlife.  Shot your pets and kids. (There’s been more than one time I wanted to shoot my kids, when they were teens, but that’s another story!)  The thing is, get to know your cameras like the back of your hand.  Practice good composition every day.  Even if you don’t have a camera with you (shame!), use your hands to frame a scene.  Pay attention to the composition, and remember “AFEW” things!

Good luck and good shooting!

PS –

Audio

Focus

Exposure

White Balance

(AFEW)

Get your wedding video critiqued.  Send $100 and your DVD to:

WeddingVideoDoneRight.com
Rural Route 4 Box 2885
Stigler, OK 74462

We'll give you full credit for your $100, off the cost of certification if you certify within sixty days of our critique.

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.