Wedding Videographers – What’s your workflow?

[Harm Millaard]

Possibly you may find dragging a clip to the source monitor, setting in an out points, dragging to the timeline easier than using the razor tool. Try it out.

You know, there is one MAJOR problem with an autodidact, they all had an idiot as a teacher.

Harm Millaard

[Mark Whittle]

Sara, yes as far as weddings go I wack ’em all on the timeline at once but first I make bins labelled something like “Before”, “Ceremony”, “Photos”, “Reception” and other bins for graphics and music.

I used to make a bin for highlights but now I just write “HL” in the clip’s description field in the project window if that clip has a highlight in it. Other clips I will identify similarly such as “opening shot” “best man” or whatever.

I customize the project window a fair bit, making the icons medium or large and turning off labels, media start, media end etc and moving the desciption field to the top of the list so it is right next to the clip name. (I think its called edit columns from the menu that pops up from the little triangle with a circle round it in the top right of the project window) I like the video & audio usage fields to be visable as well so I can tell if a clip has been used in the timeline and how many times.

I sometimes change a clip’s poster frame to show the bit of the clip I want as a highlight.

The advantage of putting everything on the timeline is it tells you your duration at any given time so you know how ruthless you may need to be. I allow about a minute for an intro sequence and 4 mins for highlights. Like you I make new sequences for these.

I don’t use the razor tool that much; I prefer to ripple edit (with the V tool, alt drag) or using a ShuttlePro controller I have set a key to perform a cut to the whole timeline (Ctrl+k) then I right click the bit I want to chuck and select ripple delete.

I find I use a lot of audio transitions (Ctrl+shift+D) to smooth the cuts.

My best asset is my Premiere keyboard which has all the shortcut keys on it as it is so much faster with shortcuts and it saves me having to try to remember them all.

As far as whether to capture the entire tape or just bits, I find it much faster and less stressfull to your tape transport if you select scene detect and grab everything on the tape, especially for weddings when you pretty much want all of it any way.

If you had a job where you shot hundreds of takes and you only want the one, or you needed to make a batch capture list for repeatable frame accurate capture later, say in another edit suite, then you would approach capturing differently, but for weddings, and the vast majority of my other work, I grab the lot.

For some jobs I shoot to a Firestore which bypasses capturing and saves a heap of time, but for a wedding it is too heavy and finicky, except for the actual ceremony and the speeches.

Cheers,

Mark W.

[Mike Velte]

Harm is right, editing in the timeline is clunky.
We use 2 cams with the internal clocks matched. Capture with Scenalyzer Live creates file names with the date/time in the file name. Importing these files into Premiere sorts them chronologically.
I create 2 sections for the DVD;
1. The ceremony, 2 cam edited in real time.
2. Highlights of the day, beginning with the before stuff (tape flowers and guests and interviews), highlights of the ceremony, the reception and drive off. I try to keep it simple but use slow-mo and blurs where appropriate.

BTW…i hate weddings!

[Sara_g]

Thanks everyone for your input! Last night I spent several hours working on this project and have discovered two awesome features that I think is going to help me alot:

1) subclips

2) the project manager (trims those huge clips down automatically!)

Thanks everyone!

[Harm Millaard]

Just be aware that subclips, especially from long master clips, introduce significant delays when scrubbing the TL.

Harm Millaard

[Harm Millaard]

This may be a workaround for the subclip delay:

Create each sub-clip from the MASTER CLIP in your project panel, start by double clicking on the clip and bring it into your SOURCE monitor, scrub around and set your IN and OUT points. Then right click on the source window or use the Clip pull-down menu to “Create a subclip” and give it a unique name. Then right click again on that subclip in your source monitor, or select “Edit Subclip” from the Clip pull-down menu, and from there, check the “Convert to Master Clip” box and click OK.

Harm Millaard

[Mike Smith]

Autodidact indeed … is that a little bit naughty, Harm, or just humorous?

Of course when we’re beginners, great teaching helps.

But suppose you knew your craft, and wanted to push out into experimental areas … would you have to wait then for someone to do it first, so he or she could teach you?

Or, and this is a great one for a creative field, simply don’t try anything different, new, original …? Never mind;teacher will be along with ideas and techniques in a year or a few ….

[Harm Millaard]

It was intended to be humorous. Sorry if I failed in that respect. Let me try another one:

Good judgement comes from experience; and experience, well, that comes from bad judgement.

or

Experience is that marvellous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.

Harm Millaard

[Mike Smith]

Love it, Harm! My misunderstanding …

[Mike Cohen]

here is a trick I have used a couple of times. Captured 6 tapes in their entirety.
Then I did a rough trim on the timeline using the razor, deleting the rubbish, keeping the good takes separated by blank space.
Then I did a project manager, which creates new clips and they are in my bin. Open the new project, name the new clips in the bin and get editing.
Back in the Media 100 days you could drag a clip from the sequence back to the bin in real time, as all you are doing is referring to the IN and OUT from the source video. Does FCP let you do that?
Anyway, for some projects this works, for most I just capture the whole tape and cut it up on the timeline – for weddings and surgery this works the best. You never know when you might need some audio or another shot to cover an edit.

There is no wrong way to edit – only many right ways.

Mike