It’s not often I’m impressed by a wedding toast. Don’t get me wrong, I hear plenty of great wedding toasts. It’s just rare that one really stands out for me, especially to the point that days later I’m still telling people about it.

At Chris and Natalie’s wedding, the best man Jessie brought the house down with his wedding toast. Their wedding was already peaking the ‘epic’ meter, and Jessie’s toast complete destroyed the meter and left every single guest cheering and chanting his name. Let’s just say Jessie’s amp DOES go to “11″.

We generally don’t share any of our couples’ documentary edits content, but every now and then we make an exception. This is one of those times.

For all of my fellow cinematographers that are always asking us about our documentary edits, here is your chance to see what we do. I know a major concern that many of you have is how to get great creative content without it coming at the expense of solid documentary coverage. One of the things that really sets our studio apart is our ability to create amazing cinematic films while still producing outstanding documentary segments. This edit is a perfect example, as it is 100% representative of how we produce all of our documentary edits (minus the text at the beginning and end).

The key for us is to always start with a solid plan for the documentary wedding coverage, and then develop the plan for the creative wedding coverage. The cinematic plan always has to fit inside the documentary plan. The other key is that during the editing process, when we invest countless hours into the cinematic edits … we also invest countless hours into the documentary edits. Every cut and clip choice is made with a purpose, and the perfectionist attitude we carry during the cinematic edits is brought into the documentary edits. Hopefully this wedding toast segment will give you an idea on how this can be achieved.

And now, without further rambling … Jessie and the best wedding toast ever.

MUST SEE! | Best Toast Ever | Serendipity Studios on Vimeo

That was just fun! You should check with the couple if you can post on YouTube to have it viral. Good job camera angle and editing too.

Awesome, Travis! How many cameras do you set up at the reception to get these sort of angles? I find it difficult to position the cameras in the right angle at the time, especially when they keep moving around. For example, at our last wedding...the groom was singing a song to his bride in one corner, which required us to position our cameras for his song. But immediately after, he jumped into the middle of the reception for an impromptu dance performance with two of his friends. We didn't have time to reposition our cameras without missing the dance.

Another wedding, they had "games" where they would invite random guests up for impromptu dance battles, games, and on the spot performances. It was very hard for us to know where to position cameras, and of course trying to track people and grab focus as they kept entering and leaving the plane of focus was hard.

Taky | Already did that. d;-) MUST SEE! | Best Wedding Toast Ever | Serendipity Studios - YouTube (http://youtu.be/m6C-8xN1qoI)

Zhong | The number of cameras we use and how we use them varies on the coverage we need. For the toasts at this wedding we used 3 cameras. One was on a tripod with a 70-200 to cover the toaster. One was on a tripod with a 24-70 to cover the couple. And the third was on a monopod with a 17-55 to cover guest reactions. The wedding we are currently working on we used 4 cameras. So it just depends.

As for camera positioning, we always try to place the tripod cameras together so that we take up less visual space. We place them where we know we will be able to cover the toaster even if he/she moves around (which they usually do). We are also mic'ing the DJ's speakers as well as mic'ing each individual toast giver. Good audio is key. The audio in this toast is not as great as we usually would get because the guests were unusually noisy ... to the point that several of the toasters had to ask the guests to quiet down. If we hadn't place a mic on each individual toaster it would have been really difficult to hear anything.

Hope that helps. d;-)

FYI - feel free to share the YouTube link with your friends. I would love to see this awesome toast go viral.

Taky | Already did that. d;-) MUST SEE! | Best Wedding Toast Ever | Serendipity Studios - YouTube (http://youtu.be/m6C-8xN1qoI)

Zhong | The number of cameras we use and how we use them varies on the coverage we need. For the toasts at this wedding we used 3 cameras. One was on a tripod with a 70-200 to cover the toaster. One was on a tripod with a 24-70 to cover the couple. And the third was on a monopod with a 17-55 to cover guest reactions. The wedding we are currently working on we used 4 cameras. So it just depends.

As for camera positioning, we always try to place the tripod cameras together so that we take up less visual space. We place them where we know we will be able to cover the toaster even if he/she moves around (which they usually do). We are also mic'ing the DJ's speakers as well as mic'ing each individual toast giver. Good audio is key. The audio in this toast is not as great as we usually would get because the guests were unusually noisy ... to the point that several of the toasters had to ask the guests to quiet down. If we hadn't place a mic on each individual toaster it would have been really difficult to hear anything.

Hope that helps. d;-)


So are you grabbing audio from the mixing board or laving the person?

Both .. sort of ... I always place a lav mic on the toaster (and we have several available as there are usually multiple toasters). We also use a Zoom H4n with a Shure 58 mic to mic the DJ's speaker stack. I never patch into the sound board because you never know what you're going to get. I've even worked a major event where the sound board tech had 15 years experience at that venue (Taco Bell Arena) and he still screwed up our primary feed and our backup feed.

My theory is that the DJ and everyone in the room can hear what's coming out of the speaker stack, so it's going to be as good as possible. Therefore, we mic the speaker stack.

Certainly the best toast i've seen so far...good shooting too Travis! and thanks for the tip about doco and highlight shooting..what you've explained is what we are also trying to accomplish.

Thanks for sharing,

Kren
Vertical Video Works* Winnipeg Wedding Videography (http://www.verticalvideoworks.ca)

That was great! Thanks for sharing... I've posted it to an aggregator site, hopefully it'll pick up and give you some good exposure... cheers!

Kren | You bet. Always happy to help.

Rodrigo | Thanks, man, I appreciate it!