wedding video questions

[Mark Suszko]

Your plan sounds good overall, you do not want to be shooting, you’re an important, involved guest. The alternative is for you to bring along one of your trustworthy workers to shoot to your specs like any other job, and hire a local with his own gear as the second camera. That covers all the bases. If you just brought your own gear to loan to a local, they may break it, mess it up, or have an error from being unfamiliar.

I’m told you can throw *anything* at Vegas and it will handle it, but conventional wisdom is to convert all the nonstandard frame rate materials all to one universal frame rate anyway, then edit.

I think 24p is a useless and trouble-causing affectation unless you mean to do a film-out. 30 P is just as good for a film look and easier for video to display.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Doug –

The main reason I don’t like to give out raw tapes is that I’m afraid someone will edit a poor video and people will think I did it. I tend to relax that rule for other professionals, and I’ve given out tapes in the past when I’ve trusted the person asking. So you should be able to find someone to do this for you. Just try to sell yourself to them as a good editor so they aren’t afraid of what you might do with their footage.

I strongly disagree that 24p is “useless.” It’s another look, just the same as color vs. black and white in still photography. Try telling a still photographer that black and white is “useless” and see what they tell you. If your son likes the 24p look, then that’s all that matters. And if he doesn’t, that’s fine too. It’s totally dependent on taste, nothing more or less.

The good news is, most cameras that shoot it allow you to record in a 24 fps mode that goes to tape as normal 60i DV footage. Be sure that your shooter can do that and you’ll be fine. You’ll get normal DV footage that neither your camera nor your computer will think is any different from what you shoot all the time. There’s no reason to do actual 24 fps video since the 24p ‘look’ on 60i tape will look the same with a lot less trouble for you. (If you get a camera model, come back and check with us. Some of the older Sony cams have a horrible 24p that they “fake” and isn’t worth using. Most cameras do it right, though. We can give better advice once you know a camera model.)

If they shoot widescreen be certain that they can get an anamorphic image (as opposed to letterboxed). I don’t know how Vegas deals with anamorphic DV, but check the manual, I’m certain they have a way of dealing with it.

[Doug Lewis]

Thanks for the thoughts. I decided to just hire a company to shoot and edit the whole thing. It came down to the fact that I don’t think I could have pleased the in-laws, and why open myself up to that hassle. 🙂

Anyway, my daughter is getting married this year also, in town, so I will use my crew and equipment for that one. I’ve done so many weddings over the years, just wish I could do both of my own kids. Oh, well.

[Mark Hendren]

Hey Doug!

I know I may be a little late in catching this thread, but I would love to talk to about wedding videos in Alabama. Please shoot me an e-mail with your contact info to mark@markfiveproductions.com.

Thanks!

Mark Hendren
Mark Five Productions

[Aaron Cadieux]

As a freelancer who ocassionally does weddings and as someone who works full-time for a salary, I was super pissed when my boss required me to shoot their son’s wedding on a Saturday without further compensation. I then had to edit the video on company time, which was still a kick in the pants knowing that it wasn’t bringing any money into the struggling company. I hope that if you use your employee to shoot this wedding, that you will pay him/her accordingly. Maybe you’re really good friends with your worker(s), and they won’t expect payment, but offering wouldn’t hurt. Just my 2-cents.

[Doug Lewis]

I’m definitely going to pay them the same as always. All 3 of them are friends of the family and are invited to the wedding, but I will still be paying them. They are working so why not pay.