We never divulge any identifying information regarding wedding videos whether they pass our scoring process or not, but I thought it might be interesting for others to read one of our wedding video critiques..

And I thought you might like to see what kind of scoring system we use - wedding video scoring system.

A WEDDING VIDEO CRITIQUE

THE GOOD

I really liked some of your camera angles, smooth camera moves, good close-ups and the good exposure and focus your video had in its earlier moments. Your creative abilities showed through, but only fleetingly and without consistency. But while creativity can add points, lack of creativity doesn't subtract any (or I couldn't pass certification!)

About three minutes into the video, I had the feeling that we could certify you based on this DVD. It appeared you were using good cameras, good techniques, and I could tell you were diligent and sincere about wanting to produce a good wedding video. It certainly felt like you understood what it took to put a good wedding video together and that you were about to do so..

THE NOT-SO-GOOD

..but also right away, little things started jumping out at me signaling that this might not be so great. It really started with the opening when I saw that Artbeats-stock-video-type aerial shot. The thought immediately came that, while this was a cool shot, it might fit better in a corporate video or documentary, than in a wedding video. Still, I stayed hopeful for several minutes.

Then the preps started running way long, as did the photo session. Each situation is different and some prep sequences may deserve more than others. We often see one or two songs for each, photo and prep sequences. I felt that you could fit an entire opera within each of these prep, photo and dance sequences. The really did start off good, and probably would have been fine if edited down, but they ran way too long (about twenty minutes each).

Clips were left in when they added nothing to the story - even clips like the photographer’s back, people walking in front of the camera obstructing everything, and more. Just removing these "do nothing" clips would have helped a lot. We felt they were distracting.

Then more clips started showing up that not only looked like they didn’t belong in their position, some looked like they didn’t even belong in this video – like the beach scene where the bride (who looked so beautiful at the wedding) looks fat as a whale in her bathing suit, mostly due to the low camera angle. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason for inserting that photo between two wedding clips of people in formal wear.

During the ceremony, there was the slow pan to reveal the photographer (close-up, standing next to the videographer) behind the flowers, then pan back to the couple. It was like the vidoegrapher absent-mindedly panned then discoverd that only the photographer was there. I never figured out what this shot was doing in the video. It seems it shouldn’t have been shot, but since it was, the editor surely should have excised it.

And the word “continuity” comes to mind. There was a serious lack of continuity in this video. And a lack of a sense of timing also. I could cite numerous examples, but the most flagrant was with the animated title screen between the ceremony and the couple greeting guests and family immediately afterward.

There was no other title screen used between any other scenes in this video (well, at least as far as I could tell, I quit watching after what seemed like three hours of dancing) yet here was this title screen separating what? The ceremony and the couple receiving their guests, immediately afterward. They were in the same building, dressed the same way. There was added continuity because we saw the couple exit to the next room, then the cameras are there with them.

If we’re going to have this one and only title screen, shouldn’t it be placed where there is separation needing a segue between two sequences? It felt out of place between these two similar scenes, but would have fit better between the church and reception where you had a change of venue and tempo.

FOREVER

No, not the song. This is how long the wedding video felt. Some may think the job of an editor is just to put things together. You go through this huge collection of clips and make sure that you include everything – “Oh here’s a great shot, let’s stick it in somewhere!”

But an editor’s most important job is to remove clips and pare the video down to the meat of the story. If a clip is doing its job in this particular place, and is contributing to the story in an integral way, then it stays, otherwise, it is moved or sliced out. Cut out the fat, deliver a lean, mean and interesting wedding video.

Listen to a great symphony. Does it have a lot of parts that don’t fit, don’t contribute to “the story”, but tossed in just because they’re good melodies? No, and neither should your wedding videos.

Sometimes we’ll make Easter eggs for good shots that just don’t fit into the story line. Or create a montage of such shots with a music background. Or leave them on the cutting room floor, but we prefer to not just toss them into the video, in places where they don’t seem to fit.

And what about the length? OK, sometimes a bride wants “everything” included. But it’s up to us to save her from herself. Unless you’re William Wyler, directing a Lew Wallace novel, your wedding video DVDs will usually work best between forty-five and seventy-five minutes (journalistic style, like this was). Happily, this also allows for near-maximum bit density on a single-layer DVD. If you really must deliver a four-hour blockbuster, how about multiple DVDs, perhaps one for preps and photo session (if before ceremony), one for the ceremony and photos (if after ceremony), one for reception events and one for endless dancing?

Most brides don’t understand what makes a good video. Your hard work and her DVD is likely to sit on a shelf and collect dust for decades, because it’s just too painful to have to sit and watch something that long. We’d prefer DVD menus that have a button for “More Dancing”, etc., or just put them on a separate DVD altogether, if the bride insists on having all of it.

Wedding videos that don’t have DVD menus or at least separate DVDs for the various segments, don’t give brides much of a choice – watch it all or watch it not.

CEREMONY ISSUES

We prep our couples to slightly tilt the hand to give us a clear ring shot, but we also have two manned cameras on the wings (either behind the couple or forward on the side aisles), as well as a static third camera at the rear. The camera on the bride’s side, (mostly covering the groom), usually gets this shot. If, for some reason, the ring shot zoom-in misses, we edit it out and go with the medium shot from the other camera. If you're doing a 2-cam shoot with only one camera near the couple, you do not want to lose your medium shot and zoom in on the hands unless you KNOW you've got the shot? Why? Because cutting to your static wide camera at this stage will not seem appropriate.

After the ring ceremony, in order to get yourself to the rear of the church, where you could duplicate the efforts of the cameraman already there, you placed yourself awkwardly into the wedding scene as you rushed to crossed the aisle, on the stage, behind the couple. This is a big "no-no" and would cause you to fail certification all by itself, because this is very unprofessional.

Your second camera had an exposure setting vastly different from your first, giving a silhouette effect that was almost jarring, interposed between your properly exposed shots. It helps to use cameras that are the same make and even same model, but you need to take it a step further and coordinate exposure and white balance settings

PREPPING THE COUPLE

Speaking of prepping the couple (as I did regarding tilting the hand for the ring shot), at the rehearsal, I always have a little talk to the couple and entire bridal party and relatives, where I explain how bad they’re going to look on the video, if they chew gum. They’ll look even worse in the photos. I go on to say that this is a very important, once-in-a-lifetime event for the couple and we should all be courteous and leave our chewing gum at home.

In this video, the groom was chewing gum. Apparently, it was a huge wad of gum. No, not “apparently”…he mostly chewed with his mouth open, so we could be quite certain that it was a huge wad of gum. He did not look charming or romantic during the ceremony and he won't look any better as this video is viewed again and again, over the years. That wad of gum has been immortalized!

Is this the fault of the videographer? In my opinion, “yes” or at least, "sort of". These are young, inexperienced people who are likely to be quite nervous. They need us to help them a little. Strict instructions to avoid gum chewing, at least during the ceremony, are in order.

The other thing I prep, is to the groom (and my wife does this for the bride), to not say his vows as though he’d memorized them or was trying to set a speed record. “Instead, look into your bride’s eyes and say these words like you mean them.”

AUDIO (or, “What did you say?”)

The biggest technical flaw in the video was the audio. The couple had two persons apparently reading something during the ceremony. These people and their words were important, or they wouldn’t have been asked to speak. But we couldn’t tell what they were saying, because there was no microphone nearby, we could only watch as their lips moved.

The minister wasn’t miked either, and parts of his talk was very difficult to understand. It can be OK to only mic the groom when the minister will always be very close and no one else is going to speak, sing or play an instrument.

From what we've seen, it is common for wedding videographers to pay less attention to the audio portion of their video than to the visual part. We all need to work at changing this.

Have you ever watched a movie where a main character wasn’t miked and you could hardly hear or understand what he was saying? No – Why not? Maybe it’s because professional movie producers just don’t make this crucial mistake. Should it be permissible for wedding videographers to make this mistake? I think not.

We know you had at least one wireless lav mic, so why were the toasts and reception dance music all fuzzily recorded through the on-camera microphone? Why not drop a lav mic in front of one of the DJ’s speakers? This will get the audio much clearer than your built-in mic.

Maybe the problem is that we call them “video cameras”. Perhaps they should be called “audio/video cameras”. Experts tell us that it is easier to watch a movie with fuzzy video than one with fuzzy audio. The sound is at least as important as the images, yet most wedding videographers seem to ignore the audio part.

MY NOTES

(these are things I wrote down while watching the video, rearranged into what I felt was the order of importance.. )

Audio. The two readers at the ceremony were not miked, could barely be heard and were not intelligible. Minister not miked and not standing very close to groom, so he sounded “fuzzy”. At times, he was difficult to understand. Reception audio (toasts, music, etc.) was “fuzzy”, the way far-off audio sounds. Dropping a lav in front of DJ’s speaker would have helped a lot.
Lack of continuity and sense of timing. I got the impression that the editor didn't take these concepts into account at all.
You (submitting videographer) did not even view this video in its entirety. How do I know? Maybe it was the twenty second length of black video (with background music!) that was left in the preps, right after the bride enters through a curtain. If everything else had been great in this wedding video, this one error would have screamed “amateur” and given the bride an unfavorable impression of wedding videographers. If we want to be perceived as professionals, then we must deliver a professional product. A professional wedding video would not have twenty seconds of black video in the middle of a prep sequence.
I hate to be redundant, but these sequences were just too, too long. A video should always be advancing “the story”. It should move, dance and have some “zing”, or at least a bit of momentum. This one started off nicely, then dragged on and on. The bride and groom will likely wait many years before watching this again and its a shame because you have some good work in here.
Editing issues. Obvious errors were not cut out. Many transitions were made without giving a thought to the fact that they would use frames after the cut (for the ending clip) and prior to the cut (for the new clip). Let me explain.. Sometimes we’ll cut a clip at the precise point where the camera settled down and began to give us a steady shot. But when you transition into that clip, a one-second transition will begin fifteen frames before your cut, (and extend the prior clip by 15 frames also), thus allowing viewers a glimpse of the shaky move you intended to cut out. When doing dissolves and many other transition types, you must take the transition length into account and cut accordingly. This editor seemed to not be aware of this.
Exposure issues. Like a photographer, a videographer paints with light and shadows, so I suppose you could argue that over and under exposed shots were an “artistic interpretation”, but I wouldn’t buy it in this case. Most jarring was during the ceremony when the two cameras had such widely divergent settings. The rear camera nearly silhouetted the wedding participants while, for the most part, the first camera had it right. Multi-cam shoots demand that cameras have similar settings to give a sense of continuity (there’s that word again) between shots from varying cameras.
Focus problems. Yes, I know it is tough to shoot a live event. I do weddings nearly every single weekend during the season. But you should not leave in your initial out of focus shot, including your focus attempts as you spin the focus ring. All this should be cut out unless you’re doing something like a rack focus effect.
Animated menu where it didn’t seem to fit. Even if moved to just prior to the reception, unless similar menus are used for the opening and other sequences, it just doesn’t seem to belong.
Inappropriate scenes left in the video. Taping the brides gown to her breasts; slow pan to photographer standing next to videographer amidst the flowers (during ceremony); bride’s nose wiping; backs of photographer and others; short clips that seemed to be mostly someone walking in front of the camera; etc.
Groom chewing gum during the ceremony! OK, you only have so much control, but we need to try. Wedding videographers need to instruct against this practice.
Zoom-in for ring, only showed back of groom’s hand. Probably better to have another shot here rather than one that emphasises a missed shot.
Nice creative effect for father/daughter dance, but no similar effects for the other dances, highlighting the lack of consistency.
Videographer shows some real talent. A few changes make this a much better wedding video!