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Ceremony Coverage Q&A

so we talked about we talked about the procession now let's talk about national ceremony coverage during the procession you notice that jessica was she was here the only thing that jessica does to transition from procession coverage to actual ceremony coverage is just transition from there to here and she actually makes that transition when the bride's about six or seven feet from completing the procession with her father whoever's escorting her because then there's going to be the giveaway and she can't she can't be here anymore she's got a she's gotta move out of the way so she's gonna transition from here to here which is where she's gonna stay for the remainder of the ceremony so it's perfect she's in transition right here she's going to get the giveaway that's gonna happen right there and then her primary function is going to be tight shot of the fish on who's going to speak for the most part about ninety percent of the ceremony thousand ring exchange her primary focus going tight...

shot of the right and we're gonna go through this and then obviously if she has the time she's going to get some cutaways of reactions and family members that are especially the first couple of rows usually the first couple rose at a ceremony are you are your major players close family close friends I mean people that you can just assume the bride's going to be asking to see in that film his first couple rose as a general rule the first couple rose and those are the those are the major players at these weddings once once we're done with camera three which was a safety camera I'm gonna pull it back and that's going to become the centre all camera alex you saw this right so uh yeah alex and tell him about it he's he knows that everything that he's seen here actually happens on an actual wedding shoot go ahead I just heard the city and I wantto hear your opinion some some people put like two cameras in the middle one will be quality and like close up and the second camera will be staying like next it would be calling like white is a white shark of course what do you think about that it's perfect and actually you remember the wedding that we had there was an obstruction in the center so so we didn't have that same capability but what I do is census camera three is becoming the center camera I still have my camera from camera one which is from the glide cam and that will generally be the wide angle camera that I used for slider shots or more creative shots or if it's a jewish ceremony they're breaking the glass I'll use that as a wide shot to get that but I still have a tighter medium shot for the center let's take a look at now the groom camera over here the only time that we employed the groom camera is for the vows and the ring exchange that's the only time that I need that camera over there once the thousand race changer over I don't need that camera over there if I have a third active shooter I want them getting cut away shots you know help me out with cutaway shots because I have to be accountable for some of the people that are here and a lot of times jessica's here she's only got like um a close range to the people on the right side if I have a third shooter they've got close range for be rolling cut aways of the people on the left side so it's a lot easier here is camera two during vows nice shot good composition remember what we talked about you can see a little bit of her dress there if I didn't show at least a little bit of the fabric it almost gives off this idea like oh my god is the bright even wearing anything isn't even wearing a dress even though we have good composition head and shoulders if you can't see at least a little piece of that fabric remember that when you're composing these shots because sometimes even though you have good head and shoulders good composition it just looks kind of odd because it's kind of just cut off so be very careful of good composition um camera number two during the vallis might center camera during the vales is here and you'll also see a wide creative shot right here with white camera you see what so I have a tighter shot but then I have a nice white shot there's another tighter shot so even though you're in the back and the center don't get tunnel vision joe just sit there like okay I have a center camera I'll just maintained center camera and then that's it try to move around if you have some foreground if you have anything that you can use to create more interesting shots do it it's it's well worth it you know here I had you know for architecture the ceiling was greater had candles I had the slider had a wide angle and it's just here I had the candles I was using with one thirty five lens and it just creates imagery that's outside of the box and it's different from just a lock down center shot right a lock down center show remember is what every videographer is going to do just that they're going to film the obvious way we never want to look for the obvious if there's something that we can use to create a shot that's more interesting we want to do that jewish and indian ceremonies have any of you guys done jewish or indian couple of you three there are a lot of work so it's going to be a lot of work it's going to be a longer ceremony especially indian ceremony it's gonna be a lot longer there will be a lot more work involved so make sure you're charging accordingly because I can tell you right now you're gonna have a lot more footage to deal with in post you're going to be sitting there with about especially an indian ceremony indian wedding two three day event you're going to be sitting there with about two three times the amount of footage of like a regular simple beach ceremony you know with fifty guests you know you're going to say in there about three times the amount of footage so just make sure that you know you're compensated accordingly preplanning is critical especially for a jewish ceremony because like I told you yesterday they get married under hope in most cases and there's so many people under this hope on and a lot of times the hope is not even that big so you remember the diagram for the typical ceremony set up this is a typical jewish ceremony set up you have a hope you're gonna have a couple sets of parents on each side you're gonna have a rabbi sometimes you're gonna have two rabbis you'll have a cantor you'll have the best man and maid of honor the bridesmaids the groomsmen you have the bride and groom and your other monkey wrench here is that the bride and groom face away from your center camera almost the entire time and even when they kind of face each other exchange vows a lot of times they don't face each other all the way but this is the situation that you're dealt most times and the problem here is that if you're trying to shoot through the size here you generally have the parents that are blocking you so when I'm in a console to with my bride and their parents hopefully I explain to the parents of their there the jewish parents I said listen and I show them the diagram I said this is a hope this is where you are going to stand how are we going to film the bride and the groom when they exchange vows and things like that uh what do you want to do I said listen during the actual ceremony I may have you shift over just a little bit just so we can have a lane to shoot through and even if they give you the lane to shoot through as you'll see here you're still going to see that it's very congested it's very congested so now you notice for the typical ceremony set up jessica was here facing in this way but the problem there is she's only got their backs right now and it's so congested on there she probably not even see the rabbi so she switches to here now what what does that create as soon as she switches here and I've got that center can going what what just happened what do we just do we cross the one in the line with that shot exactly so what do you do now this is a situation where moving to here was your only shot of the bride and you still wanted to maintain a center camp so what do we do do we violate the one eighty roll of course we do because we were responsible for recordings right like we can't tell the bride's parents by the way we didn't really get a shot of your daughter turned the fouls because that would've violated the one eighty role you know this is not going to fly you know especially with jewish parents but one eighty roll what are you talking about just you know film filling the daughter you know fill my daughter fill my son that's what we want to see we don't care about this one april we care aboutthe one a year okay and yes it is visually odd you know when you watch it but what's more odd is not ever seeing the bride during the ceremony that would be more odd than violating the one eighty role so listen if you have to violate and sometimes I'll tell you during a jewish ceremony we just had one we didn't even have to violate it because they were actually facing each other but if they're facing away that the entire time you're gonna have to make that adjustment it's just something that you're gonna have to do and you couldn't get rid of the center shot because you still have a direct shot to the rabbi the rabbi's facing you usually have a clear shot of the rabbi so it's a great shot and you'll see it here so this is the bright side during her dallas this is the groom angle and this is the centre able and you can see all the people that are underneath the hope it's very crowded under there I'm not lying in the diagrams I mean this is this is real life situation you know you have both sets of parents you'll notice here you have best man on those days you have made of honor you have the rabbi you've got the couple so it's going to be very congested under there okay if you if you get burned and you're out of position and say they're going to break the glass right then just stay where you are and don't start adjusting don't start trying to reposition your tripod and refocus and and switch your ia sos and things like that because you're going to miss the shot if you don't have the shot that you wanted but at least you have a shot maybe it's a wide shot and you wanted more close up shot stay where you are trained your team if you have at least a decent shot just stay where you are don't try to get the money shot if you're caught out of position you just deal with it but at least you have a shot because what happens um a lot of times I've seen teems with three guys all missed the kiss like they're all all three cameras were moving right there are new kiss because they were con opposition they weren't listening right and you do you typically know when the kiss is going to happen like when the fish and says something like okay we're going to do one final prayer before we pronounce them you know husband and wife work so you should automatically know during that prayer I need to get in position but sometimes you'll even get a team with three guys that fall asleep and they're just they're not listening to this so they're not aware of it but then this situation comes where they're going to pronounce him and there are a lot of position they're all adjusting their cameras and and and just making small adjustments that are visually disruptive now to this grand moment which was the kiss where you could have just held a wide shot or medium shot and you have been fine that time thing any questions from city I had a question earlier when you were talking about the gram of that guy that knocked over your seat three hundred ah problem that I run into quite a bit and I've heard different people's opinions on how to deal with it is guests that lift up their ipads and try and take pictures and they're lifting up their iphones and standing in the middle aisles trying to get their own picture or even photographers who get in the way and what opinion have heard is just keep filming if they're in the way don't try to recompose to adjust to all the guests desires and then explain it to the bride and I've tried to stay out of their way where do you fall on that on that side of it you certainly want to be on the same page with photographer the greatest thing about being able to film with his diesel ours is we have what interchangeable lenses we should wide issue long we can shoot mid range so I always get with photographer I says hey how you gonna shoot the procession I'm gonna shoot long okay I'll shoot long you know like jessica shoot long you should look how you gonna shoot decide um I'm gonna shoot why I said okay I'll shoot wide or they're gonna shoot mid range a shipment ranged so you can always meet in the middle right or you could give them ideas like hey I was going to kind of go white for this and it's like okay I'll shoot why but you don't want to like get them out of their game or not allow the photographer to do their job because they do have a function they do have a style and they're used to doing things a certain way but the cool thing about these cameras is we can kind of adjust to whatever their stall is a cz longer stops not too crazy but generally but I know what you're talking about because I get this all the time where they jump into the well I've had situations where you know during the procession is when that generally hobbies are you talking about the kiss I'm talking more like the guests I've got during my weddings during the course of the ceremony during the course of certain they'll actually get in the middle aisles or the work will go on in I'll have them see I'm very assertive to the point where I would open its history you have to sit down you know this is there's professional photographers here there's you know video team here watch it later you know just or just take the photo from your seat I don't think I've had one so bad where it was just crazy where they just flooded the center like that but generally have one or two or like an uncle that will come up and he wants to be the photographer or the videographer or or you'll notice like the floating videographer around the ceremony and it's like the uncle or you know the grandfather some like this so just be a sort of aura just having assistant I'll just I'll gently have assistant go over and says hey you know how that guy sit down you know some like that over there's a coordinator a planner trust me they're getting them out any other questions I just want to make a comment about the one eighty rule so that was another video that I watched last night and the last video that we played there that you showed a clip up and she her audio was so incredible that girl as well she sounded like she was whispering and you could hear every word she was saying which one just the last video that you said you had to cross the one eighty rule oh yeah her audio was incredible but I was so captivated by what she was saying that I would have never in a million years noticed about the one eighty rule ever exactly you're so immersed in the emotion you don't want it you know the reason why her audio was so good if you notice the rabbi was holding the microbe to the mouth and we always tell them even though we've got them miked up because what did I tell you the best sorts of audio is going to be the main feed because they're holding it up well generally when efficient air doing the thousand ring exchange they don't hold the mic up to their mouths we make sure that they hold them michael because now we have like a direct source of audio when they're holding up not this guy I think he had a microphone or he only had a laugh he didn't have a handhold we're assuming he was going to have ah have a handheld so what he did was he actually physically grabbed his lab and he was reaching it over try to get their audio things like that so visually looked kind of ah it looked kind of odd we were hoping he was going to be using a handheld mic but either way we always instruct the efficient ce toe hold the mic up tio not up here because then it's you know it's distracting to this covered their face usually just below the chin just hold it just below the chin and that's perfect if they remember there was uh we have one wedding recently where and it was a very important wedding and I wanted really really good audio the problem wass we didn't have much control in this wedding so the groom wasn't wearing a laugh the officiant wasn't wearing love and the bride wasn't wearing love so basically we were just relying on our feet from the direct board right because you weren't allowed to love anybody no bride no groom no fish on they had their own mike system and this was it the only problem was they didn't love the bride for their systems so I was like oh my god so asked ah efficient I said sure could you please remember when it's time for the vows and rains change could you just grab he was even using hand held mike he hada lavonne so he was in there but they had a hand home mike by the altar area that he could have used so I said can you just grab that hand held mike just for the thousand ratios and then he told me he's this look if I remember to do it I'll do it if not you know it is what it is and I was like police sir just try to remember because there's like a very important wedding you know so the valve started and now is the bride's turn to sayer vows and he didn't grab the handle mike till about ten seconds later and he actually remembered to bring the handhold mike over and then I ended up with perfect audio for the whole thing so just remember just try to negotiate with people sometimes because sometimes sometimes you're just not thinking about the videographer they're thinking about their service and what they have to deliver so I just try so please just I'll beg for audio honestly I just I've begged priests friday of priests that were just adamant against you know wearing microphones you know I had one I tell you in thirty years he'd never warned ah microphone for a videographer and I literally bag myself police or just this one time and then he told me he said this is the last time I remember going to do that is a good just probably the last time we were going to work in this church so it so it worked out perfect right got a question from great question from fashion tv so what kind of sound check do you conduct while sitting the audio up do you have a checklist a workflow to ensure you capture perfect audio for your edits while checking the audio and do use headphones yes I'm not the audio I'm not the sound engineer from my team is jessica she goes she monitors audio what we'll do during the reception is since jessica's busy filming if I have an assistant I'll have assistant run over and just monitor the audio because the levels are gonna be different for the dancing the live band playing and the speeches you know the ideas that would be a lot different we're gonna discuss that later on for reception coverage on audio but yeah we definitely moderate audio just to make sure the levels okay you want to make sure that your audio's never clipping because of your audio's clipping you just always gonna end up with distorted audio so that's how we handle that but yes answer the question we always monitor the audio and can you define clipping for us is um if they look at their levels you know when the audio when the audio levels are kind of at the maximum range uh andi hitting that maximum range we try to use minus twelve peeking at minus six as a general rule as the maximum that will allow that level to go up thank you but once it's beyond that and it's kind of just hit in the end constantly you know you're clipping at that point you're gonna end up with some distorted audio and probably most of us have at some point ended up with some distorted clipping audio which is not fun and post great a few people have this question including a bio sambo films how would jessica film the reaction of the groom when the brightest coming down the aisle if she's in the aisle how do how do you that's a secret no way can tell you she generally does it before depends on the length of the owl I could tell you if the mao is ah a thousand mile long she's got time to kind of go to the side get the groom reaction then come back for factual bride entering the ill if it's a short I'll she'll do it beforehand and basically imposed what you're seeing is a reaction that was taken maybe when the groom's parents were coming down and and not the actual bride you know it's a little trickery and post because when the groom is standing up there and friends and family are coming down the aisle he's generally emotional you know whether he's smiling or maybe tearing up and things like that so sometimes you can trick the viewer in post and that's how we do it because sometimes you just don't have time to step to the side get get the groom reaction and then come back in in time to get the bride coming down the aisle and maintain focus and do all that so it just depends don't get too risky when it comes to trying to get that groom reaction because if you don't feel like you're gonna have enough time to get the groom reaction and their actual bride coming down the aisle just get the groom reaction from before you know he's going to be standing up there and most of the groom reactions that you've seen in our work some of them are not even really you know when national bride was coming down it was when maybe his sister was coming down or his aunt or ah grand parent or something like that but they're still smiling there still emotional and it still works if you cut it together with actual bride coming down I will say that you do seem to get a lot of the men crying so you seem to work that out some way they're very emotional during ceremonies that's why I tell you like you can you can trick the viewer with these with these films it doesn't all have to be very linear that's the reason why we had it you know we're looking for the best shots were most emotional shots on dh sometimes the emotions come before the bride's coming down sometimes you just you never know but if the I'll short and you're very limited you're just not gonna have time to get that unless you have like a third active shooter which is always a great scenario you're just not gonna have time to get it that jessica was able to take camera two from in front of the groom getting his reaction and then over a shoulder to get that rack focuses she on sticks for that is she moving a whole tripod set up for that or which mono pod so she's just she's on sticks the whole time okay wow yeah because it's outdoors it's on the grass we have uneven footing so to try to battle that you know handheld there on a mono pod is just and with a seventy two two hundred no less doing iraq focus on a mono pod and being tax sharpened focus it's ah it's it can be very challenging what do you do when you have real I know you're showing us the jewish wedding and you were really congested but some of the weddings I'm shooting I mean the altar is so small and then they'll have huge bridal parties do you just make it a point to connect with the brian said you know this is where we will shoot from what if you just don't have a lot of room up there above the altar area yeah like I said yesterday if you don't have a shot you have to do whatever you have to do to achieve a shot you can't just miss the shot on a lot of times you can pre plan for stuff but maybe when you get to the church whoever the coordinator is for the church they have their own way off how the broader party lines up I had one wedding in particular where they lined up the bridesmaid in the groom's maids on the groomsmen almost like a like a football huddle around the bride the groom so you had no angle no matter where your camera you had no shot off the bride and the groom so basically you have to like break ranks with a mono pod just to get a shot of the bridegroom and this was a you know a um a very smart idea that some coordinator church to basically conceal the brian the groom from all the guests you know all the cameras and things like that with the bridesmaids and the groomsmen you know so trust me I've seen almost every bad situation what I will tell you is if you don't have a shot just train yourself to do whatever you have to do to get the shot that's our rule number one if you don't have a shot don't just stay there because you're going to stay there for you know forty fifty seconds you know minute two minutes with no shot wondering if this problem is going to kind of like um take care of itself and most times it's not okay from white orchids studios I know that sometimes changing batteries and cards khun b like a singer taking a breath at the right time what's your guy's workflow on cards and batteries and I bet you come with a lot of extras absolutely these cards for the cameras there they're semi cheap unless you're shooting four k on the one d c then they're about seven hundred dollars a card but most of these cards nowadays they're very affordable just like I tell you invest in the essential gear first and when were first starting out we don't have a lot of money I didn't have a lot of money I didn't have all these toys that I have right now I just literally had the the essentials that I needed to film the wedding you need batteries plenty of them so you don't run out plenty of chargers make sure you're recharged all your batteries before every shoot that's like rule number one especially in your audio recorders because you don't want those things going going dead midway through ah ceremony so stock up on cards I'm completely stocked up on cards right now completely stocked up on batteries I could shoot literally probably two or three different weddings with amount of batteries cards and additional gear that I have right now and sometimes we've been asked to film two weddings on the same date and we have actually last week we did we don't like to do it but it comes up sometimes so j's photo and eric asked plus four other people asked would you ever use a gopro for your wide unmanned camera and what do you think about using a gopro I wouldn't use one most of the situations that I run into honestly especially ceremonies there very little it because down in south florida even even though we're on the beaches and things like that there's a lot of rain down there and a lot of brides don't want to risk the rain and the humidity and the heat so you see a lot of the ceremonies happen endorse in a ballroom but what they do in the ballroom they turned on all the lights these gopro's just do not function as faras I know well and they don't perform well in low light situations as far as I know I don't know about the new ones but um I wouldn't use one a lot of people in the chat room are really curious about jessica oh my god so we're just interested maybe you can talk about your personalities like how is she warming outgoing is she and how as a team you complement each other is that too much is that perfect okay what do you think about that they're probably wondering why she's not here and I'm here right now they're not I had somebody in brazil asking me like it just it does all this stuff why are you here and she's not right uh it sounds like she does all the work but she does so much work um I tell you this about our personalities were both perfectionists and we're looking for perfection which is a great thing we both care about what we're delivering to the clients which is a great thing especially when you're dealing with like a husband and wife team jessica is uh she's mohr she's more reserved you know so she's not kind of out there being active with clients or anything like that but she is very assertive so she needs something she's certainly going to ask for it but she's kind of like thea the silent team player you know she just goes where she does her job and she gets out you know jessica's her love is for editing her love for shooting I don't think there's much love there but she has to do because I rely on her and I've invested so much time in her and she's gotten so good at being like a primary second shooter that I couldn't imagine a shoot without her so I definitely rely on jessica a lot and I hope she doesn't quit shooting could be very difficult to replace her for sure but but her love and her passion is definitely for editing