One More Live On-Air Wedding

Published at 12/1/2009 in General. 0 Comments

Building on success of the live on-air wedding broadcasted in May 2009, A-Morning TV Show pulled another one, just as successful. The small army of local wedding vendors eager to showcase their talents, has helped to present beautifully every element of the show.

A-Morning Wedding Ceremony

Family and guests are looking down on the ceremony from the second floor of the Media Mall on 87 George St. in Ottawa, Canada.

I asked the show producer Ziyada Callender to assess the success. Ziyada kindly responded, and here is the interview:

Q:  What was the success on a scale form 1 to 10?

Z: On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate the wedding show a 9… since
there’s always room for improvement! There was so much to do in such a
short space of time, I’m more than happy with the outcome of the show.

A-Morning Wedding Ceremony

Ingrid and Gino are leaving the Ceremony at the A-Morning Ottawa.

Q: The most important motive of every wedding is keeping the bride happy.
Do you think we made Ingrid feel good?

Z: Keeping Ingrid happy for this wedding was even more important than the
first wedding we did, because our focus was on couples who had a
disastrous first wedding. Ingrid’s first wedding was a complete
catastrophic destination wedding so it was extremely important that she
was pleased with everything. Thankfully, she was!

Q: Have you heard back from the viewers? Any exciting emails you could
quote for me?

A: We had a quite a few emails from viewers saying how happy they were with
the wedding show (the dress was beautiful, they got so many prizes,
etc.) but the best one for me — the one that I kept — was from the
bride and groom themselves:

Thank you for giving us such a great ‘re-do’. It was an experience that we will never forget. Please pass on our thanks to the staff and hosts of the show. Everyone was so nice and worked hard to make the day so great for us and our guests. We may not have come across as sentimental on the show but this ‘re-do’ experience not only gave us a new wedding day experience that was far better than our own it also helped to remind Gino and I that we have a great life together with our children.

A-Morning Wedding Ceremony

Wedding gown show makes good television.

Q: Local wedding vendors charge big money for their services. You have not
charge the couple a penny. Are you going to spoil local brides?

Z: We love our community and showcasing local businesses. If there’s a
venue for us to support both, we’re definitely going to do it!

Q: How do you think it affects local vendors in terms of setting up certain
standards. Who is catching up?

Z: I think shows like this gives vendors involved a chance to showcase
their supply to such a mass audience and ultimately, generates more
business. Because of what we’re doing, I feel local vendors are raising
both their quality and quantity to meet the demands once being on our
show.

I will let you know if there is another live on-air morning show in the future. Thanks!

A-Morning Wedding on Flickr.

Slide Show: To Shoot or Not Too Shoot?

Published at 10/18/2009 in Reception. 0 Comments

Slide show nowadays is a staples of any wedding reception. Someone from the bridal party or from the family puts together a show based on the snapshots of the bride and the groom in their childhoods, and then some more of them dating.

I often hear requests to include the slide show into the final video. If you have to shoot it, there are few basic rules:

  1. Before the show is up on the screen, ask the projectionist to bring white on the screen, it could be clear light through the lens of the slide projection, or a blank page of any document or browser if the show is played off the computer. Do your white balance.
  2. Switch to manual focus. I never use auto focus, but many people do, so for the slide show I recommend to use MF.
  3. Unlikely you’ll be able to set dead center against the screen. Therefore the screen won’t be a rectangle from your camera point of view. You have a dilemma - either to include full and skewed screen in the shot, or crop it - I always prefer the latter.

But more fundamentally - do you need to shoot it? Seems to be obvious - why not if the customers want it? Here is why not in my opinion:

  1. Slide show eats time of your final video. If you follow the couple for entire day, you may have a hard time squeezing the slide show in your final project.
  2. Quality. You are judged by the quality of your videos. If the images in the slide show are out of focus, improperly exposed and have unbalanced colours, that may cast unwanted shadows on your skills.
  3. It is easier to provide the couple with the double- or quadruple-disk case with some slots empty so they could place the slide show CD along with your DVD as a “bonus” disk, rather then to deal with the wrong colours, skewed picture and bad sound track altogether.

“If there is money to be spent it’s either on funerals, babies or weddings!”

Published at 5/31/2009 in General. 0 Comments

- says TV producer Joanne Woo.

Joanne produces daily breakfast television show in Ottawa, National Capital of Canada. The city with its suburbs totaling up to around one million inhabitants wakes up to the only local morning show named simply - A-Morning. /A\ (sic!) is the brand of the station, hence the show title.

Atv_wedding_413

On the photo: the weather and the best man Bill Welychka looks up as the A-Morning host Kurt Stoodley performs the ceremony.

 While the station struggles through the hurdles caused by the federal regulations and current status of economy, the staff decided to take on the wedding theme and run four hour show culminating in the live on-air wedding ceremony.

JOANNE WOO: “It’s something we’ve never done… I love the challenge of new things. So we thought what the heck, let’s take a chance.”

The show propped up by the local sponsors went well as a high class wedding with the white limousine, make up artists, decorators, clothing retailers and jewelers, all focused on promoting their businesses at the same time making good television. Response was strong and positive -from the married couple, their families, sponsors and viewers as well. The station in fact has received several requests for the copies of the show.

JOANNE WOO: “It’s a big morale boost to know that our little station can put together a big production with so few resources.” The show was put on shortly after the major cuts in the industry in a whole and about 50% staff lay off at the station.

Atv_wedding_547

On the photo: news anchor Sandra Blaikie blows bubbles on the newly married couple Stephan and Christina leaving the TV station.

Apparently the station is keen on capitalizing on success and eager to run the sequel, and possibly to make the wedding show a regular one.

Is it going to affect local wedding video production businesses? It will definitely raise the bar in production quality challenging local videographers to catch up. Is it going to compete with the businesses? Probably not. Few occasional weddings a year won’t bite out of a big pie. On a contrary, production team wants to see wedding videographers on the show, says Joanne.

That’s all. Let me know what you think in the Comments box. I would like to hear from the videographers, marrying couples and local TV stations, what do you think of a live on-air wedding on your local morning TV show?

More photos of the live on-air wedding of Stephan and Christina.

Being Prepared to Film at Mixed Ceremonies

Published at 8/30/2008 in Mixed Ceremonies. 4 Comments

If you are asked to capture the wedding ceremony, there is big chance you belong to the same culture as a groom or a bride, or both. Yet when the groom and the bride have different cultural/religious backgrounds, you may find yourself in unknown land.

The situation basically falls into one out of three possibilities:

  1. Two separate ceremonies happening on the same day or some time apart.
  2. One hybrid ceremony with equal participation of clergy from both sides.
  3. Main ceremony with some deviations, often the ceremony follows bride’s background with some changes to please groom’s family.

In the first case you have a double job, and need to learn details of both ceremonies. Second and third cases are more tricky, and may catch even an experienced wedding videographer off guard. So be prepared.

Discuss the details of the ceremony with the couple while paying attention to all the changes made to the traditional way of liturgy. While shooting, think of balanced capturing, i.e. try to cover details of both traditions equally. If the ceremony is a traditional one with minor changes in order to pay respect to the”less significant party”, make sure you cover those little details for they will add to uniqueness of the ceremony.

Once I happened to cover mixed wedding of Lebanese Melkite Catholics and Polish Roman Catholics. The bride was a Melkite, and so the ceremony was conducted in the Melkite Church with the liturgy in Arabic and English languages with some lines in Polish. But at the very end of ceremony when the time has come to say Lord’s Prayer, groom’s family stood up and read the Prayer in Polish while the rest of congregation was only listening. This was the moment not to be missed, and probably of the same importance as the exchange of vows, since it created that very unique merger of two traditions blending together under the same roof.

Extending the Ranges of Availability

Published at 7/9/2008 in SIY Wedding Video Guide. 0 Comments

The book “Shoot-It-Yourself Wedding Video Guide” has become a popular item among readers. I would like to thank everyone who ordered a print copy or an ebook from Lulu.com, great publishing and print-on-demand service.

To serve bigger community of video enthusiasts and professionals trying the water of a wedding video business I have made my book available as a print copy through Amazon.com.

It has also become available as an ebook for PDA’s and PC’s downloadable from Mobipocket.com and from a long list of online ebook stores.

Again many thanks to all my readers! I hope you are enjoying the reading and making good use of the guide.

Richard Emmanuel speaks with Ottawa Citizen

Published at 7/3/2008 in General. 0 Comments

Richard Emmanuel, photo by Malcolm TaylorThere may be a chance to work shoulder to shoulder with great and successful personality. Unfortunately I have not yet had that chance with Richard Emmanuel, the photographer based in Toronto. But I have read an article on wedding photography in Ottawa Citizen on June 25, 2008. Big portion of that article was based on an interview with Richard.

Although he is making point about approach to wedding photography, everything he said may be equally applied to wedding videos. Just few quotes:

“A lot of people want to live like rock stars. [A wedding day] is their chance to do it for a day. My brides are all princesses for a day. I help make their dream come true.”

He likes the idea that the pictures may stay in the family for generations. “I capture the milestone moments.”

That’s the key, helping the marrying couple to make it a day of a celebrity life and capture it for generations. Apparently it ensures Richard Emmanuel’s solid booking for 18 months to two years ahead and a healthy compensation for a hard work.

Photo by Malcolm Taylor, published in Ottawa Citizen.

Shooting at Jehova’s Witnesses Ceremony

Published at 6/26/2008 in Jehova's Witnesses. 3 Comments

Shooting Jehova’s Witnesses wedding is not much different from any other western type wedding. Entire day is very similar to other weddings and I suggest you to check through existing posts to get details on other parts of the day including the Ceremony.

As for the Ceremony, it is happening in the Kingdom Hall (or Assembly Hall) with the elder presiding at the podium in the very front of the Hall. The Ceremony as a ritual is visually very simple. So is the interior of the Hall. Therefore I’d suggest to spend more time on guests and family arrival. Don’t forget shots of the parents and grandparents on both sides.

Discuss with the marrying couple if they want you to record entire Ceremony, or just bits of it to be edited later.

For the former you’d be filming the elder giving a speech, or sermon with possible reaction shots of the bride and the groom. Position your self on one side between the elder and the couple where you can pan your camera left and right.

For the latter, get shots of the couple sitting in front of the elder and listening to him. They may be looking into the Bible and reading paragraphs mentioned by the elder. Vary shots of the elder with reaction shots form the guests. Use wide, medium and close up shots to make the edited copy look better. Use the side aisle to walk to the back of the room to get wide shots.

Exchange of vows and exchange of the rings, and the book signing all are very similar to the Catholic Christian Ceremony.

FAQ Video in Videomaker, May 2008

Published at 5/14/2008 in General. 0 Comments

Videomaker 2008

I was delighted to see Mark Montgomery using my Videomaker forum entry for the “Your questions answered” page.

Not to mention that Videomaker has been one of my favourite readings since my first days in television and video production (there is actually a copy in my news truck), I am a frequent visitor to VM web site. It is a good place to visit, to chat, to help others and to learn new stuff for everyone, whether you are an aspiring enthusiast or a seasoned pro.

Have not you subscribed yet?

 

 

High-end Wedding Spendings Steady: Reuters

Published at 4/12/2008 in General. 0 Comments

Latest decline in traditional marriage numbers and US economy slow down made some wedding vendors worried. Too early, says Claudia Parsons, Reuters. At least New York videographers should get their cameras ready for the season.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - “Investment bank bailouts, home foreclosures and job losses have spread economic gloom through America but in New York, at least, there’s one industry still weathering the storm — high-end weddings. Cake makers, florists, wedding planners and dress-makers at a wedding show this month said brides were still determined to enjoy their big day with almost no expense spared.”

Read full report.

Shoot-It-Yourself Wedding Video Book is Now Available

Published at 10/27/2007 in SIY Wedding Video Guide and Entire Wedding Day. 0 Comments

Shoot-It-Yourself Wedding Video Guide book cover

Whether you are a video enthusiast planning to shoot friend’s or family wedding, or seasoned video professional going for success in the wedding business, this book Shoot-It-Yourself Wedding Video Guide is written for you.

It will walk you through entire wedding day step-by-step, revealing secrets of successful wedding day video coverage.

The book is available via Lulu.com publishing and on-line store.

Preview Shoot-It-Yourself Wedding Video Guide.

Support independent publishing: buy this book on Lulu.