Planning for the wedding and getting to the church

Having given thought to all the best methods when using a movie camera, be it cine or video and going by ones past experience, you might think you have ironed out all the snags. The opportunity to film a big family wedding came up and I jumped at another chance to use those skills.

The first thing I did was to make out a shooting schedule, covering the wedding itself and the reception. It depends on what is required, or possible, especially whether you will be allowed to cover the wedding ceremony itself in the church. Usually the bride and groom want everything covered! In this case, the vicar gave permission to film it all, provided we were not obtrusive and did not use special lighting. I decided that two cameras would be a good idea and invited Penny to be the other camera operator.

We did a recce in the morning when the organist would be rehearsing. The time to do some cut-aways of the interior of the church, the flowers and the

Difficult lighting

organist (brother of the groom) pulling out the stops as he started to play. This was the opportunity to record all the music that was going to be played. We also agreed where
 
 

each of the cameras would be and where Penny would set up a tape recorder to make an independent stereo sound recording. Come the afternoon things were not as straight forward as we had planned for. It was a Saturday and parking was not possible outside the church as it was at the centre of a one-way system. Only wedding cars had a special concession. So, I stood guarding the equipment, while Penny
managed to park at the top of a multi storey. The previous wedding was running late, so as our guests arrived they were mingling with those of the previous wedding. When Penny arrived, we had to squeeze our way through the mixed crowd with hellos and greetings and somehow arrived at our prearranged locations.
 
 
 

The light was different, I FORGOT RULE ONE! The sun moves round. The light was shining straight at me through the windows - large and bright.I shot some important

cut-aways of the people taking their places in the pews, you can’t have too many of those. The most important shot turned out to be the groom’s father and mother looking back to the church door with a big smile from the father. This I was able to use when editing, at the point where the bride and her father arrived. LUCK - but worth noting! When it
 

came to taking a good shot of the bridesmaids, those bright windows were right behind them, so it was a matter of opening up with the tiny stop control, not very satisfactory with a video camera, as the electronics take over and it makes back lighting compensation difficult, especially as, in panic, I moved the small button in the wrong direction and closed down, so I ended up with silhouettes. BEWARE OF PANICKING.

I moved to abetter position.

The system worked beautifully, especially in the part after the main ceremony while the signing of the register was taking place. The bridegrooms sister sang while the organist accompanied her on the piano. When editing, we lap
dissolved from close-ups of the girl to shots of the signing and back again to show the pianist and a long shot of the singer before returning once more to

Ugh! back light

the register To finish there was a big close-up of the singer which I faded at the end of the song. This worked extremely well, except that the colours on the TR55 came out much paler than those shot on the M10. Fortunately I was able to tweak the colour up with the V8000 and back down to the mid-position on the M1O shots. I had to do this all through the editing of the video. Check that COLOURS MATCH when using different cameras.
 

At the reception, all went fairly well, but there were still problems. At the cutting of the wedding cake, it was placed just inside the french windows of the dining room. The result was a well lit cake, but the bride and grooms heads were shadowed. A light on their faces would have helped, but this would have necessitated the use of a blue gel over the light. If only I’d had a reflector with me. LACK OF ANTICIPATION! But of course the close-ups of the knife and
 

the happy, laughing couple were all right. The final problem came with the speeches at the reception

due to aircraft noise. I SHOULD HAVE HAD A RIFLE MIKE WITH ME.

Penny was a great help with the editing. The resulting video was a success and much appreciated by all those who saw the epic - a reminder of what was such a happy day for everyone.

I can't wait until the next wedding!