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Lesson Info

Shoot: Toasts and Group Dance

The way that rob has the lights, we diagram this before, so both the person that you have shooting your video and you can be on one side, right? It's important to note here that this is a very small scale we're working in very tight quarters. It was usually a lot we would never be this close to the action is close to the action or this close blocking people's views. We always try to make sure that we're not obstructing anybody's view because we don't want to be a nuisance. We don't want to be obtrusive, and it looks nicer with a longer lens anyway, so I love shooting toast with my eighty five because that light was just gorgeous, too. Me and toaster timer, no one's moving it's not hard to find the focus there, and I don't use your one thirty five off those well usually use the one thirty five here I'm using a fifty just because it's going to give me the nicest shot it's on? Yeah, you're not gonna be able to hear yourself, you just you just gonna talk. So what we've done is we've actual...

ly written a little speech, it's only a couple of sentences, but we just want to capture the audio, all right? We want to kind of capture the visual of mom giving the toast and then at some point I'm going to turn and get the reaction now in this situation here we only have one toast but in a real wedding you're likely going to have more than one right? So it gives me that would give you actually more opportunities to get the shots that you want then as opposed to right now so I'm actually when we're done shooting mom giving the toast I was gonna ask the bribing him to keep looking at mom and I'm gonna get my reaction shots there but normally in a wedding you have plenty of time to do both right? So what we're going to do is turn the mic over to our bride's mom and we're going to let her at this point go ahead and read her speech I'll tell you when honey I'm just gonna make sure we have the the camera rolling here and that we're tethered and as you can see if you look over the monitor guy's light is nice okay we have nice three quarter lighting on her face we have we're shooting on the shadow side they have nice backlight coming from that light and that's because of the two point lighting that we put up that's what I want that's what I'm looking for when I set up my lights for the toasts all right? So let's give our bride's mom our undivided attention good evening everyone I want to thank all of you for being here to share this wonderful occasion to celebrate this day with us. You are all truly special family and friends, and we're grateful to have such amazing people in our lives, especially those of you who are watching at home on www dot creative live dot com. My daughter has always been a princess from the way she used to play dress up with her grandmother's dresses to how she learned very early on how to get her own way to how she held up the entire family one summer on vacation. We had to go all the way back to tulsa, oklahoma, because she left her barbie doll at a rest stop. She has always been the princess of our family, but today, when I first got a look at her while getting prepared this morning, I can stand here and truly say that today, don, you really are a beautiful princess. It is my wish that today will be the day she is the least happiest, and I really hope that we won't have to hunt down for not hunt down dem a for not living up to every expectation we have for him as our daughter's husband now is awesome, that is great. So what I'm going to this time is let's just pretend like it's somebody else's giving a speech now and I'm just going to stand here so you guys just look it over in that direction and I'm just going to get you guys reacting so this will be my typical shot for a bridegroom reaction okay as you can see here on the monitor its again really nice life a little bit of light flare coming in and since I'm really I'm really shooting shallow here s o I want to have to kind of pick and choose who I want focus because if I dial this down a lot of times the bridegroom had tables up against the wall so I want to separate them from that wall in order to do that I gotta shoot very shallow right cause that brings us into the conversation remember we talked about that so what I'm doing here is I'm shooting I think probably at two, two or two five andi I have to choose who I want to focus so I'm opting for the bride okay? Because I think her mom and I want to make sure that you know she's the one who's reaction on catching so just in this little time while I've been explaining this I was able to get some really nice reaction so I'm really happy with that can for five seconds more than enough for fusion's lie joe so that's it that's my broad ingram reaction shot so the light looks great all they looked at each other as even better. That's perfect on. We'll take my voice out and you won't even hear it later on. So that's it that's how we do the toasts, okay? And vanessa was shooting the whole time as a zay was doing that, and again, we didn't set that up other than to just ask the d j hey, is it okay if we put the person people giving the speech over here to give the speech looking at that and you will probably get a funny look. At least we do because for the past fifty years they've been putting the person who's speaking behind the bride and groom so you might get a funny look like no don't worry, it'll be, it'll be better. People can see the person giving the toast better. They can look at each other, which is going to make it more emotional and before you know you convince him that you're idea is better, so it does work out, and I always clear it with the cup. First you know, I always tell them even in the beginning of the day I go hey, remember we talked about our appointment I'm just gonna have people your maid of honor best man they're going to face you for the toast like, oh yeah that's great and they like that so they're your last resort too. So if you really do get troubled like oh it's what the bride and groom want so we're working for them they want to be able to see the react they want to see their faces I mean when they put him behind them and they're looking up like this it's awkward you know that's a bad angle to shoot somebody so early is great to have him like this and everything and again live with light it's just phenomenal and you know what we do is these lights are powerful for the small room but these ar e six fifty's have amazing throw on them when you these air lens focuses the light it's so when you when you turn they have to to mow, you have spot and flood okay and floods just going to spill the light all over the place spot is going to focus it as much as it can go ahead you can take that and just, you know it's going to focus it right on them so these lights even if they were about another thirty or forty yards back, I can still focus him and make it look just like this. So you know, and what we try to do is raise them up high and as you can see over here, this is like set down there's like this little area that's a good orchestra pit, our lights would actually be high this way they're not blinding the bride and groom you don't want it right in their face or is blinding them. I mean, if they look up, yeah, they're going to see the light, but the only time we use the lights to this intensities for the first dance parents, dances and toasts and then the rest of the night we only use a tiny bit of just filled its a little bit of pain, usually just one of the lights, not nearly at this intensity, just enough to kind of give us a little bit of wiggle room for the exposure for dancing footage so like that's, the other the other advantage to having the light higher again is it swimming for the couple it's going to help your photographs? Also esso having it hire is going to give, give their cheekbones definition and give the rest of their neck a little hide and with the need or not it's going to make them look a lot better, and again, if you're shooting from the shadow side like I was, I don't know if at home they can see some of the pictures from that angle both of the mom and the shadow. I'm sorry of the bride and groom it's photographing on that shadow side it's just going to slam them down a lot more than if you had used a flash director even bounced you're not going to get that same dynamic late if you were using a flash, you would have to be using an external flash and why do that when you can have this since you what's actually going on with your life, right? And another thing you could do here? I mean, what we just did with the mono pod and just shooting those two angles is probably the most basic you're going to get okay? If you run into a situation where they insist that the speaker just stands behind the bride and groom and you don't feel like arguing or you just don't want to be that a sort of that's fine, you're still going to get everything yu need just by pointing in this direction, you're going to be fine, just try to shoot into your life wherever your light is, so you're not shooting flat with the light of your back, which just flattens everything out so if that does happen it's not a big deal another thing you could do aside from just the model potshot is break out the big guns and, you know, bring out a slider say you're not interested in capturing the whole speech, but for your fusion slideshow you have this really great idea for putting the slider on the floor behind the speaker and just doing the slide pull out of actually maybe ought to set that up so that I can show that I don't like looking at you I want to see it, okay, so let me just fix this. So while he does that, what he was mentioning before actually just lost my train of thought thinking about how we're just that slider shot is going to be just remember the way that we might the mom that is a way of recording the audio separately so you have that being recorded and you may or may not sync it up so that your video clip talks about the mom because this is fusion and not a film, you will most likely just use bits and pieces of just the audio and put that part underlay or voice over on your fusion piece showing other clips of video so since the primary focus of what's happening at the toast is most likely just that audio of what mom are the maid of honor or the best man is saying let that audio be captured and think about different creative shots that you could be doing, like rob is doing here, and I would have had this set up well before anything happened, I would have thought about this well before. So if I wasn't really interested in, like I said before getting the mono pod here, amon a pot here, but I knew I wanted one great shot of the toast for my fusion slideshow this would be the money shot when we bring our mother of the bride back in just for one second. I'm just gonna have her stand here, and I'm going to show you what the shot would look like and what lens you had twenty four millimeter lens on the slider and you could just stand right where you were before would be perfect. Thank you so much, it's. Just gonna be your feet so you don't have to, so what I'm doing, she pulls up addressing you must choose, right? So basically what I'm doing here and know what I'm doing switch to the other side and you switched to the other side problem because the way the light things, the way you know what I thought would probably, and instead of going with twenty four, I think I'm gonna go back to the fifty here. Little bit yeah rob switched to the other side when he was on the other side the light was almost shining directly into his camera and while flair does look nice, it can be overpowering and you don't want it to be overpowering so you switch to the other side he's going to have mom's body blocked the late during some part of this slide. And then even when the light is out it's not going to be shining directly into his camera to overwhelm the whole image. Exactly. So what I'm doing here is I'm gonna probably while she started doing the toast, I would start setting this up using my magnification tool to get my focus bride. And just when mom has given us this pretend mom is giving the speech now I'm simply just going toe let me just start my camera so I could actually get shot for tomorrow. Wait till tethering comes in there is there's something like that, okay, so loved that again. It's the foreground it's bringing, pulling into the conversation, it's a beautiful shot of the bride and groom in the way the light all of a sudden peeks out from behind them on this dress it's just gorgeous, yeah, probably I'm a little assertive I probably would have gone up and grab that that centerpiece and moved it so area I do tend to take it a little too far sometimes but you would not have done that during a toast if I oh certainly not no no no preconceived yeah that's just a really great shot peeking around the edge there and likewise the other the flip side of that would be to do it from the other angle you don't get easily yeah flip so that would be an example of sequencing shot if you had him you know, if you have three toasts right you've got three toasts going on to made of honors and the best man your video guy will have the time to do this just get one slider shot takes you forty five seconds on one side then move around to the other side to sequence it and get you the other shot on that side and you need to do it from the floor there's actually a bar back here that rob can use to do it that way while he's doing that. Are there any questions from our students here about the audio set up lighting? How expensive these lights are think we told you that yet? Yeah, the thing with lights it's the same thing with any piece of camera equipment what you see is what you pay for is you know what you're going to get so these lights a little bit more expensive are they around eight hundred each these lights rob nobody likes themselves they're about four hundred okay so not as bad as I thought only for only four hundred so but they're really really great lights they do plug into the wall they're not battery powered so something to keep in mind I know some reception halls just don't have that many outlets but they are very direct and they are heavy so you would buy a stands and sandbags to weigh down the stand so that the drunken people don't not go over your stuff and smacks it made him look all right so that's when we have about like just pretending you're out of your mind clear line mom can stay right where she is so just pretend mom is giving the toast here again another shot would be something like this you know where you're just kind of getting her shouldn't focus point is right where the white boxes the focus point is actually right on her and I probably put a longer lens on one thirty five on here so I'm just really seeing only two back to the bride and groom's heads and then mom space so just for a fusion slideshow that'd be a really nice dynamic shot and then of course you know you probably have season guests in there as well it's depending on what the layout of the room is so that's just what I would do for that particular circumstance and I just like going for those money shots for the fusion slide shows for the films that's a little different because you have to think about all these other angles and for the films, the way I do it is there's a camera down low here to the ground it's really kind of just, you know, hidden, duly hiding behind the guests or something like this and just shooting the bride and groom, and so they're mostly looking out that way, and that gives me that reaction shot and then there's somebody standing here like we did before to get mom and then we have a third person roaming the room with a long lens on picking off the reception guests and the reactions like a sniper just picking him up, you know, what's happening, I wouldn't even know you stand before that you see yourself in the same day at it way have I think, roughly about fifteen ish more minutes, I believe eso what we'd like to do is just show you really quickly what the actual reception dancing looks like when everybody is dancing. And one thing to note while rob grabs his mono pod, such during this, I will use a flush for this part because I need to freeze the action all these other things are a little bit slower, and we don't you know, aiken use a faster shutter speed and I'm okay but if they're dancing around all crazy like I need a flash I need to freeze my action so the way that rob shoot during reception dancing he's just looking for quick spots there is absolutely no way that he could focus on one person jumping around like a lunatic so the effect that he gets essentially and he's usually shooting at a pretty low aperture is he is getting them kind of coming in and out of focus as their dancing and it's a really fun effect it looks like people having a great time you know that kind of blurry drunken action going on in there plus a lot of the time jay's and bands have light they have like cool theatrical lights colored lights and there's flying all over the place in different lighting and I would generally tone down my lights for that because I'd rather use off I'd rather get my images off of his lights that are more colorful world more action oriented as opposed to these just very static and white so so what we're going to do is we're going to let rob is just going to be the one that is filming this for you guys so you can see it at home with this looks like and we're going to get all the reception guests up on the dance floor that's right don't make me play the single ladies get up so come on up, guys, you're all going to come to the dance floor here, just watch your step on the wires. Guys be real careful. So this is perfect having all of these people there's a good o bridegroom to you dance there is dancing so you can see rob has really lowered the lights a little bit. They're not going to be is bright as they are during the ceremonial parts of the reception hall because we don't want to kill the ambience here and just get nice and close is not circle dance. All right, so guys, dance all right? So what I'm doing here, right? So I'm just kind of picking off tight shots of people way more people in here. I love us. I'm going to take pictures of this's great it's just good. Good motion. Good action. Just people eyes is so good so all normally do a bunch of this with the long lens on and then I'll switch to a wider lens getsem wider shots so just starting with this learning and memory back fifty like it keep it there, keep dancing, that's it hands up, guys, hands up waiting for the way keeping up, keep it up, guys keeping up, all right, that's good, give yourselves a round of walls, all right? Thank you I'll tell you what I'd like to do I'm gonna play back that clip and show you guys that on and then you'll see what I was doing during that time it will really help you to understand what I was filming that was fantastic. I'm so impressed I hope everybody who's watching this online is like having the best time ever it was great I'm sweating just watching you goes way have a sorry so what I was doing I started out with one thirty five telephoto too oh all right so I'm a prime lens on goes down too well we're only using one light source in an ideal reception we have uh plating we'd have reception lightning and all this color lights flying around but generally here if you watch the screen this is pretty much what I was getting I'm not moving the camera a whole lot and there was some changing shots so here I am just so again I'm just looking for different fun movements and action and you don't always get it so you just have to keep trying. There's russ so what I'll do is I'm now right here I'm standing in one spot and I'll get six or seven different shots in that one spot and then I'll move to another spot as you're going to see here in a minute I'm going to move to a different spot I'm not really I kind of exhausted my options here I'm kind of exhausted my my shots and then just remember of all of this you're only using like two, three, four second clip so you just need a little bit of this, so the thief fact that it is difficulty is okay because it will take about a minute for to get like two or three four second clips, okay, here I am going to move to a different position now this so I and I left the camera rolling intentionally because normally I would stop camera, but in this case, just so the tether I left a going and here I was obstructed, I realize didn't have a view that's the thing we're working with a telephoto lens, you're not always going to be, you know, have a clear line of sight, so you just try move around and get which cannot rocking it out. So again, you're just looking for two or three, two or three seconds of each and the bride and it's fun because he also changed the way that his light looks as well said before you had a little bit more harsh side lighting here you've got more just rim lighting, which is great, okay, so this clips about to come to an end and then I'm going to show you the next clip which is where I switch lenses and I went to a fifty millimeter lens on and then I focus more on the wide shots okay, so here again takes me a second to get my bearings get my focus I'm eyeballing the focus, but once I have my focus said, I'm not really doing too much too and I'm letting things happen in that focal plane here I kind of switching my focus to the foreground got her hands clapping just kind of rocking it out again no mother in law that's perfect, you know, obviously with better light, you know, with more of the theatrical lighting you seymour of the face is being filled in with color and maybe just splashes of white light and things like that I like to do a wide shot to I like to kind of get an overall view of the whole dance for especially when there's a lot of people on it so that's nice so there you go that's how I generally would fill my dancing and you know, if it's just me I'm going to switch lenses off, then I'm going to move around I'm gonna try to get different dynamic angles like that and I probably would have spent more time going around the room or but you know, with wire I'm kind of tethered so just just one to illustrate a little bit and then when I mean that's for fusion and when I'm doing my films, we have like two or three different people out there doing that. So all with different lens is on, and we're just trying to stay out of each other's way and the goal is to walk out of the reception that night with a solid five minutes of usable footage for film, for film, profusion, peace six or seven shots in your golden right six or seven shots of three to four seconds. How long were we doing that for, like, four minutes? I know I've got five or six or maybe even a it's solid good dancing shots and just doesn't know to put in your section. Now that last shot. Remember how that last shot had everyone's hands in the air had a lot of negative space at the top? You're going to see how I'm going to use that in the fusion album and use that video clip is the background of an album layout later, which is pretty sad when you see you'll be like, well, okay.