If so what are your thoughts about the 'Shoot It Yourself' approach to wedding DVD?
I seems that at least one of the investors thinks it has potential.

Just watched it on BBC iplayer.

The company is Shoot It Yourself:
Wedding Videos / Wedding Videographer / Wedding DVDs / Wedding Videos London / Wedding Videos Essex / Shoot It Yourself/ Film Your Own Wedding (http://www.shoot-it-yourself.co.uk/index.php)

I recall seeing this company when they charged considerably less than the starter of £749 and thinking what a bad idea it was then. Now they are charging much more they are putting themselves under considerably more pressure to produce quality from garbage footage because of increased client expectations.

They seem to be hoping that filming will always take place in the most benign and forgiving of circumstances and that clients will be happy to receive just a voxpop succession of very short scenes of guests goofing around. Woe on them the moment anything such as backlit subjects presents itself, and we can only imagine how bad the audio is always going to be.

Not to mention that for that sort of money clients would be able to find at least some experienced videographers prepared to shoot "proper" footage.

The Dragon who invested said that she has lots of ideas. Perhaps she has identified areas outside of the wedding market. Lets hope so for her sake!

Pete

But they are very successful, and there is obviously a market for this kind of service.

I watched the Anna & Ade sample on their site.

Just as you might suspect its crammed with incorrectly exposed, missed focus, and poorly composed shots. Just take a look at the ceremony coverage such as it is. Most of the time the right half of the screen is blocked by the guests standing in front of the camera operator; and it is of course shot from the back so forget about capturing the couples expressions.

I think they are setting themselves up for a bad fall. Its not a huge fee but its not pocket money either. People are not going to readily write it off. And claiming that the equipment is broadcast quality strongly implies that the clients will receive clear crisp footage. If they want to resort to blaming the clients for not following their tutorials or not trying hard enough ..... well good luck to them with that!

I'd put it in the same league as throwaway stills cameras left on the guests tables for the reception. But hugely more expensive. Or those aweful evening stills shoots with guests wearing funny hats and tashes. Appealing only up to a point.

As for their success so far. They claimed to have completed 80 cases but that did not tally with their claim of 10-15 bookings per month. Also they used to charge more like £300 and some assignments included a proper videographer so those counterbalance the gross figures.

The dragon must have something up her sleeve as I can't believe she regards it as a goer in its current form.

Pete

I have read on other forums about this madness, and personally I think they won't last long. Quality is really poor, for this money...Plus, what kind of image they showing to all future brides and grooms about wedding videos overall....or might be this will be a good comparison between real professional video and them.
I would give them a name: "How not to shoot it your self" ;)
Anyway good luck to them!

Don't knock it. They are offering a type of wedding video that their customers want. It's that faux amateur wobbly cam reality TV look with garish captions. The two ladies apparently worked at MTV & BBC3 (the Beeb's yoof oriented channel) so it's hardly surprising what sort of video they are producing. The actual process of filming is also an entertainment for the wedding guests just like having disposable cameras on every table.

Different couples want different things from their wedding video. Shoot It Yourself are offering another option besides short form cinematic or traditional documentary style.

One very good thing is that their prices are realistic. Many wedding film makers woefully underprice their offerings so if SIY set a benchmark of £750-1000 for their edit-only product then it can only be good for all of us. Incidentally their prices include many extras e.g. £25 for an extra DVD, £20 for a personalised DVD cover & even £175 to jump the queue & have your video ready within a week.

That was my thought... from across the pond.

Very much in the "reality show"/MTV edit style, which no doubt is entertaining for the moment - probably like zooming hearts and stars transitions and perhaps shallow depth of (out of) focus shots (running, ducking and covering!). I even caught someone discovering the IR/nightshot function on the Sony cams! WHOO HOO, "Ghost Bride Hunters"...


Looked to me like they relied upon having a boatload of footage, so they must rely on the shooter to be "trigger happy". Condensing 6-7 hours of footage must definitely require a certain mindset (something akin to enjoying being poked in the eye with a fork over and over and over), but then again I can see where it in theory could be profitable...at least until one loses one's mind... those plucky lasses seemed to have already gone over the edge, and were enjoying it, so there you go... my sort of people actually, at least when I was younger and crazier!

On a small Island like the UK where logistics of delivery shouldn't be an issue, it's actually an interesting business model. if my mental calculations were correct, the break even on the equipment rentals was 2-3 rentals, so that's pretty good, and after that, it's just editing time... hmmm...

and after that, it's just editing time... hmmm...

How much editing time would be needed to produce something half decent out of that rubbishy footage is anyones guess. It just seems scary when one thinks about how many unhappy customers there could be.
And while they would only have themselves to blame for the footage, as we all know there is no end to how much editing can be done.

That's a definite downside - 6-7 hours of badly shot footage could leave one bald... but then again, this is the generation that sits and browses YouTube for hours, this would seem right up their alley...

True. Im not against this so strongly. I agree with previous comments.
If anything it will help to illustrate the value of hiring a pro over DIY

I thought it was quite a neat idea, especially if people are willing to pay the price. It also taps into the Youtube/MTV generation with wobbly cam and shakes for effect - at least the couple cannot blame the videographer for poor lighting or missing scenes. I do think they are hire company 1st rather than wedding video producers. You could go about the same business model for just about anything....could be DJ's and photographers next. Imagine hiring out DSLR's for selected wedding guests to take photos which are then sent back to be included in an Italian style photo album. Or the DJ hires out their rig and the guests get behind the 'decks' to play whatever songs they care to listen/dance to.


Just a thought........

I'm guessing Dragon's Den is the equivalent of the US show "Shark Tank"... and apparently the investors (or at least one) felt good enough about the business to invest for expansion.

I'm sure the resulting footage is "interesting" - I've seen some guys whip out the "Flips" and shoot a wedding - I guess it's better than "nothing", but it's not the most watchable footage. As a practical matter, give a few monkeys a primer on camera operation, and you won't get Still Motion, but you might get as good as some ex-wrestler/videographer from the UK who was the topic of another thread here (prolly better, really, as you'd actually GET the footage)!

I've also heard of people with stage/industry connections who go "DIY" - there are probably some advantages to being in front of a camera op who isnt' a stranger, but is someone you've known forever, and you can "let your hair down"...

Increasingly, with the improvements in cameras (I'm presuming part of their financing/backing was to upgrade the aging A1U's and get all MC50's), it doesn't take a LOT of talent to get usable footage - knowing the CX550 (consumer MC50) and what it can achieve, I could see the quality of the productions rising substantially... if you can get the basics of framing down, the camera can pull off quite a bit of the rest, complete with optimization via facial recognition, and very well refined auto performance. And when one considers how "HD" a smart phone or P&S is now, it gets a bit scary...

Not everyone wants a "professional", refined production - and a breezy, casual shoot with MTV editing style may be more popular with the masses than sliders, glidecams, shallow DoF, cranes and all that fancy stuff we spend so much time on... something to ponder anyway!

They certainly have found a market niche, how large that will become we can only wait and see. They are reporting that they took 28 bookings at a wedding exhibition at the weekend. The backing of the 'Dragon' has certainly upped their game.

Already here in UK there are clones of the idea, one on a website only registered the day after the programmed aired is offering a much cheaper option using Flips, and many established videographers have started offering guests cams as an extra, or an alternative option.

Those who've been in the business a long time will have seen trends come and go. Only time will tell if this will be a stayer, but with big financial backing, a media personality determined to capitalise her investment, and a generation with a disregard for the 'grammar' of film making values in preference to exciting content, I don't think that they can be lightly dismissed.

Hi George

On the button actually!! Yes, they is a niche market there and for a bride wanting a "fun" video it actually does deliver the goods. Then again hopefully the camera operator won't point the camera into any bright light so even on auto it horribily under-exposes the rest of the image. With full auto camcorders you can probably get fair enough footage 90% of the time ..Ok the ceremony audio isn't going to be great, nor that from the speeches but it will be good enough for a LOT of brides.

We do tend to look at things way too technically as wedding videographers and spend a huge amount of time getting things the best we can. Most brides don't even see this and the fact that the bridal vows reverberated around the Church from the poor PA system won't even worry them!!!

I don't think it will replace us professionals but it will certainly have a market with some brides...the price is still a little hefty ???? From 745.00 ???? That's around $1000 and a lot of semi-pros could do a basic wedding for much the same price. I would have expected the price (which consists of the hire of gear and then editing) to be a little cheaper??? If you edited the footage in say, 10 hours you are turning a pretty fair profit of around 75 quid an hour without actually having to attend the wedding!!!

BTW : Is the JVC camera behaving itself now?? Still shooting back in interlaced like me????

Chris

Wouldn't most ask friends and family for their opinions before doing this. Most wouldn't chance it and say no, in case it does go belly up.

Anyway the brides mother would probably drop the hammer if she thought her baby wasn't going to appear in the best light.

In time, enough really terrible and cheap looking product around will kill it.

Cheers.

Hi Chris.

I don't think it will be much of a threat to professionally produced DVD, rather it'll carve out a market from people who might otherwise not consider having one. The sort of people who'd go for it I don't think would be looking for the traditional type of production, I don't think it's an either or.

I agree that their pricing seems ambitious, but if you look at their pricing menu you'll see it gets a lot costlier than the promoted £745 (though that is a £100 drop from the price pitched in the Dragons' Den). There is one thing that it might do though which is put the cost of the c£1000 producers in perspective in the minds of couples who think that that is expensive for a full production service.

On the negative side though I am a bit concerned whether the friends that are delegated (or volunteer) to shoot on the day will bother okaying things at the church or will just pitch up and start shooting without even the courtesy of speaking with the vicar. You'll no doubt know from previous post just how difficult some of our clergy can be here in UK, I wonder how many more are going to be antagonised by the 'director for a day' people who don't have to worry about going back there again, and will be feeling the responsibility of getting the shots at all costs sitting on their shoulders.

From what I have seen on a variety of forums here in the UK Shoot It Yourself certainly seem to have upset a lot of so-called video professionals. Their attackers mostly just come across as bitter & jealous of success sounding like orchestral players complaining that talentless pop musicians are making pots of money that should rightfully be theirs.

Shoot It Yourself are getting business because they are offering customers what they want & investing a great deal of effort in marketing via Facebook & Twitter plus spending a lot of money on advertising . (£1500 ($2300) per month apparently). Good luck to them. They aren't taking bread out of the mouths of video professionals but are catering to a market for reality TV style video with lots of dialogue to camera. This style doesn't appeal to everyone but neither does more traditional documentary style or arty cinematographic style. Different people have different tastes. While most weddings have a professional photographer the overwhelming majority of weddings don't have video of any kind. It's an enormous untapped market & it's mean & petty to begrudge Shoot It Yourself their tiny portion of that market.

They certainly have found a market niche, how large that will become we can only wait and see. They are reporting that they took 28 bookings at a wedding exhibition at the weekend. The backing of the 'Dragon' has certainly upped their game.


Hi George,

Matters of scale in both the market and the product process. I look at this in purely terms of input v. output.

Problem they now have is to ratchet up the revenue side of the equation in order to satisfy the Dragon (shoulder pad lady) but in order to maintain a level of post production quality their cost side will increase to meet the demand of the levels of (projected and actual) bookings.

Something gives; either the quality to meet demand, or the number of bookings has to reduce in order to satisfy the cost side of the equation. As a result, the expectation of year-on-year profit suffers - shoulder-pad lady will not be happy.

Although you could increase the number of editors and reduce their costs - how about auto edit to match the auto sound, auto focus and auto exposure? Perhaps they could get the local media college involved and have them call it work experience? Better still, they could sub-contract the work to some far-out sweat-shop economy like fashion retailing.

If the quality goes downhill then they are further maginalised (another name for niche market - a marginal approach); if the bookings reduce in order to match the throughput, then shoulder-pad lady will dump the stock (after she has got her money back of course).

Conclusion: Unsustainable. An effort to obtain the greatest level of revenue and profit. No need to worry about a five-year plan here, as this is a plan to make money fast and to move on. Well isn't this how the Dragon's see it?

And you guys want to hand out camcorders in order (you think) to offer a comparitive service? Why not just ask people to use their iPhones and extract the footage? Here's an idea: get them to dock their iPhones during the wedding breakfast in order to harvest the footage? Now you can have that for free...

Stick to what you know and what you do well.

If not, then make a £60K investment (preferably using someone else's money) in order to change your own business model... I wish you well in your new ventures.

:)

Hi Claire

I for one, certainly wouldn't even contemplate undertaking such a venture. I was purely saying, as George was, that they have found a niche market ...whether it's sustainable or profitable is another story!!

Even the great Philip Howells who shoots pretty much high end stuff in the UK offers to loan a camcorder to the bride and groom during their honeymoon and produces a DVD for them!!

I personally would have nightmares wondering if the footage will indeed be editable at all...sure the demo video looks good BUT that might have been the best footage they had out of 30 shoots..all the rest might have been absolutely terrible!! I shoot alone and when I edit there are no surprises plus I "shoot to edit" so the post production process is fairly simple!! Give a would-be cameraman a camcorder and despite "training" they just might go around waving it at all and sundry and produce 3 hours of rubbish...that's the chance these people take.

I'm sure that George certainly has no intention of buying up a job lot of cheap cameras and starting his own version of these people's business... and that probably goes for all the other replies here too!!

Chris

Hi Chris,

I was quoting George concerning the mention of 28 bookings and the Dragon - I was not aiming the body of my reply at George.

George knows my position, don't you George? :)

But agree your points Chris - sorry for the confusion.

:)

Apparently they had a brilliant idea... over 100 weddings in the past six months, as I counted.
Shoot It Yourself's videos on Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/shootityourself/videos/page:1/sort:newest)
I guess one year from now we will see much more videos like this over the internet.

The big question in my mind is how many vicars will get totally pi**ed off with amateur video people that they eventually ban 'anyone' with a video camera. Could be good for us, could be bad. Hard to predict really.

And then how about:-

Who is paying the MCPS fee?

Who is paying the PPL licenses?

Are they getting away with calling it friends and family, meaning the church fees will be lower (i.e. no video fees) whereas if a pro videographer is recording it most organists seem to want double the fee for their terrible playing!

Who is paying the MCPS fee?

Who is paying the PPL licenses?Ultimately the customer of course as with all of us. SIY only provide one DVD in the £749 package so a fiver for the licence isn't going to break the bank. However I doubt that they have legitimately licensed any of the copyright music on their website Wedding Videos / Wedding Videographer / Wedding DVDs / Wedding Videos London / Wedding Videos Essex (http://www.shoot-it-yourself.co.uk/siyexamples.php) so I wouldn't be surprised if a disgruntled professional wedding videographer hasn't already grassed them up to the MCPS/PRS. If they want to take any wedding videographers to court over infringing copyright SIY would make a perfect high visibility example.

If you read their FAQ's they say they take care of all the licences. They are a legit outfit.

As for the comment about vicars getting pissed at people running about with cameras im confused. Are family and friends not already filming wedding days with cameras??? At every wedding we do, someone has a camera or a video camera and is filming. A friend filmed our wedding, I was a friend who filmed our friends wedding. I see it all the times on the forums that people are just going to have a mate film it. Just because SIY supply the cameras its not going to make things any different.

Almost every vicar we meet has a horror story about a professional videographer who he had to have words with... they never have a horror story about a family friend who had to be told.

Guests with cameras is nothing new.

If you read their FAQ's they say they take care of all the licences. They are a legit outfitThey are legit but like many of us (including Mintyslippers) the videos on their website are infringing copyright. The MCPS/PRS licences only cover physical products (DVD, Blu-ray etc) they do not cover broadcasting to the whole world over the Internet.

Seems like a pretty good idea to me, and they are "first" in the new category. Increased competition is good, no?

Anyway, I watched the demo vid and had to laugh at "you only get married once" - now that indicates the target market along with the "MTV credentials".

They are wise with their advertising...For example there was no need for investment form a dragon. They were already set up and making money but dragons den is a massive platform for getting your company out there. I would say their business has 10 times the intrest now. I admire their business way of thinking....that said for couples getting married it makes no sense. Why pay the almost the same amount to have armatures shooting your day in a half arsed way with low end equipment and I can't even bare to think what the audio would come out like!

Its a novel idea and people will think it's cute to begin with.....But when brides compare their armature footage with a friends professional footage at the same cost...they will regret the investment

Yes, but they won't admit it.

Low end equipment would be Flips or Zi8's or something like that - they were renting A1U's (old, but still a decent small "pro" cam), and it looked like they were shifting up to the MC50, which is a pretty capable camera, with good stabilization, pretty decent sound (not sure about the shotgun on that kit, but the on cam mics aren't too bad).

Sure the "gear" isn't super expensive, but it's more than adequate for acquiring good HD clips, now if you can teach the monkeys, er clients proper camera techniques and give 'em a shot list...

So the finished product doesn't have any artsy fartsy DoF/slider/steadicam/crane/arial footage... will it give them something fun (and hopefully watchable) to remember the day, you bet it will, and for most people that's ALL that matters.

I watched (somewhat in horror) some footage of a few friends who literally whipped out the Flips and video'd a wedding for their friends... Bad cam technique, iffy sound, pretty bad, but I'll venture the couple was happy to get it.

When everybody and their dog (or perhaps CHICKEN) has a HD video capable device in their pocket, with them everywhere they go, the professional REALLY has to up the ante in production value/deliverables, the "gear" is not so much the issue...

Hi Ana,

Another way to think about it... and no doubt many couples are thinking this way. Is not that a pro can do it for less. But 'WHY' is a pro doing it for less.

Shoot it yourself have a very VERY strong brand. A brand instils a feeling of trust. What is now happening is brides are seeing what it costs to do themselves and then what it costs to have someone do it for you and there not thinking SIY is a bad idea. There wondering why is the pro cheaper.

SIY are now setting the baseline price for a wedding video.

I firmly believe this is a good thing for our industry and may well encourage many to charge what they are worth rather than fighting to offer the lowest price around.