Lessons

Lesson Info

Gear Essentials & Extras

the first thing we have is our cameras this happens to be mined the one d c I consider this a toy because it's it's an expensive camera where I could buy I could buy a dslr camera for fifteen hundred dollars and not spend twelve thousand dollars and it's gonna function almost the same in terms of low light and things like that an image quality that I'm getting same lenses same everything but at any rate you have your camera now one thing I will tell you about dslr shooting is that it's a very risky camera the rewards are great because the imagery is beautiful but it's a very risky camera why what are the two tricky things of ideas so our shooting focus and exposure are you going okay I answered it for it yeah okay um focus and exposure it's usually the two things that are going to burn you with this camera is focused on exposure now the imagery from these cameras how does it look it looks unbelievable when it's in focus okay if it's slightly out of focus it doesn't look so good on dh t...

hen the second thing is your exposure so later on we're going to talk about ways to kind of control exposure and make sure you're not blown out and over exposing your clips and we're also going to talk about uh maintaining focus which is very tricky with these cameras and the worst part about all this is that you're using a risky camera at somebody's event that's only gonna happen one time in their life you know if you think about that we're taking this risk because we want this grand reward at the end hopefully we're going to do it right and we're gonna be able to maintain focus and be able to control exposures and give the client this beautiful imagery but sometimes if you're not on your toes or maybe your second shooter is not on his toes or maybe the third shooter fell asleep you may have some problems because these people are responsible for part of your production you know if you have a second shooter of you have a third shooter these people are responsible for a portion of the footage you're gonna have to use to produce this film so you have to think about that you have to you have to make sure that your team is on the same page has to be you can't you can't be an excellent primary shooter and have a second shooter that's kind of social because then your film is going to be it's gonna have an imbalance it's gonna have an imbalance so we have to get around that the's are amazing cameras amazing cameras in low light number one weddings for the most part you're going to be dealt a lot of low light situations so you need a camera that that can perform well in these situations and this is one of them trump solid shooting before you think about a glide cam before you think about a slider get a reliable tripod at least one that's got nice fluid head I'll leave these slides appear in case uh maybe some of the online audience wants to write so I put some of the model numbers down because normally people will ask if you guys want to jot down some notes this is what I use for my my primary shooter for ceremony in speeches is this ah it's a miller d s twenty carbon fibre tripod leg fluid had combo kit it's it's excellent and the panning depending on this head is the best that I've seen in this price range much better than what I was using when I first started now if you can't afford something like this obviously this is I think about thirteen or fourteen hundred dollars for the complete kit if you can't afford something like that obviously you have to be ableto purchase what you can just to stabilize your shot something like that I didn't have this from the get go because I don't have any I don't have much money so I was kind of buying things as I needed but not the best so so as time goes on and you're making more money hopefully you're going to be able to upgrade your equipment and always think about upgrading the essential gear before you upgrade any type of toys that you really don't need on these shoots at the end of the day if you didn't have a slider and if you didn't have a glide cam you should still have a professional looking product period that's how you should always think if I can't if I can't do glide camera can't do ah ah slider shot it's okay because you never want over use those tools in anyways because they lose its value you know if used sporadically once in a while they do raise production value will not like tio if they're done right if they're they're done right if they're executed properly they do raise production value but you can't overuse it stuff like he just can't rely on being creative with a slider being creative with a glide camp because there's so many other things that are so compelling at a wedding you have so many emotions that are going on so many connections that you just need to be solid enough to capture and you'll be okay so if if you had to go to a wedding I've had weddings where I didn't have any slider anything like them and I was okay because I have beautiful moments and have beautiful imagery all throughout the day and we're going to talk about and we're actually gonna run through during bribe perhaps in the ceremony the reception we're going to run through these shots you're gonna be able to see them first and you're going to see I will never use a glide camera slider for none of this stuff that we do during this workshop so mono pod I think this is an invaluable tool for us right now this is ah man photo five six one b h d v mono pod with swivel feet this is great number one because you khun mimic um little dolly movements and you can start to add movements to your shot and why do we have movements for shots tat interest right because you could have perfect lighting and perfect composition every clip but it had perfect lighting perfect composition every clip throughout the film it could get a little bit stale believe it or not you know if you don't traduced some type of ah emotion or connection or maybe if you don't have that maybe that's the time to kind of introduce some I call it visual eye candy when you introduce one of these wild shots it's like visual eye candy because the shot really doesn't mean anything it's just it's really just eye candy to it's like a wild thing you know when they're watching the film and it gets kind of to a point where it might become a little bit stale and he introduced one of these you know it's one of those and then it kind of keeps him going for the next couple minutes until you introduce something else so this is ahh this is invaluable though I use this about seventy percent of the time on the wedding day the only time that I will not use this is during the ceremony and that's what it during the ceremony everything else I use and that's just for me that's not for my primary shooter that's on tripods and we'll get into ceremony coverage and reception coverage later on this is invaluable I love this because it allows you to kind of walk around it allows you to walk and it becomes part of you if you try to move around looking for different shots with a big tripod it just it draws attention to you and and whenever you're drawing attention to you you're not getting natural emotions and people's natural side because they're just they're taking note of what you're doing and they're seeing the big equipment being adjusted either in bright preps or wherever whereas this you could just it kind of becomes part of you and you could just you could walk you could scan you could see what's going on and in a script and like I said you can also introduce the movement which is really good we'll get into this more with uh with props this's got the swivel feet audio that's gonna be very very important this is what I used this is not what I use when I first started of course this is an excellent unit because it takes it's a four channel field recorder and it takes four feet so if you're out of church and you have you have a groom feed you have the efficient you have ah a direct feed to a sound board maybe and you have musicians you could take all four feet which is great or you have a podium where they're doing readings on dh there talking from the podium you can have you can have a wireless there and you can run that through here so this is excellent this takes a quarter inch and xlr did you see her and this has some of the best pre amps in an audio recorder that I've ever seen so what that means is the quality of the sound that you're getting is super clean you know it doesn't have all the distortion of this stuff that you want to remove imposed very very clean signal this is an art twenty six which is ah it's similar in size to probably comparable to ah zoom h foreign but this has the same preempts as there are forty four it's in the same price range as a zoom on dh this takes mike level online level feeds which is really good but this is only to channel field recorders so it takes half so you wanted if you wanted if you had this year and you want to take four feet you'd need two of these or you would just need one are forty four so I have this I primarily use the r forty four but sometimes if we travel or we split teams I'll have my the shooter was my wife jessica um she'll have the main are forty four unit and I will take this with me connecting to a sound board a mixer this is critical because this is going to give you really really clean audio beyond what you're going to get from is anybody using wireless mikes here in there but mainly just the recorders so why don't we use the recorders because we're trying to avoid the interference that we get with the wireless mikes probably right plus her cheap you know there are about a hundred bucks but you still want to throw a nice live on there but connecting toe a sound board is gonna be great because what happens when you connect to a sound board when you're out of there even if you love somebody and you have a recorder most people talked through a microphone so they're talking directly into the source and that that sources connected right onto the soundboard so if you're getting a clean feet hopefully from the soundboard that's really going to give you some nice audio you know because they're speaking right into the source as opposed to speaking out and they're kind of mike here or if you're if you have a bride and you're relying on your groom's mike she's kind of speaking across the way you know so it's not as direct as that microphone that's running right through the sound board of the mixture they have to be prepared because the band in the d j they're not going to provide the connections that you need to connect to their sound board they hopefully they're going to give you a feed and you want to ask for the cleanest feed that they have but you want to make sure that you're well prepared this is probably one of the most common cables that we use for audio because a lot of times you're dealing with the deejay that just has a mixer and he's going to give you hopefully a record out and not like a headphone out you you have to monitor it to see what the cleanest signals going toby but kind of ah emphasize that you're looking for the cleanest feed that he has because you need to record what speeches speeches or if you're at the ceremony you have to record the vows you know those air for me the two most important things at a wedding is vows ring exchange and the speeches because it really is your audio that you're going to need for your film on but we use that audio to narrate the film because these these words that are spoken at a wedding they're kind of they tell the story of your couple and we need that you know once we get into storytelling and all that we need those words that it's precious you know so we have to be able to preserve that audio make sure that we have the best audio are she ate a quarter inch is probably our most common commonly used cable set up next to that is going to be xlr if you're dealing with a band and once you start getting it some of these higher and events they always have a band you know because it's three four hundred guests and they'll have a band and sometimes they have a band and a deejay so when the band takes a break the deejay place and you have to be very careful because you may be connected to the band but for the speeches the deejay handsome his mike and you're not connected teo his mixer so now you have no audio even though you were connected through the band som boards will be very very careful when you're connected to audio I always asked which system are the speech is going to come through because the music I'm really not too concerned about the music write all the music that's gonna place couple of protected anyways I'm concerned with the speeches and what we're getting from the people that are speaking words about the brian the groom xlr cable should be your number one choice for feet if they don't have a feat to give you get a splitter and now they'll have a feat to give you because you just plug this into that use whatever feed they're using and then you have two outs okay just come prepared these cables are so cheap while you have to do is go toe you know a radioshack order them online there eight nine dollars ten dollars eleven dollars they're very cheap just come prepared if um this is ah excellent a quarter inch okay this little piece right here is very very important and I'll tell you a story I was at a wedding for five months ago and they had big bands playing these were like famous artist that came in to sing and I didn't have the r forty four I actually had actually had a zoom recorder that I was using because we we split teams and I went to puerto rico to cover this event and and I didn't have the luxury of having my r forty four but zoom's still records audio but the problem was it wouldn't take a line level feed from the board so basically the signal that was coming off the board was too hot for the zoom so what happens all your audio is distorted okay and it was funny because there was um there was another camera crew that was at the same wedding because they had this whole reality tv thing going on so they had a camera crew and they were using a zoom h foreign and I had this luckily in my bag and this is a line to mike adapters so basically it's going to convert of that line level to a mic level that now the zoomer quarter can record without the distortion so I knew they were using a zoom but I don't know if they had this or not and the next day they called me in a panic because these were like famous artists and said oh my god do you have audio from the reception and I said yes please and they told me this story and I knew right away they just didn't have this adapt or so how lucky was I that two years ago I bought this and I stuffed it in my bag I forgot it was there but the night of and I was hearing all this distortion was like oh my god I hope that adapter that I bought two years ago is still in my back and it was thankfully because I would have been in the same situation I would have lost speeches I would have lost all the music all this very important things to the to the client I would've lost so when I tell you be prepared be prepared because this is our this is all our responsibility we have a very difficult task very difficult because like I tell you lighting's not cater to us audio's not cater toss and beyond what we do with our camera filming were responsible for all these other things outside of just our camera we need to worry about lighting we need to worry about audio because if any of those things fall short our production value goes down you understand if we lose audio at an event what happens to our film it's done it's over it doesn't matter what you did how properly you perform how creative you were at this wedding if you lose audio it's over you're your film just took a nosedive you could have the greatest film in the world but if it has bad audio it's unwatchable you could have a good film with great audio and guess what it's better than that great film so that's how important audio is so if you if you want to skip over this stuff and buy the fancy slider and buy the glad camps and all that stuff before you invest in audio I could tell you you're making a huge mistake so first and foremost please and as many times as you can reinvest in good audio reinvest I'm still reinvesting in better lavs better recorders as much as I can invest in audio I do it because it's so worth it it's so you've had you've had situations where you're sitting there a post production and you have this amazing audio recorded this natural audio and now you can just lay that down under your sound trucks right and it's made it and then you have the opposite you have really bad audio where you're just like oh my god how am I going to fix this you know it's just going to really it's goingto d'oh it's gonna devalue my work although all the hard work that I put in now this audio it's not who I am this audio is not me but I was relying on a djs equipment a band's equipment and and you know because of that now my work's kind of being devalued nothing that came out of my camera was wrong it's all these other things because a lot of times you have to rely on other people to do your job properly in this industry it's crazy because if your photographer you don't really have to rely on anybody anybody else's equipment to do your job properly right we do that's the difference that's why I tell you you're a photographer don't become a video over okay it's it's a headache I mean you really have to wrote you really have to love this job to want to do this job because it's so many headaches and you're relying on so many different people's equipment to do your job properly that really it's enough to drive anybody crazy but we deal with it because we're just not human you know wedding videographers that we're crazy you know it sze were special type of being because it is a lot of hard work ah a lot of time you know you're not the most important thing at these weddings you know so you have to deal with that too and like I tell you nothing's cater to the wedding video are for you know if a band shows up everything's cater to them perfect spot perfect spot for the lighting nobody cares you know they're setting everything up for them you know the cake designer shows up the cakes in the perfect spot the lighting's perfect the pin spots that they have on the cakes perfect the decor people everything's looks beautiful but what about the video guy nothing's cater to us we have to kind of fend for ourselves so be prepared for that you have to you know really have to love this craft to stay in it for a while this is the wireless kit we're going to take um we're gonna take a listen to some examples that I have of wireless uh direct feed and many recorders all compared against each other the same event and you're going to see that the wireless gave you the best sound but they came with a risk because you get interference and and the risk is just not worth the reward I think but I still use them because if I if I could get him to work without the interference it's really good especially if it's better than the direct feed that they gave me sometimes most times I hope eighty percent of the time the direct feed should be your best feet because I could tell you they're they're speaking right into the source so unless the system is kind of old and not so great the direct feed should be your best feet if you can get a direct feed that should be number one wireless and then many recorders this is what we use little many recorders or something similar this is very small and we use this a lot and I love them because they're so reliable if something happens to a direct feed no bram interference on the wireless no problem because then of the day I still have this and there's no risk of interference the sound quality I don't think it's going to be a cz great as it's not as great as say like a good direct feed or the wireless but it is an excellent back up it's an excellent backo live mikes are very important but this is something that I feel as time goes forward you get more money you reinvest in better lives I have labs are that came with a sennheiser and I just use those for a long time it was a kit and then after that I moved up you know once I made more money and I could reinvest in love mike's I bought these tram to your fifties which I still have we still use I've had an issue with a couple of them or passed a couple years you know we've had a couple of them go down and the support was not so great and things like that recently I found these deep microphones the lab mikes and they have excellent quality but they come at a price there probably two times oppressive this these air about a couple hundred dollars and that's probably about four five hundred dollars so do you need the dps no you just need something that works but as I tell you as soon as you can kind of reinvest into something better whenever you have the opportunity to make your product look better or sound better it's worth the investment why do we buy new cameras to make this stuff look better but what do you reinvest in to make it sound better you have to think the same video audio whenever you khun re invest to make one look better you have to do it do you delight this this light is invaluable I found this light a few years ago and I tell you some best light there is for what we do in the wedding industry if there's a better one please uh send it in the chat box or you guys let me no I've never seen a light that performs better than this years ago I was looking for a light that I didn't kill the ambience in a room because I started I started getting hired to do these events are we're a little bit more high end they invested a lot more money in the corps and the lighting design and all this stuff and years ago if you put one of those lights into a room it just kind of it had so much spill that it kind of became a giant ice or and it just killed down beyonce and everybody knew you were there everybody knew it was your light and I just didn't want that any more so I asked around I called being age I was talking to some tax and I knew what I wanted I just didn't know the name or the model number or where to buy it so I explained it teo to attack of being a judge and he told me to go you need to date a light so he pointed me to tito and and I found this light and this light is great it's dimmable it's true focus a bles so it has true spot true flood and it's small and it's only one hundred fifty watts and I tell you it has so much throw on it it's this this light at the time had more throw than my four hundred watt light much more because much more direct it's true focus herbal so if if you have a speech and you needto shoot across the room to kind of reach who's ever speaking it reaching with no problem without spilling over into the ballroom and becoming a giant ice or so it was great you use for a dance for sure going to be plenty of coverage on the dance floor we're going to get into a lot of this when we cover the ceremonial reception but this light hands down is the best light that I've ever seen make sure you have a heavy duty light stand consider having ah small san die because there are children that run around the weddings and things like that or maybe some inebriated guest that might happen to bump into your life stance so just make sure that you have something or security license if you have a light stand now and it's not that tall this is an extension pole that I used to use before I just bought ah high enough light stand the thing about lights you want to mount them as high as possible because lights cast shadows so if you have amounted to low they might cast your shadow on to the bride and the groom are people dancing or I might just cast everybody shadow onto each other so the higher you can get your light the more it's going to cast the shadows onto the floor which is what you want especially doing things kind of around the couple you don't want to film your shadow on the couple so highlights will actually cast your shadow onto the floor which is a great situation this is ah great led light that I use it's ah it's a torch led its dual temperature which is really great because of your outside you can use the daylight function of your indoors you can use the tungsten feature which right or you can kind of blend the two to kind of dialling the look that you want and I find it really nice I have found on these that the uh the tungsten color throws a little bit of a greenish color cast to it but it's great because you can always just add in a little bit of the daylight and it balances it perfectly and I'm gonna get into during reception coverage how exactly I use this little led light because it's phenomenal I mean it's so handy and having a little light stand like this is invaluable and I'm going to get into all my little tips tricks techniques that I use for coverage and I and I really feel like I've got coverage down so hopefully you got to be able to draw some information from that I would have a small tripod I'm gonna get into the use of the small tripod when we get into ceremony coverage and reception coverage creative tools this is what we save all our money for and we want to add production value tar shots the kastner center slater I've fallen in love with a cider it's so smooth the the shots are amazing the main thing you're looking for when you're when you're when you're buying a slider is what the smoothness of the shot and this definitely has that I use I also use a travel dolly from kessler for a lot of our travel work actually for all our trouble work I bring that because it just fits in the suitcase and it's just a smooth this they also have this which I just reaching recently purchased which is an oracle controller soviet reusing a slider and you just can't maintain that smoothness all the way across with your hands you have this where you just connected to one end of the slider and remotely it just automatically pushes from one side to the next very very smooth you can control the speed on like I tell you these are just toys when you when you get to a point where you say you know what I have good enough video stuff I got good enough audio stuff good enough tripods I can invest in maybe some toys and things like that and we all love toys I love toys don't get me wrong my point to you guys is get the essentials first investing the essentials just so you know that what you're getting out of your cameras is the best you could get out of your camera which you're getting out of your audio is the best you could get out of the water and you're really happy with that stuff and then kind of lean towards the toys and these they're not that expensive you know glide cam is I think four hundred dollars or something like that reset gear remember this especially your second shooters right because a lot of times a second third shooter's they're just showing up and they're just they're in zombie mode just handem a camera and they start recording the problem is is that the last event that you filmed was typically a reception and a reception you have higher isos you know if you're using manual kelvin maybe the color's off so you don't want them shooting perhaps you know in daylight at thirty two hundred you know our thirty three hundred and you don't want them certainly not shooting at twenty five hundred eyes so or anything like that if they have tons of natural light pouring and so just make sure to reset the gear pro photographer wanted to know what is the biggest gear failure or challenge you've experienced a za professional and how did you respond I'm actually going to cover great I'm going to cover the biggest failure I've ever encountered and how I dealt with it and that's coming up for I think it's during ceremony cover awesome yeah ok another question about maybe what we're gonna be covering in the next three days maui photo had just wanted to know if you're going to be going over the settings that use on the recorders are we going to get into that how to actually use the recorders I hadn't planned on it okay well I just wanted to see if you were gonna because generally it's just ah it's just hitting record and adjusting the levels on the recorder okay but just remember you wantto you want to match the you wantto match the output that they're giving you from the board of the mixture with the sensitivity on your recorder and they usually have knobs where you can control the levels of the of the audio coming in