Lessons

Lesson Info

Shoot: Bride in Gown

we have a bride this gun in her dress now very very important before the bride gets in that dress is that she understands exactly what to be doing once she gets out here so generally before the bride goes back to get dressed I will tell her I said listen just go to the next room or I'll step out and you stay here that's actually the best situation because you can actually leave them in the good light just let them get dressed here and sometimes I can sneak a couple shots not of the bride and the nude but sometimes just to slipping on the dress without showing you know obviously anything that's um uh not wanted in the film it's it's kind of dramatic it's very nice if you could get those types of shots her reaching up to grab the dress and pull it down those were also great shots always always kind of be on your toes obviously I'll leave for the stuff that she's not comfortable having a camera inside there uh with but definitely give her instructions so if she were to leave the room I wo...

uld tell her I said listen get dressed just up until the point where you're comfortable with us coming into us meaning video and photo and she'll say okay because I still want to get the laces in the back I still the zipper's very fast I definitely prefer laces because it takes so long and you get so many shots if they do have like a button up or a lace up but sometimes they just have a zipper and it's just a zipper than the getting the getting dressed segment is just it's very fast and you don't have time to kind of bounce around and get different shots so I'll instruct her also don't put on any jewellery because once she's in her dress if you didn't have a lot of time to get to getting ready because maybe she had a zipper at least if she's you know putting on hurries I think it looks very flattering for a girl very nice if she's put on a hearing and nice dramatic lighting with her beautiful wedding dress on state same thing with the necklace you could have somebody else maybe her mom her sister or somebody close put the airing the necklace on and this really is just it's more content for the film you're always looking for more content so whether she's getting dressed putting on hearings putting on a necklace putting on a bracelet whatever the case may be it's more content it's all I'm looking for is mohr shot it's not a matter of you know what she put in areas I don't even care about this so I just need more content I need more content than somebody just pulling up a zipper in the back of her dress so with our luck the lace up did not work when we have those ever but it's great because we have jewellery which is also great and I think the julie looks very sexy very very nice you know when the bride's putting that on so the other thing that I would tell the brightest once you're in your dress I need you to come out into my life rather than stay back there because sometimes maybe there's a table back there and the hair and makeup person is now back there touching her up and maybe she just starts doing that type of stuff there and I don't need that I need her always we're the natural worthy good natural light is so we can work so she's gonna come on out now and then the best thing to do with the bride is just to kind of minick where you need them to be rather and then give this whole long explanation I would just tell them listen when you come out I just need you to stand here right where I'm not facing this okay and always look towards the light because sometimes we look back into the room to the unexposed areas the simplest instructions you can give them is always always find the light look towards the light you know if you're going to look over his shoulder looked towards the life you look back to your brother back towards the light you know so and sometimes you're gonna have to give him some verbal direction at this point you're definitely not to give us a verbal direction because they may be standing there a little bit lost in the moment you know and they're just like oh my god there's so many people around what do I do oh my god um no I'm gonna have you have you help me out uh actually she is but I'm gonna have you angle towards the light just like that perfect so let's get set up again so from jona silva she says ray do you ever stabilize your mono pod shots later in post I find that my munna pod shots are often a bit shaky and what other resources do you use to help keep stable shots during your shoot yeah I definitely stabilize a couple shots here and they're in post there a little bit you know if you're shaking a little bit or just trying to maintain a shot and there's a little vibration and there are shake or anything it's very easy to go in there just with the stabilizer plug in and just stabilize the shot there's nothing there's nothing listen there's nothing wrong with fixing in post you just don't want every shot to have to be fixed in post I try to shoot it right so I can minimize the amount of filters that I have that in post but yeah definitely done that toe where I've stabilized my shots and post okay but you don't ever frame with the idea that you potentially will have to do a lot of stabilizing in post is that sense yeah I understand what you're asking I do have shot sometimes maybe not during perhaps with maybe like say during a ceremony where I'll frame in a certain way knowing that I need to leave myself enough room toe where if I stabilize it because it's going to punch in on the shots I'm gonna lose I'm gonna lose some real estate on the shot so I have to I've got to compose my shot accordingly that's everything awesome thank you cool all right so I will probably keep my hundred lens on and and you could just help her out and adjust her with the dress and this is great she still she still in some nice lighting here remember always checking focus and here I've got a I've got a static shot and she's all happy there you go and I can pan down I can get some against some hands in there I can pan up and I'm gonna see I'm gonna kind of see both so once you have the shot remember chemo but can you just keep adjusting back there where you are and and here I can introduce kind of like a movement shots like khun practices a couple times and I probably wouldn't do with a hundred cause to challenging I'll probably get the fifty on here but I can still get some shots here you compound on the dress he some detail and if you need anything from the bride at this point like you thought would be cool like if she looked over her shoulder just ask her you know it's okay at this point just to start giving it some verbal direction because she's really just there maybe waiting for some commands is jamie jamie okay so just stand there kind of looking at the light and can you just be behind her almost like if you were just center dress yeah and you and jamie can you just like look over your left shoulder town yeah I just like perfect perfect so you seen her give her some verbal direction and I didn't tell her to do anything she just naturally smiled when she saw the makeup artist right it's just natural emotions so you're revoking emotions but you're not telling them to do anything specific because those types of instructions would just generate something that's that's fake you know it's just contrived and I'm just I'm really just looking for natural motions so just stay back there and and this is this is real life situation she may have she might have a zipper dress and it's just going to end so fast and then say like you know her friend or her relative they're just going toe want to leave and I'll ask him I said he just say their second just kind of fluff the dress there's always something to do like some type of adjustment with the bride's dress so it's okay if you need a shot to kind of complete your sequence just it's okay toe asked you know just ask don't be shy ah lot of this job is really being assertive and if there's something that you need just ask for especially like it's going to be like a little quick sequence that they're doing you may need a little bit of time just to work especially want to change lenses and compose different shots so here just looking like that um just in a second so here and just looking off your right shoulder you going down perfect so little little commands I could just give her just looking over your right shoulder and down with your eyes because these commands that I give her you're never going to see it you're never going to hear them in post you're just going to see these beautiful movements of the bride you know and this is the time that's really your time to be creative because we are we're visual artists and this is this is really our time you know so and you're going to see same thing with great photographers great photographers they give great verbal direction and they're able to have their clients be relaxed on camera but but if they're not doing with photographer needs that gave us a verbal direction we we have to do the same thing because we are trying to create stunning imagery and a lot of times that stuff is just not it's just not happening yeah so we can uh we'll go with the jewelry don't put it on her just yet and if something's going to happen and you kind of want to get the the beginning of the movement just hold on until you're ready you know to your composure shocks this this so difficult because it's not just like taking a picture you know it's like you know you have to get set you have to focus you have check focus you have to record you know make sure everything's perfect in the shot and then you record the shot and then you have to record the shot for however long it is so here let's see what kind of shot we can get um yeah I'm gonna have your stand like right here just angled towards a lot a little bit right there yeah and I'll tell you what homer here let's see what we get remember I check I check focus on everything so on go ahead okay so just get a quick shot hold on before you clasp it and this has got nice details so make sure you check focus running the details could you loosen it and then bring up yeah huh remember check you check your exposure always exposure and focus on the two main things that are going to mess you up here ready ready for a question while you're shooting yeah awesome so the question is do you shoot with sink sequencing in mind stay there and I'm going to add to that the absolutely do you make shot list you have in your pocket of sort of I don't have a shot list but I definitely I definitely try to get like two three four shots related to the same sequence here and I could do three toe you know I could do like three to four seconds here I could do three to four seconds here I could do a panning shot so these are all different shots so I'm getting I'm getting two three four shots without even having to move here just panning come in aiken dio and just just stay there adjusting did you have you have earrings you were gonna put it okay what else was there just a necklace okay huh yeah keep it posted there so another question right we talked about if the bride's not happy or she's not smiling and you you've made comments like just be happy or right you know smile which is is pretty casual but if you're in the room where the bride is getting ready and she's really stressed out a couple of people and assets in different ways what do you say to the bride or what can you do because you're in such close proximity to her and a lot of times while the bride is getting ready is when she's the most trust out because so many things have to come together and they relax later but do you have a comment that you make or more that you say I just recently had a wedding less less weekend where the power went out at a very very high end wedding the power went out for about seven hours so they couldn't plug in blow dryers you know what's ah what's machine they used for the curling irons everything and it was hot this was in this was in palm beach florida this so is hot it was muggy and there's no power and they spent a lot of money on this wedding and now there was no power at all until about six thirty pm at night and we'd been there since about eleven in the morning with no power so how do you think the bride was a little bit of trust so you have to approach this situation very carefully because um this is the bride's this is the bride's dream day and it's basically come in iraq okay so now what do you do you almost have to play therapist because what happens when a bride gets trust what happens when anybody gets trust your muscles tense up in your face and you know that they stay like that until they finally relax and that takes a little bit of time and they're just stressed uh the bright certainly not gonna be looking her best she's going look happy to be a very difficult situation and you really have to approach that almost like a like a ticking time bomb because you could just say one thing that could just devastate the bright and she could go into tears so you have to be very careful the situation that I had was the hair solace he had a salon so he said just come to the salon will do your hair there where there was power and then we'll do your make up there and then I was like no that's not a good idea because the salon is goingto have yellow lights and lamps and mixed lighting you know daylight with tungsten lights so it was just a bad situation and the bride was already stressed she had already cried so it was a very bad situation and I have to tell the bride it's not a good idea for you to do the hair is fine if you want to do this on to the hair but to do the makeup in the salon is not going to be it's going to be a good idea and we had already found a spot for her to do the makeup and they didn't need anything with electricity anyways we found good cool spot with nice natural light coming through but the bride was still stress she's very stressed and it was it was a mission to get her back to the spot that we need to her being for bride perhaps she had to be very careful now I tell you this you have to kind of you got to read your clients you have to be able to read the bride if you're giving her some verbal instructions and you see that she's kind of like not into it just lay off it's not worth it it's not worth being creative to upset a bribe because you're never going to get what you want because it's always going to look bad you know she's gonna look stressed you look upset a soon as I kind of I sense that maybe she's overwhelmed by the photographers and if I see that I said you know what I'm not even going to go there because she's already stressed out so you gotta kind of know when to leave it alone if she's happy she's still in the spirits and she's loving it play you no you listen if brian wants get creative were all about being creative and fun and getting all these cool shots and things like that but if she shut down and she stress and she's not feeling it just learn to leave it alone it's not worth it you know so so that particular bride I told her to calm her I said look we've got everything we need you know we're still gonna have a beautiful ceremony so we're gonna have a beautiful reception you're still going to do first look it which they did was very fast though I mean you have to be prepared because some of these events again through all these monkey wrench is that you and it's going to become very stressful this event I can tell you there was about forty seconds of bright slipping in her dress two minutes later was first look a minute later was like three or four candid shots two minutes later was a tuba signing and like five minutes later was a ceremony and we had to basically do all this stuff within ten minutes it was crazy we had even set up audio for the ceremony so but you have to be prepared and you know we all want to do these big extravagant events and things like that but I tell you there are a lot of work it's a lot of stress nobody knows each other so it creates a lot of different monkey wrenches and then if the power goes out for seven or eight hours forget about it you know andi was funny because the bride just called me this week and she said raid that we get everything we need because she was so in a video and she was just she loved the video and she definitely want to make sure that and she even giving us a sketch schedule with so much buffer room in there that she called me during the week this week and she's like that we get everything and I said look we got everything we even got some candid shots we got the first look without ceremony reception the words spoken at this wedding one of the best I've ever heard in my life so I told her that she got really excited I said if I'm being honest with you on lee thing that we kind of missed out on because we're about a beautiful venue was the candid shots and she goes can we do a post shoot and I said if you do that you're going to have a home run so now we've scheduled on after shoot we're going to go back to the same venue we're going to get all these beautiful shots with great weather and it's done you know so there's always ways around it things like that so but never stressed answer the question don't stress the bride ever you know just it's not worth it because you're just never gonna get that type of imagery that you're looking for with a stress bride okay cool maybe another question from the studio audience yeah uh you mentioned earlier that you work quickly efficiently so that you have time for lots of shots but how do you know when you're done with the sequence how do you know when you need one more shot or how do you know when it's time to move on and go shoot the dress and the shoes and step away you almost feel it like you always do like if you think about the shots that you have and sometimes I'm even um I'm clicking through the shots that have like I'm reviewing our photographers called chipping you know see what like what should you have um I'm like I'm clicking through my shots to see what I have and then sometimes I have so many where I'm just like oh my god this is enough I have to get details now you know I have to get the shoes I have to get the dress but I don't have enough dress maybe I get a ring shot but as faras bright makeup and getting dressed and things like that I have I have more than enough now one of the things that I will do just for some eye candy and a lot of times when she's done getting dressed and things like that the photographer's gonna do some portrait of her looking very beautiful and I do the same because this is one of these moments especially if they're not having first look or anything like that or maybe the candid you're going to be very limited I'll try to get at least two or three shots off just the bride looking very beautiful put over next teo really beautiful light maybe I get a couple of the shots now before we close some and I'll tell you exactly what I need and never never make the bride work I always move stuff out of way I'm over chair I just you know never this is her day you know never I require her to do any physical activity so I'm gonna have you I'll just have you stand here on just kind of look out the window what's your husband's name start jamie you're okay you know okay so just think about jamie just kind of kind of almost peek around the curtain there so I'll give her a little bit direction just a couple things that I'm looking for with these shots and the only thing is I'm really looking forward to just a couple two three shots of her looking really beautiful because what's gonna happen is in the film there's always beautiful words being spoken about the bride's beauty so if you're if you tie in a couple beauty shots to the those words spoken uh it could be very powerful in the film so that's the only purpose of these shots you know that this they serve no meaning or anything like that they're unplanned they're not scripted in a timeline or anything like that it's just literally for some eye candy that I can tie together with uh some of the words being spoken yeah that's fine remember check your exposure make sure everything is looking good check focus this is this is literally the most important thing and just looking down your dress and you see that slight little verbal direction I gave her your never gonna hear it you're gonna see it looking on your dress and then out the window perfect did you see that just very quick verbal direction looking down your dress looking out the window and I'm anticipating my own shot as on pani I already know what I want to see in my shot so I'm giving her this little in advance this little verbal direction okay looking down your dress looking out the window things like that and then the shot just rolls out perfectly so so once I get a wide enough shot I'll come a little bit closer so I can tie in some stuff yeah the same thing just kind of looking out the window there looking up towards main and whatever you think and some of these shots you know he just kind of play around with you know brights look um they look very sexy like anything that you shoot it's gonna look really nice in the film even if you're not showing her face you just showing kind of details in the accessories and in the dress and things like that um we're not like photographers where the kind of the document everything you know they document every detail you know the dress the shoes the the place cards invitations all this stuff we can shoot in a way that's just very dramatic and sexy and beautiful and not really revealing um the entire image and we're okay because it's it's the motion that's creating the interest in the clip so you don't always don't always feel like you have to show the entire image the whole time because if I just showed like the entire bride the entire by the tire by the tire bright is just it's really even though it's a beautiful bright it becomes un interesting it just becomes still because the viewers already seen it on dh you know we have a very short attention span as viewers you wantto constantly want to be fed cool new interesting information that we've never been fed before because once that once the brain's been been fed that information it's done on to the next thing we want to see something different you know the the brain is just hungry for new information you know once this kind of process that old information is done it's already in the memory bank but they've never seen the details all up close and personal or her eyes or her lips and things like that so just keep everything constantly changing and interesting and stay there one last second I get it I get a couple more shots um I love using the mirror because it's really nothing else in the room but generally you'll have other things in the room that you can use us for ground even people I can do wreck focuses s so this was like a real live shooting situation you have so much footage because there's so much other things going on besides the bride doing makeup and hair you have interactions yet bridesmaids and parents and nieces and you know all these other things you know gifted changes letter writing valid writing speech writing all of these things so you're gonna have you have much more content than what we have today uh but we're still doing pretty good on content you mentioned earlier about wedding planners and I know what the level of filming you do probably almost all of your weddings have a planner but before you were at that level and there wasn't a wedding planner at the wedding did you spend a lot of time helping the bride planned out the day just to make your day easier how did you deal with that because a lot of the weddings that I'm doing have no wedding planners and the bride's air attempting to make their own plan and it just seems like a lot of times those fail so how did you deal with that I'm glad you asked that question did you know that I was a wedding planner I'm a wedding planner I planned the bride's wedding you guys didn't know that I'm not really a wedding planner but if you're in a situation where there's no wedding planner it's even better because guess what I have weddings where there's no wedding planner I become the wedding planner so what happens I create the schedule I don't create the latter half of the schedule like post ceremony I create the priest ceremony scheduled for sure hands down I create all the timing and I said listen if you want to run on time and be comfortable on your wedding day and us to be able to get all the shots of target will be able to get all the shots I recommend that you kind of follow this guideline as faras the timing of the day and things like that because now what have you done I don't really care about the planning of a wedding I care about basically setting a perfect stage for me and as far as timing things that I don't want to be like fighting the clock so now that I've created my own schedule that schedules catered to me it's like the greatest thing in the world so if you don't have a planner the best thing to do is ask him I'll ask him I said listen do you have a wider point I would recommend a wedding planner because I want the bride to enjoy the day and I don't want the bride or even her mom I've had moms that planned the wedding come up to me after the wedding and tell me I don't remember anything I didn't enjoy today because I was so busy trying to tie up this and type that and plan the wedding that I just I didn't enjoy it and I have to wait till like watch it in the film and I don't like that to happen so I always recommend that they not only get a planner they get a good planner that knows her stuff because a good planner is going to give you a really good schedule and a good planner is going to keep things structured and on time and things like that so it's always better to have a planner but if they don't have a planner and you could become the planner it's a great situation you know just I will said listen if the ceremony's at this time you should be starting makeup but this time if there's a first look involved you should be doing first look at this time because I already know based on what based on her own experiences right we've all been to a wedding where was so relax because the schedule was perfect right and we've been toe weddings where we're stressed out because there's no time to do anything that was a bad schedule so I always draw from those good weddings where everything was relax and the schedule was perfect it was plenty of time that bright wasn't stress I try to draw from that and said listen I've been to weddings were if you follow this time guideline based on what you're doing is going to be perfect so just become the wedding planner it's the best thing because you're basically planning the wedding not for the way you're planning for yourself you know so that you're going to have enough time to do what you gotta do and the bride's gonna be relaxed and she's not gonna run on and she didn't run late which is always great