Lessons

Lesson Info

Planning for Ceremony Coverage

very important know what type of ceremony going to deal with especially when you're talking uh non denominational catholic jewish indian you need to know what kind of ceremony are because for instance a jewish ceremony the bride stands on the opposite side so you may plan for just a traditional non denominational wedding where you know the bride's on the left side but now she's going to be on the right side she have that just the camera's accordingly in your primary shooter your primary shooter has to make the adjustments accordingly establish a bribe cam at all times like we talked about yesterday you should buy yourself what's your primary focus during a ceremony if you had to have a shot what would it be normally my primary focus is I have a camera in the middle aisle shooting up like a more dynamic shot and that's my primary camera in camera I'm personally using uh moves between the groom's side and the bride's side depending on vows and who's talking in those types of things so wh...

en they when they're doing the vows will you actually swap to the other tried for the groom bows or we stay on the bright side I'll swap to the other side folk I show you more typically what what do you guys do alex your two shooters we usually have three cameras and s o one central camera middle camera and we'll be one camera covering the groom and the bright from other side okay and probably sometimes force for just a bureau or just like you said what's what's that greater shots and looking for emotions from up like from the guests now if you only had one camera but if you were on ly allowed one camera at the front who would you cover the bride of the girl well usually on I would say you would well bright yes of course but if you had waited behind the center camera yeah senator criminal just going into both both yes that would be to save what the tight shot the close up shot up front and they only allowed one camera which one would obey I will try to shoot both I think like just just middle somehow somewhere you know I mean like if it's a middle camera they don't know you still have the middle camera yeah well of course but they give you a choice to have on ly one camera close to the front right you be on the right yeah if some well if she will be a more emotional if she's more emotional okay you better have that camera on the brian yeah because this is all about the bride that's my point and you know I have some some churches where I come from you're only allowed one camera by the altar and that's it and one camera the back so you have your center camera all the way in the back and they allow you one camera up towards the front and we always try to establish a bride camp you know because generally the bride's a little bit more emotional well sometimes sometimes we get rooms that are a lot more emotional than the bride but generally it's the bride and the bride looks beautiful and the center camera has both the bride and the groom anyways but we always try to establish a bride camp so my primary shooter at the front is always established on the bride at all times because the groom cam when do you need the groom camp thousand ring exchange and that's it but that bride camp now you can kind of fluctuate between the officiant the bride and maybe some cut away so we're going to get into camera coverage here in a few seconds anticipate very important pay attention during a ceremony and communicate with your team have signals or maybe some of you guys used do any of you guys use communication devices or no nothing we don't either we just hand signals right uh so like my my signal with jessica that we've kind of come up with is to avoid both cameras moving at the same time it was like that is whenever you see us with their hands down to our side that means that that's like a signal for you to move and make your adjustments and zoom in and do whatever and as soon as I see her with her hands her side I know I can move and I can recompose a different shots so that's kind of our little visual reference you know to let each other know hey it's okay for you to adjust your camera recompose your shot ah void three angles of the same subject this gets kind of this creates jump cuts and you read it you know when you have the groom can the bright cam and the centre camp all pretty much composed the same and in the edit or in the film you're just you know cutting between camera one camera two camera three camera two camera one camera through you know and it's really all just the same uh it's just the same content pretty much the same compositions and things like that so if you have if you have a center cam going maybe the bride it maybe your your camera one is shooting some cutaway shots because there's always some emotions going on at the ceremony this is another important reason to not try to film on a model pod or hand holder with a shoulder where you're kind of battling teo just maintain stabilisation because you're concentrating so much on the stabilisation where you're losing sight of the people that are actually there if you have a camera tripod night making composer shot make sure it's in focus good composition and now you can kind of just scan the room and you see somebody that's a little bit emotional maybe tearing up a little bit or if they're getting ready to applause you know for the kiss now you can kind of turn your camera get that shot you know for three to five seconds we apply the same rule during the ceremony for cutaways as we do for everything else for preparations for candice and it's three to five second rule so if the camera's here on the official nicely composed and we turn and we see some emotions you won't know and it's not that important what we have here and the center camera has it covered anyways now this camera will turn and three to five seconds start plugging away at the parents because it's always nice while you're playing the ceremony to be able to kind of tell the viewers what was going on the room you know who was in the room what was their emotional state things like that so that's why you want these b roll cutaway shots remember we're looking for content we're always looking for content for the ceremony it's a little bit limited right because everybody's pretty much motionless and it's really all about the bride the groom and the words being spoken at the ceremony but there's other things that are going on such as people's emotions so and it's always good when you create these films that are twenty minutes what's our obligation so the clients our obligations just that we're going to create a high quality film and give them exactly what they hired us for what the anticipated exactly but they want to feel a cz though they've seen everything right and they want to feel is though they've seen everybody so what do you do during the ceremony there's accountability because they're not gonna remember everything that happened on the wedding day but there's certainly and remember who was there right if there was a reading done by a sister they're not gonna remember all the words spoken by the sister but they are going to remember that the sister read if grandma grandpa and aunts and uncles on all these people are they're they're going to remember that they were at least at the wedding so all we do is like when I cover broader preparations I don't film hair and makeup for everybody that's in the room it's really all about the bride because all these other people are going to come into play at some point in time whether it's during hair and makeup maybe they come up to the bride they interact a little bit or maybe they're helping the bride with her dress maybe they're saying beautiful words to her maybe they're preparing a gift maybe they're preparing speech so I'm showing all these bridesmaids in the film and I'm basically being accountable for all these people that showed up to the wedding so I don't necessarily have to show maybe the grandparent's at the ceremony because I've already shown them during brought a perhaps or maybe the grandparents spoke of the reception so I don't have to show them so much earlier in the day as long as these people appear in the film at some point because there is no rule as toe when they're going appear as long as they appear at some point you gotta remember the film is about the bride and groom it's not about the aunts and uncles the neighbors the friends the cousins and things like that yes they will show up at some point maybe they'll show up when they're dancing things like that but they'll show up at some point in the film so you don't get the complaint later on where I didn't see my aunt anywhere in the film and she was at my wedding you know you don't want that top plates so just remember it's all about accountability you know if you don't get him on if you don't get him early in the day try to get him later in the day things like that okay this is a typical ceremony set up correct he had the bright on the last room on the right you have your guest and you have your efficient I want to talk to you about procession coverage and how we cover this events this is our setup for every wedding for every wedding this is our exact same setup and as you can see here we're not violating any one eighty rules here we're all on the one eighty rule line and like I told you yesterday if you're ever in a situation where you just don't have a shot forget about the one eighty rule and just make sure that you record the moment camera one is generally mei and I'll be back there with a glide cam and this is just too when you have ah the glide camera steady cam if you have one of these devices its really for tracking moving subjects and during a procession what do you have you have moving subjects so it's a great time to employ if you have won a glide campbell like until yesterday you don't really need these tools they do raise production value certainly during a procession it makes sense to you something that you contract subjects with but if you just have a solid camera on a tripod with a solid shot it's going it's going to be just a good because it is a very special moment when they do this procession so camera one going to be me I'm gonna be back there just trying to track subjects you'll notice I'm gonna be out of the way of camera two which is jessica just is on a seventy two two hundred and her responsibilities is the procession the groom reaction and some reactions from these people in the front I can't get the reaction because from back here all I have is the backs of people's heads so sh she's she's in a better position to get those types of shots camera three and we'll see this later on is just an unmanned camera that I use right next to jessica in a very small tripod this camera serves a couple different functions number one it's going to cover jessica because jessica's cover me I'm trying to do a creative shot which I may mess up and lose the shot and hopefully she's going to get the shot um if she it is not able to maintain focus we talked about this yesterday it's very difficult to maintain maintain focus manually on a moving subject that's coming right at you it's very challenging I'm hoping jessica is going to be able to nail the shot and she normally does like ninety nine point nine percent of the time she's able to do it a lot better than I ever good that's why she's up there um the only thing that I need in the edit is two to three seconds of the person making the procession in focus just two to three seconds and it's a usable shot in post if she's not able to do that because maybe they just walked to faster they ran down the alley or something like that I'll always have camera three available that footage and I'll always pre focus maybe like on the third or fourth row or our third or fourth pew and at some point the good thing about that lens number one I'll either use generally use a fourteen lends a cannon fourteen and that lens shoots a lot flatter so it's it's it's not got the same shallow depth of stay like you know a fifty one two are thirty five or something like that so so even though they're not tax sharp and focused back here you can still see them pretty killer unless you zoom in and things like that but what I do is we pre focus here about the third or fourth pew so at some point they're gonna walk right into focus so you're guaranteed a shot that's going to be in focus of this very important moment of the procession and ultimately the bride coming down with her her father whoever's escorting her down now so that's why we have camera number three I'm going to show you visually I'm gonna show you some clips here uh camera number one right now so that's camera number one and then camera number two is a long lens that's gonna be jessica seventy two two hundred and that's all I'm looking for it's just two to three to four seconds now if jessica wasn't able to maintain focus I've got camera and three it's not the greatest shot in the world but it's very very acceptable teamwork it's all about teamwork if everything comes together this is what a procession should look like as you can see jessica does a lot more work than I d oh I had one shot she had like eight what wasn't the maid of honor and the groom's or the the maid of honor they also were a wedding that you shot very good very good that means you've been watching the I told you I watch like twenty video actually I shot this bride was that groom's sister so I've shot both weddings down in brazil and they're all videographers these air all videographers that I shot their wedding down in brazil so I'm doing the whole family right and very very nice family I mean brazil's wonderful and the people are just amazing donna brazile okay that procession that you saw was in a perfect world but we don't live in a perfect world because in that wedding there was perfect lighting it was nice and even but what happens if there's mixed lighting right and it's not so even you have very harsh lighting you have hot spots you have shadows spots what do we do then what do we talk about doing yesterday we talked about exposing for the bright spots don't expose for the shadows because then you really gonna blow out the bright spots so this wedding here you're going to notice there was a lot of trees creating a lot of shade but then there was spots where the sun was actually coming through and creating a very difficult situation for us so what we did was we exposed on in the bright areas of course and I just want to show you the same setup and the other challenging thing about this one this was a monkey wrench that they threw they said now we got the deal with this mixed lighting situation the broader party's not even going to come down the center aisle so we showed over said okay what's gonna happen well the groom's men they're going to come around the side of the ceremony area and come up to the front and then assume position and then the bridesmaids are going to come around this side right and then the parents are going to come like not even down the center like off centre unless you were there right this was like you you remember this they like kim or on the sides um so we're like okay so now we have to do with this mix lighting situation and they're not going to come down the center alice all that stuff that we planned for for them coming down the center aisle just went out the window and this is this is what the shots were looking like and how we were able to kind of adjust to the shots this is just raw shots sure way to get the groom there and this is the bridesmaids coming off one side and you see how we're using the background as a canvas we're using as a campus if you could do that benny they then you can expose for the shadow areas but on the groom's side it was a little bit difficult cause we don't have that this was off the groom's side and you could see how were exposed for the bright spots here I had to expose off from bright spots here we had a problem this was not a great shot for the bride so now the front shot of the bride is going to be the main shot that we're looking for in the edit and here's how it looked in the film so we had the growing there cut away shots like I told you always be mindful of those there's some first looks up in here but just ignore that uh because some procession stuff's going to wrap up right after you could see how the first look stuff comes together as well back the procession and that was extracted from a film so that's why you're seeing all the extra visuals groom reaction main camera seventy two two hundred so even though you have the difficult lighting there's always ways to not only the difficult lighting but the monkey wrench of having the groom's come up one way and the bride's the bridesmaids come up the other uh totally ignoring the center out rights which typically yes sir the most common monkey wrench that I've run into is that both your cameras two and three are right in front of the groom's mother this right at her knees as she's sitting in that front row on the aisle seat how uh how do you be respectful to the parents in that front row horse during the processional while moving to cameras around in the front this the camera two is generally right next to the main photographer so and they try to make themselves a smallest possible while they're up there we'll take a look at that later on today that the camera three is really a situation where yes sometimes it's almost right next to their leg and a lot of times when I'm setting the camera I will talk to the grand parents and I said listen I'm trying to get this beautiful shot of your granddaughter she comes down now you know I emphasize that I'm trying to get this beautiful shot of the grand daughter is it's not about me it's about your rent or which it is it's all about the bride but you need to emphasize that it's not it's not me is I mean we're just trying to like we're trying to get your granddaughter here I want to get this beautiful shot of your granddaughter she's coming down if you can try not to bump the camera so that way it doesn't wobble she's coming down the aisle okay and trust me they don't move this camera now I did have one particular situation when I first got the cannon c three hundred right and I don't even shoot weddings with a c three hundred anymore and this is probably why I made the mistake of using my c three hundred when I first got it as my camera three for the procession so as I'm in the back with camera one on the glide cam I'm seeing I'm seeing grandma go down the center aisle and I'm just looking at her as she's walking directly towards the sea but she's off center now right like off centre of the aisle and I was like oh god please like veer left veer left and next thing I know my c three hundred was my brand you see three hundred was literally like taking a nose dive along with grandma's cane and everything so that was the last time I ever had my c three hundred used for for camera three local luckily camera three's low to the ground so it didn't have that far of a drop but I still had still had many hard little hard ray quick question if you don't mind yeah on the jessicas shooting that seventy two hundred she doing any rack focus or sure she is doing okay I wanted to I want to understand that whatever she has time to do now if you notice that that that she did the rack focus from the bride to the groom how far away was the bride coming from like two miles so she had so much time to really get in there and compose different shots and get created because you're still looking for the content remember if you have the time and you can squeeze out that three to five second little creative content you can tuck away do it you know but sometimes you just have a very short aisle and you don't have room to play like that so she would have never had time to see sit there and get you know creative rack focus from the bride to the groom or anything like that so really it's depending on how much time you have how short the alan we have some files that are just a mile long so then we have so much time to get cut away shots of the groom shots of the bride iraq focus you know I'm not doing it she's doing it so she's she's actually doing a lot of work up there which is good it's really beautiful but so as they're walking down she's going to catch that bride right in the middle of the aisle she's just holding one one soldier focus by knowing that they're going to be walking slow enough to grab that second and I coached the bride I asked her I said listen when you walk down try to walk nice and gracefully I also coached the bridesmaids especially their walking by themselves they get nervous so they're just like their speeding down the centre and that that it really creates aa big problem for jessica because now she's gonna have to try and maintain focus on somebody that's really walking fast or literally sometimes kids run down the centre on there's just no way and that's really when the camera three comes into play and the camera three is that the kid level so it's great you know it's right here sometimes she can obviously maintain the focus but sometimes they literally just run down the centre all because they're just so nervous but at the end of the day the client's still gonna ask you hey we're we're the little flower girls and the ring boys that came running down the aisle things like that so you always want to have something that's going to cover you especially with these cameras because like I told you these air risky cameras to shoot with you know battling exposures and focus it's very challenging with these cameras so you have to be prepared for bad situations