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Shoot: Reception Part 1

so we're at the reception what's the number one thing that we're concerned with at the reception we know this already by now audio okay so we've we've got our sound tech who in my case is just taking care of the audio and I'm taking care of the lighting I'm looking at everything I'm looking at a possible positions for the person giving the speech you want you want taken account the backgrounds okay for the speeches because you don't want your you don't want the person giving the toast with his back to maybe a speaker or maybe some band members or maybe an exit sign or maybe something that's just very unflattering to the shot so consider your background not just a spot that you won't understand you really have to start to consider his background and things like that because you could devalue the shot by having him in something in a position where it's in front of something that's very unflattering so think about position think about your couple right now with these dear sort cameras if ...

I didn't have enough camera light I'm still okay with us I could I could work my eyes so and I still have a pretty acceptable image but I want my image to be as clean as possible so even though they're kind of exposed a little bit somewhat by these candles I do wanna have another camera light for this couple here the family here for the family I'm never going to light them off camera I'm just gonna use like utilize the ambient light on available like that's in the room which in this case was great because they have candles all on the center of the table and that light is actually throwing off some decent light onto their faces and things like that so I'll get into that now the first thing that we're going to cover for reception training is the first dance because typically when they do their introductions that's the first thing that generally happens is they go right into their first dance on the dance floor so I'm gonna invite the bride and groom to go into their first ass guys have you noticed if you notice this um this particular area that were we've been dealt here it's very congested and it's very small and there's not a lot of room to move and sometimes you're going to be confronted with a wedding reception that's very small maybe there's only thirty forty yes and your dad is going to be very small the table's gonna be pushed in tight and you're not gonna have a lot of uh room to move so in this particular case probably a tripod for your main camera is it's going to be too big and bulky and you're not really gonna be able to move too much you're probably blocking guests which you want to get in the habit of so your spot's probably gonna be like right in the center right there is fine so fire up the camera and you can kind of just face each other and almost get into your first dance mode now this camera here is going to be the primary camera which again is going to be jessica behind this camera one of the things that jessica does even though I've already established the off camera lighting she'll always have an led light on her camera and the reason that she does this is if this couple turns away from the you know the priest set up like that I have you're gonna have an under exposure you're going haven't underexposed image and I want to avoid that at all costs if they turn away from the light same thing with a person giving a speech even though you kind of like pre plan for some lighting there's there's a lot of situations where they turn away from your preposition lighting you always want to have something onboard just in case he can feel some under exposed areas of your shot um and and that looks that looks pretty good guys just look at each other just like you're in your first dance now we're gonna look at this on live you just you can see what I'm seeing in the camera okay so this this right here I'm not using any light and I'm not about four hundred s o which you khun probably tell is a little bit underexposed okay say you have one or two choices if you're not using on camera light you can try to expose the shot this way and what are we always going to do we're always going to check focus always check focus come back and then we can start recording right there you guys you're just looking at each other just enjoy your first dance and and this is kind of the primary function of the primary shooter is just getting a nice stable solid shot of this couple doing their first dance and this this shot depending on their movements sometimes they're just dancing around around but sometimes they have they've got a dance that's a little bit choreographed instead of holding a shot like this that's so tight if you see that they're moving around a lot and you're kind of like you're very challenging keeping them within your frame you might want to go just a little bit wider instead of being here remember always always check focus just to make sure that everything's in ranger and like I said they're moving up towards the camera just give him a little bit of room now here I am at eight hundred eso most receptions are going to be even darker than what we're dealing with right here so if our far external light was not working maybe we want to introduce some of our own camera lighting so you see the difference here and now you can see where I can actually go in and and possibly lower my eyes so to something like four five hundred remember always always white balance here I'm a little bit too warm for this tungsten lighting and just kind of dollar into taste this shot for the most part from the primary camera they're just maintaining a solid shot because I'm moving around I'm getting more creative shots so remember we each know our roles I'm more creative for this she's more solid that's good guys looks really good congratulations yeah um so that looked really good and I want to keep you guys out there because I want to get into my camera positions so this is going to be the primary shooter and you guys just go in the centre if you like and joe I'm gonna get the um I'm gonna get the fifty sometimes sometimes people want to dio you know like some more creative shots with either glide cams or sliders and things like that if your area is just so small sometimes you're just gonna have to do without these tools and just get creative without those types of tools you know because you kind of running around a small dance for with them might just draw some attention to you from the guest so just try to remain a cz under the radar as you possibly can grey yes quick question meat would like to know if you have image stabilization on that seventy two two hundred yes great thank you ok any questions yes and with that shot that you were just shooting on the seventy two hundred with the mono pod with that normally be a tripod if they if you had room for a tripod that yes okay exit seventy two hundred it's a little bit challenging especially if you want to get to start doing rack focus and things like that it gets a little bit challenging so incense it's just a lot easier to be on sticks yeah let me just get the live you working on here again and the guys you can just uh play around in the centre um generally speaking you have a lot more real estate where you khun where you can work were in a training environment so the my real estate is very small but as ah as a bureau cameras a creative camera I would literally be bouncing around from behind everyone and I wouldn't be up here in the front where everybody could see me so I'd like to get creative that way kind of shoot from behind the guests use some foreground look for candles or crystals any any type of foreground that I can shoot through to start making these shots looked really interesting so going to her first dance guys let me see what I can achieve here and I'll probably get thea a joe I'll probably go ahead and get that hundred no I cannot I can use this for a little bit just leave it here in our house which I'll lend us I generally have just like I'm doing here I generally have lenses preposition or I'll have an assistant holding a lens for me that I want to use for the first dance because the first dance is generally last three or four minutes sometimes sometimes it only last a minute so you have be careful sometimes they don't dance the entire duration of the song so you have to make sure at least you have the basic shots down now if you notice that they're going to dance for the entire duration of the song you're gonna have sometimes a place so maybe I don't want to be stuck with just twenty four to seventy lens or one hundred lens maybe I want to swap some lenses and composed of different shots so I will either if I don't have an assistant I'll just prepositional lens so I can grab it quickly or best case scenario is to just have an assistant on standby holding that lens for you okay guys you can dance around I'm gonna pull this off s so so here I'll just try toe try to see if I can use some foreground with them pervert you could just compose different shots you have the family in the background which is great but just look for different types of shots here probably go and change swap out lenses hey guys could you take a little bit further off towards that way yeah way probably even a little bit more that's fine I just want to show you the depth that I'll get with us and here you definitely definite want to throw some light their way wait remember always check focus wear whatever you can use we're very limited so very limited in the amount of area that we can move but I would generally just keep bouncing around the room I would get up behind the family maybe maybe get some reactions of the family during the first dance um but I'm basically looking for four run I'm looking for content three to five seconds three or five seconds from I'm constantly you know in an actual borrow you don't just have one table you probably have like twenty or thirty different table so I'm really working the room trying to come poses many different shots as I possibly can because I'm in the I want to load up on the content that I have to produce this film what and here you'll notice it's a little if you see what I'm talking about it's a little bit under exposed you can just go ahead and start trying to expose a little bit with the led light and this is basically this base of the composition of a main shooter so you never wanted to get into a habit off getting the same composition as your primary shooter you're function is really a creative shooter at this point so you're just looking for shots that are outside the box you want to think differently just like you thought differently during preparations during candidates you want to do the same thing here because you can have a lot of basic looking shots that have good composition good lighting but if you have too many of them it just kind of becomes repetitive at that point repetitive and stale really so you you always want to be able to mix in some some visual eye candy if you will so always look for things that are outside the box yes I had a quick question because you mentioned earlier that you had your second shooter and ah it's camera that was low on a tripod so really at this point you're shooting with three cameras constantly rolling is it a challenge staying out of those shots do you care how do you approach that for the first down for the first dance because you had mentioned that your you had a like a camera like no we only use that as an emergency backup camera like like were like caught off guard with something that's a surprise like a surprise speech or surprise performance then we use that just to get set up before the up until the primary cameras their vote to establish themselves but we never used the will never use that static camera for a first dance that all the only time we will employ a can a static camera like that is if they have a huge performance going on and maybe want to put a a nice fourteen lens on the camera just tow have like wide coverage of the entire dancefloor and then that way jessica is a primary shooter she can get nice tight shots of what's going on in the dance for this is it's basically like a camera three at a ceremony it's got the whole thing covered so in the editing we wantto kind of switch back to this white camera we could just switch back it's a solid shot it's unmanned it's never moving and then again I'm just kind of bouncing around the room being creative and just trying to achieve shots that are outside the box you know you as a creative shooter if you have a solid second shooter you should never we're looking for shots that are very predictable you know very two basic you know two squared up you know shots that you're really relying on your second shooter to achieve you should always be looking for shots that are interesting you know like visual eye candy a lot of content that's really your primary role thank you yeah creative camera mostly is on one apart and jessica would be young tripod right for this unless for you know for the couple's first dance I'd like to get at least a couple shots with light camp because of what I can for those types of shots does add some some really nice production value but if you just don't have the room for it is very congested is very small area you're probably just not gonna be able to use it just switched to a model pot and there's plenty of creative shots that you get because you can't even use that many glide cam shots in post without it becoming too repetitive so it's always better just to get a cup a couple of those shots and then maybe transition to a mono pod even the event that I had with alex I think there were situations where maybe I had to like him and I had him standing by with a model pod and a camera for me and we just we worked like that you know when I was done with a guy like him I handed the black camped alex and he had me the mono pod with a camera on the lens of my choice and I just kept working you know without losing any time that's why it's always great to try to have somebody that can help you you know assisting on the shoot because that way you're not battling to um fine your gear and and ultimately you're missing all these beautiful shots yeah and photography one of my favorite compositions is taking a quick moment to snap behind the couple and use a video light to backlight them and get the silhouette is there a way to do that without obstructing jessica's primary shot is that a big concern of you if you ever tried anything like that jessica actually jessica likes to shoot against the data light so she's actually getting that yeah she she loves getting that flare effect and that hair light effect and in that situation she's actually employing uh filling their under exposed areas with the l e d light so she loves shooting against uh the data light down any questions from online we did have a question that came up this was from uh son youtube who and we talked about this I think probably off camera but talking about using a jim crane or anything trying to get the bride and groom from above whether dancing and I'm sure that you've tried that but why don't you implement that on a regular basis don't need it I I've only used ah jib or crane out a wedding maybe just a handful of times and it's only when they asked for you because you're gonna have weddings we do we do a lot of russian weddings and russian weddings they love to have the jobs and the cranes and things like that but unfortunately in some of these venues you just can't fit ah djibril cranes just so limited that you can't use it uh the jib does give you some amazing shots but again if used too much it just becomes kind of sort of like the slider the glide cam it just becomes too repetitive and too predictable at that point so but they do give some amazing shots especially after great jib operator I'm not a jib operator here so don't try to be a jib operator if I have a situation where they want to order um jaber crane at their event I will subcontract a really good job operator teo toe work the job for the event I think we can get into speeches that'll be really good so we'll transition over so have the the couple come and sit down and joe you khun hang onto this for a second so as you can see here um this is probably a little bit of better late than what a national situation will be like you should be a little bit dimmer than this the good thing is that you have candles on this table so you have a couple different options here since you have the candlelight kind of giving them some exposure you can just work with your eyes so and expose the picture that way or you can use on led light and have ultimately a cleaner image if you will so the speeches general you're going to come up after the first dances and this is very important you have to think about speech speeches before the wedding reception even starts because you want to have your lighting already propositioned you want tohave the led light already proposition maybe your backup camera and your unmanned camera you wanna have that readily available for this for this segment here this table doesn't look too it doesn't look too too bad because there's not that many obstructions the only thing that I would tell you is maybe this little centerpiece um maybe it's obstructed them a little bit if I had my unmanned camera down low this this thing here you could always you could always move out to the side just for just for the speeches maybe had you know something like this just for speeches and then I would have the couple just try to settle it lt's together and let the couple know what you're doing because they may see you moving all these arrangements and things like that and they were like what are you doing hard core you know we've got a lot of money for this I always talk to the couple ahead of time and I let them know I said listen guys just for the speeches I want you to be able to see your best man that's going to give a speech I'm just going to move this center piece because obstructing you guys I'm going to move it off to the side until a speech is that okay yeah they're like cool let's do it on dh now you got the green light from your bosses which is basically the couple and if anybody asks you why you moved it you just say the bride and groom wanted it moved you know so you just kind of like a focus their attention that way and that's what I do I just tell them exactly what I need them to do or what I'm doing so that they're well aware and they're not freaked out and wondering why I'm moving things around so now this is perfect can I get the led light actually I'm gonna have to put the that led light we'll put it on that light stand yeah that's why so this looks good now what's our um most important area of concern is the person actually given the speech so we pre determined a spot here based on this room and we've determined that this spot is probably going to be the best spot number one because he has a clear view of the writing the groom and he also has a clear view of his family and friends on this side so they don't have his backs they don't have his back and we're looking pretty good and he already knows his own he's gonna stay right here he's going to speak into the microphone very important that you instruct them to speak into the microphone because sometimes they'll have the microphone and they'll kind of speak like this and this does you no good you know especially if you're connected to the sound board of the mixer and you're waiting for this to happen boat what happens you've already starts a speech are you going to run out there and kind of interrupt the speech and things like that you might have to live with this situation if you don't instruct him properly so I'm gonna come up here and I must say listen if you could just stay in this zone here when you give your speech they'll give them your back obviously don't give them your back and speak into the microphone and you're done okay and hopefully he'll remember speaking microphone sometimes you just have to do with because sometimes you tend to speak in the microphone and they do one of these were they're just big talk with their hands so they're doing this and your audio is kind of in and out in and out in and out in and out how do we get around with that you have a backup microphone we always put a backup microphone on the person giving the speech because if you don't maybe you're going to get this in and out stuff or maybe they're gonna have the microphone down here now they they did remember to put the microphone up here we're gonna have excellent audio from our soundboard feet or a mixture feet and we're not gonna have to rely on the little mini recorder that we use but if this fails we always have the mini recorder which is great cool all right so let's get into um lighting for speeches if if he's giving a speech here to get him that up already actually joe can you dim that down all right okay so this is with no light let's see what that looks like live you this is with no light and probably about five hundred s o and this is this is not too bad this is not too bad remember I can't emphasize this enough with these cameras always check focus okay joe can you introduce some of that light okay perfect exactly now I can actually go down on my show a little bit and clean up the image and he's pretty well lit and I can't even I can't even dimmed out in the light even a little bit more on dh that's good now what you can't see is this diddle light that I talked about before it's probably about it's probably about twenty five feet away from our subject and jo how far is it dimmed up about how far about a third about thirty percent and we're about we're about twenty five feet away and that's thirty percent and I don't really even need it because my s o is four hundred eyes so which is that's the native aya so for this camera's very very clean and it gives me a lot of latitude so that's about twenty five feet at about thirty percent so just imagine if you had this across the room you could put it out eighty percent or one hundred percent and it's going to give you enough reach um to reach your subject which in this case is amazing so you're gonna have your primary camera here you can check focus this is going to be seventy two hundred on a tripod always speeches anything that has to do with dialogue is always going to be on sticks always on a tripod so here we've checked focus this shot's not going to be a model pod this shot's gonna be on a tripod and can you just start your speech just thank you everyone for being here jamie lena they feel absolutely blessed that everyone was able to make it and before I get too far into speech I've especially I think our parents for their financial and genetic contributions that brought about this joyous event you know I was really nervous about giving this speech but jamie he took me aside beforehand and he said dilip you know if it it doesn't go so hot this time you know there's always my next wedding buddy it'll work man okay I'm gonna stop either that was good all right so he looks great but what's happening here you have the couple they're cracking up right but we have no shot so we have to establish a shot of this couple at all times so joe let me get the fifty lens and I'll actually get thea I should get that small tripod if we can oh it's all those I'm sorry wait you have a question from the studio audience oh yeah this is a good time so when you might uh the speaker um the best man usually have a backup for for him as well write the love mike yes what about the bridesmaid since during the dresses and the intense because sometimes we've had them hold the recorder with their hands and just clipped the lab onto their dress because there's really no place to clip the transmitter or tuck the little many recorders so it just depends if we're really worry off the djs equipment will definitely have them hold because the geezer is on ly source of audio that you have and he doesn't really have good equipment you're really running the risk of losing that speech altogether so sometimes we might just as so the bridesmaid or maid of honor you know if you could just hold this recorder in one hand and your and your speech in the next just go from there thank you yeah cool um do we have the let me get the small get this small tribe okay so now can you hold this yeah yeah so I'll crank this up just a little bit the tripod that I use actually uh the stock in the center actually raises up and down so you don't really have to manipulate the legs too much but I will raise this a little bit okay that works all right so I'm gonna have I'm gonna have this light and I'm gonna explain to the couple I'm going to say listen just for the speeches I'm going through a little bit of soft led light just expose you guys during the speeches you're not to look at the light just kind of pay attention to the speeches so they're just kind of kind of direct their attention over to you dylan right okay we'll make sure that this light is given equal coverage and you can see here I'm not even using fifteen percent intensity with this light is very subtle you don't want anything that's too bright because you saw their eyes now they're annoyed with you okay and you and you don't want that you just want a subtle amount of light okay so you can shoot pretty clean for the most part now remember this this camera here is going to give you a solid shot of the couple the entire time remember the level out the tripod nice and level and then we're gonna go live you and see what we got and would you say this lighting is pretty realistic for a reception or do you think it's brighter than most dimly lit receptions would be um it's brighter okay okay so remember you have a pretty good shot here what we're gonna do always check focus he's looking pretty good there and and just compose your shot however you wanted