Mandi & Manjit's Wedding Trailer.
This is the Trailer from what I believe to be the largest scale wedding film produced in the UK( not including the Royal ones) please correct me if I'm wrong,

It took 5 crew, 2 cranes, 2 steacicams Glidetrack shooter and a host of other kit, Edited with Adobe CS5 Premiere and After efects using a myriad of plugins.

Mandi & Manjit's Wedding Film Trailer on Vimeo

With one word... awesome!

Wow Wow Wow !! one of the most IMPACTING trailer I've ever seen !!
Great edit an LOVE the (name of the song) music !!

Thanks for sharing !

With one word... awesome!

Thank you Dimitris, Im liking that one word!!

Wow Wow Wow !! one of the most IMPACTING trailer I've ever seen !!
Great edit an LOVE the (name of the song) music !!

Thanks for sharing !

Hi Franklin, so happy you wrote your reaction to the clip, gave me a lift as was having a 'bad hour' much appreciated

Pete

Woah thaz huge... loads of editing effort there.

Hi Sean, Yep around 20 hours of post production on this one, was a marathon as opposed to a sprint!!! thanks for your comment
Cheers
Pete

Really fantastic!!! How much did you, they, charge the couple for this?

Stelios

sorry, I'll be honest :)
great editing, poor shots

Really fantastic!!! How much did you charge the couple for this?

Stelios

Thanks Stelios, Feel like it would be somehow not right to say for some strange reason, but prices are clearly listed on my site index (http://www.engagecinematic.com) if your interested

Cheers

Pete

sorry, I'll be honest :)
great editing, poor shots

Couldnt disagree more, as my gran used to say, you can't make a silk purse out of a pigs ear!!

Thanks for the only negative comment tho, always appreciated.

Buba, I don't watch all the trailers and rarely comment on them but I did watch this one and frankly I thougth it was extremely well done. Shots and edit. So I'm curious as too your comment about 'poor shots'. Could you be a bit more specific about which shot you think fall into the poor shot catagory. I'm not looking to start a "thing" but just curiousity.

Although I'm not a fan of the "epic tralier/highlights" I really think this is very well done. congratulations on pulling off an excellent piece.

Hi David, Thanks very much, especially nice coming from a fellow film maker who doesn't usually like this genre, Thanks for taking the time to post.

All the Best

Pete

sorry, I'll be honest :)
great editing, poor shots

Actually, I think I know what he was getting at. When you look at this piece in a vacuum the edit outshines the shooting. When compared to the edit & music many of the shots felt ordinary. Technically many shots seemed to be blowing out in places although this could have been due to the color grade & I also noticed several shots where some fill light would have been a big help.

Specifically, in the opening shot we're losing bits of the fancy roof of the building & again at :14. I get that it's a very light colored (metal?) roof, but a grad filter might have taken care of that.

My main concerns begin at :58 with the shot of the car. It's a quite unremarkable shot using out of place techniques that just don't feel right here. The slow zoom out and 20% angle feel like the same old shot wedding videographers have been getting of the limo pulling in.

At 1:01 or so there's a series of shots outside with people praying or whatnot & their skin is completely blow out. No clue if this was done in shooting or in the grade but it just doesn't feel right, makes the overall shooting quality feel somewhat lesser than the standard set by the gear used, music selected & edit done.

The stedicam entering the church shot at 1:52 bobbles, again hinting at slightly subpar shooting (when compared to the overall piece).

Consider as a counterpoint the couple's silhouette with sun peeking through & the subsequent shot of the cake. Both are well composed & convey the same epic feel of the production around it. I guess the point is that if you're going to go all out, when something is off it sticks out more.

*The more I look at it, the more I'm convinced that a larger problem might be in the grade. The grade is harsh & makes it feel like the cameras weren't able to handle much dynamic range. What cameras were used?

Something that also threw me in places was the use of zoom which generally is a no-no when going for cinematic. Unless I'm seeing it wrong, you're mixing dollies with zooms at :25. All rules are meant to be broken from time to time & it's true that my personal bias is highly anti-zoom but they just took me out of it when I saw them despite the engaging music & well paced edit.

Again, the overall piece felt great, the music & edit was superb for the style you were after but flaws with the shooting & grade were made all the more apparent by the quality of everything else.

First and foremost, I loved the way this trailer built up to the end. Overall I thought you did a great job. Was it perfect? No, but for me there wasn't anything that really bothered me except for maybe the slow zooms (just not my thing). Nice work!

I noticed you mentioned you spent 20 hours in post on this, so I couldn't help but go see what you charge for a trailer. 200 pounds divided by 20 hours leaves you making 15/hr. I loved the trailer but you need to be charging more (in my opinion) for something like this.

Hi Ethan,

A lot of what you said is obviously personal preference and opinion, I agree with the grade comments in places, the car shot maybe not too creative, but not totally out of place, and the zooms were done in post to flow with the music, zoom is used in cinema and if i see it in a film, it doesnt say 'video' to me!

The steadicam shot isnt perfect, had i had an empty room to shoot would have been tho, try filming perfectly on a 20 hour shoot filming at 6 locations with over 800 guests organising 4 crew and dodging 4 photographers all in one day!

That said, thanks for putting your points to me concisley.

Best Regards

Pete

First and foremost, I loved the way this trailer built up to the end. Overall I thought you did a great job. Was it perfect? No, but for me there wasn't anything that really bothered me except for maybe the slow zooms (just not my thing). Nice work!

I noticed you mentioned you spent 20 hours in post on this, so I couldn't help but go see what you charge for a trailer. 200 pounds divided by 20 hours leaves you making 15/hr. I loved the trailer but you need to be charging more (in my opinion) for something like this.

Hi Travis,

Thanks for taking the time to comment, I will achieve perfection one day!!!;0)
I'd like to pick up on your point about the charge for the trailer, as it was a good one!!
You are absolutely right, the charge for this has no correlation to the amount of work involved, but there is a reason for this.... I haven't spent a penny on advertising since September 2008 and the sole reason for this is the trailers, as soon as they are online, I can guarntee enquiries will come flooding in. For example 2 days after this trailer was released I had an enquiry for another Sikh wedding worth £7500 which I am due to complete on next week.

So I see the work I put into them as a form of paying for advertising, and it's worked a treat so far.

All the Best, btw Love your work

Pete

Two jibs? You're an animal, Pete. Kudos for the level of ambition. I'm glad to see you got to shoot Mandi's event, I felt bad we coudn't make it work for her, very sweet couple. I also agree with others here that you need to charge more for your services. Clients should value your time and effort, but they can't until you value it first. Don't be afraid to be firm. I'm planning a trip to the UK next year, I look forward to meeting up. Congrats also on launching Wedfilm Academy. Hope it does well for you.

Cheers,
-K

no words to say anythink. Its too good man. I love ur shooting and editing

Thanks For sharing with us. If u get chance to learn from u i naver missed it

Two jibs? You're an animal, Pete. Kudos for the level of ambition. I'm glad to see you got to shoot Mandi's event, I felt bad we coudn't make it work for her, very sweet couple. I also agree with others here that you need to charge more for your services. Clients should value your time and effort, but they can't until you value it first. Don't be afraid to be firm. I'm planning a trip to the UK next year, I look forward to meeting up. Congrats also on launching Wedfilm Academy. Hope it does well for you.

Cheers,
-K

Hi Kevin,

Yeah it was quite a challenge, the biggest of my career so far, managed to pull it off, and they are chuffed with the results, as you said lovely couple, Mandi is so matter of fact she's so funny, her humour kept me going over the 18 hours of shooting!

Prices are allways a contencious issue, and I do try to keep them in direct correlation with the work rate, so I'm getting there slowly!

Do you have any dates for your UK visit, and do you still have plans we talked about before? If so, would be more than happy to help out with the project and promote it through WedFilm Academy.

Back to work, the mountain just got to kilimonjaro level now there is two businesses to run!!

All the Best

Pete

no words to say anythink. Its too good man. I love ur shooting and editing

Thanks For sharing with us. If u get chance to learn from u i naver missed it

Hi Sunni,

Thanks for the kind words, and Im pleased to say you have a chance to learn from me with my new company Wedfilm Academy, check out the site and if you like what you see you can sign up for it.

Best Regards

Pete

Excellent edit and consistent build makes an entertaining viewing.

Only thing I that took me out of the enjoyment of it was the grading, some shots looked really well graded and some seemed almost straight out of the camera. I didn't mind so much the different grades but more that, going from some real punchy images and then flat shots. but that's about it.

Hi Peter,

Appologies for spoiling your enjoyment, Im having a little bit of a hard time colour correcting from 5 camera sources, i'll get there in the end!!

Hi Guy and Videomakers collegue,Pete James is one of the best Wedding videomaker I saw here, you can see that every work he made is always very good for shooting, music,if you like epic style,and editing too.
Now with Wed Academy web site, with Richard, he made another great Job for all,newbie and not.
I like the Pete and Richard work a lot.
Gianni from Italy.