WHAT
Filming the speeches of the best man and parents of bride and groom. Then going onto capturing a lot of coverage, and the first dance. Shooting on a Sony A7S with rode mic attached.
(Brother's Wedding 09/02/2019)
EQUIPMENT LIST
Rode Mic
Sony A7S
Sony FE f/1.8 50mm
Mini Manfrotto tripod
METHODOLOGY
I had no experience of shooting weddings, so went into this absolutely blind as to how it was going to pan out. We got to the venue at around 9am, and I started immediately taking photos, as I knew the speech wouldn't be taking place until 2pm. When it got to 2pm, I began to feel the pressure, as we started to be seated for our meals and the speeches, I set up my camera on one of the front tables, facing the bride and groom. I wanted to try and fit in everyone of that table, but because of my fixed 50mm lens, it was pretty difficult. So the speeches were under way, and about 10 minutes into the speech of the brides father, was when I sadly realised that I hadn't turned the flipping mic on! I was fuming, extremely embarrassed and ready to chuck my camera across the room but I turned it on and left it. I'd also noticed that the mini tripod legs started to slack which resulted in the camera facing downwards, cutting off the heads of the speakers. So to try and correct this I was constantly monitoring and holding the tripod legs, which made the camera tremor and shake, giving the footage a really weird look which obviously was not wanted. The speech went properly tits up. I didn't tell my brother that though, eek. I wanted everyone in focus too, so my aperture was set to around f/8, quite closed and to make sure everything that was in sight was in focus. I did think about putting it on auto-focus but my lens doesn't have it built in, so there is a slight lag when trying to find the new point of focus, so I didn't want to risk it. The white balance was on auto, as i've done a lot of research on the Sony's AF system, and it's one of the best in the industry. I didn't want to be stressing about manually correcting the white balance, as I already had a lot to manage, so I felt it was the right decision. My ISO was quite low, as there was already a lot of light at the location, so I didn't need to add more light into the composition within the camera.
So then it got to the evening where I had more freedom to shoot what I wanted, to float around and get coverage of everyone at the ceremony and on the dance floor. The lights had dimmed so I changed my settings appropriately, fortunately my camera is great for low light environments. I had a bit of time before the first dance to capture little moments with friends and family, I wanted to get a mixture of close ups and long shots, as I knew when it came to the edit there would be a fresh variety of shots, not over using any particular compositions. All of the footage shot after the speech was shot handheld, with the mini tripod attached to the camera and the camera strap acting as a counteractive weight to create a smooth handheld motion. I had opened the aperture up quite wide, to about f/2.4 as the lights had really dimmed and I wanted quite a shallow depth of field to create that real sense of intimacy of the dance.
I only had a day to really edit this piece so I rushed some parts, and definitely missed some footage on the day but I had to make the most out of the footage I had. I felt that the transition dissolve effects worked nicely throughout most of it, and then some hard cuts were fine when appropriate. I didn't colour correct any of the footage as I felt it looked very natural as it was. I got the same text font that was one the cake to use as my text for the titles of each new moment. I felt it was a nice touch, linking both and adds more of a thoughtful layer.
WHAT I LEARNT - HOW IT EFFECTED MY APPROACH TO THE PROJECT
There were lot of things that went horribly wrong with this event, I know that I was there to enjoy it but for the most part I was stressing out about capturing the right footage. Looking back, after showing my family and brother/his partner the finished product, they all seemed really happy with it which I can't ask anymore for. But they can't see all the errors and minor mishaps that make me cringe inside, because they don't know what goes on/how it works behind the camera. This experience really effected me and my approach to this unit, it had me think long and hard about how I approach things in the future, how I should thoroughly prep, try and think visually how it will look in the edit. One area of this piece that really bugged me was the constant moving of the camera in the speech, this immediately had me thinking about how I should make sure the set up of the camera is correct, way before the filming is meant to begin. It also made me realise to stop messing around with the camera once filming, as the tiny movements on the camera make the visuals so unattractive and very hard to watch. Furthermore this lead me to think once I come to film my major project, I'll make sure everything is set, so all I have to do is literally press the record button and stand still. Making sure things were in focus was quite an issue, as my small LCD screen on the camera is too small to make out what's in focus or not, so it made me realise that what would be a smart idea when it came to our shoot days, would be to have a separate monitor, to see whether our subject matter is in focus or not. I didn't feel proud of this work, and that's definitely going to motivate myself to create a piece of work within this final project that I can actually say i'm happy with. So I have to learn from these small projects, which I am doing, that there is so much to contemplate and do to have a great piece. It made me realise the importance of auto-focus, and that i'll potentially use it for our project, as for moving subjects it's extremely difficult to keep them in focus if you've got quite a wide open aperture. That's the good thing about the Panasonic DVX 200's is that they have a very good auto-focus system, so i'm fortunate in that sense. As I did not have to worry much about the lighting for this project, it made me think more about how to create certain moods with the power of using just a few light sources in the shot. Camera movement as well, particularly when I was using handheld, has to be to a decent standard as you can really see the difference between someone who knows what they're doing and don't. The first minute or so I was getting to grips with the handheld of the camera on the mini-tripod, and if that was on a job I was being paid for it wouldn't of been good enough. I should have known how the camera was going to feel and how I needed to hold it. So this definitely gave me food for thought approaching the oncoming filming of our project, and if any handheld recording did come into play, i'd want to play out the scene from the top as a rough guide as to how I would hold and move with the camera.
Overall this experience was very timely, leaving myself with lots to focus on and improve just before I start filming my major production. Its made me more aware of what my weaknesses our, and if I can avoid them and improve of some of them during the production that'd be a success. I've learnt a lot from this that will be applied to future projects.
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