Italian wedding

Huwelijk on Vimeo

This is the first wedding of this year I did, a Italian one. I actually like doing Italian weddings eventhough they are not the easiest to do, people get very excited but they are always very friendly, they don't treat you like an employee like I have experienced at some very high end weddings.

You also have to be on your toes all day as things can get a bit chaotic, especially with their children who will bump into you and your tripods. I constantly had to check up on my unmanned tripod at the venue when it was recording speeches as it was a attraction magnet to some small kids, when viewing my footage afterwards I see several shakes in the camera caused by children touching the camera or bumping into the tripod legs. It's good I have a second manned camera with guest reactions that I can use to cover that up.

You also need to be prepared for anything to happen because you don't get warned when something will happen, even the DJ would only be informed at the moment they appeared in front of him and asked for the mike. This meant I just kept a zoom h1 constantly recording all evening in front of a soundspeaker because the DJ couldn't give me a live feed and I had 1 camera permanently on standby on a tripod and then my steadicam incase things got moving.

It's also weird but it's only at these kind of weddings people have an interest in the gear I use, particularly my steadicam gets the most attention with people coming up to me asking how it works :)
It was also a bit challenging in the morning as I had to shoot in small bedrooms with strong backlight, my rx10 was not able to deal with such high contrasts but the white glow I got at the back looked like a gateway to heaven, something like that light at the end of a tunnel that you see, just before you die, so I can also say it was an intended effect. :)

This time I used my sony rx10 and my gh4 with a 25mm f1.4 (on a monopod) for bride and groomsprep, in the church it was one sony cx730 pointed at the lectern and a sony ax100 with a wide safteshot (both on the same tripod) and I used a second sony CX730 handheld.
For the photoshoot I used a the Sony rx10 again.

From the reception it was a gh3 permanently on a steadicam and the gh4 on a monopod or tripod.
I only shot 4k with my ax100, being able to reframe in post during a ceremony is a lifesaver and gets me much more usable shots, didn't shoot 4K with my gh4 as I didn't see the need for that and it matches my gh3 better in 1080p. The vimeo film is at 720p, I can change it to 1080p so it's more detailed but heard from clients they have issues streaming a 1080p file and it buffers too much, so I have to trade some IQ for better playback. I"m still not that satisfied with the last musicpiece I used as I had to extend it and it sounds a bit too repetitive to me, possible will change that a bit the next few days.

The couple has placed this video on their facebookpage and it generated almost 900 views in one day, looks like I will be doing a few more Italian weddings the next years :)

[Noa Put]

Made some minor changes but maybe interesting to some, I exchanged the photoshoot footage I took with my sony rx10 with some shots I made with my gopro and a feiyu g4 3 axis gimbal which can be seen at 03:15 right after the church sequence.

Because I pick up the pace in editing at the end of the ceremony and use short clips only those steadicam moves made more sense. At the photoshoot there was very little time to get all creative so I just let the photographer do her thing and worked around her. Next wedding I"ll try to reserve some time to use that ministeadicam more with the couple without the photog.

This is the first video ever where I have had 1200 views the first 24 hours (it was 900 when I first posted this but it kept skyrocketing) and that only through their facebook page. :) At this moment it has settled down at almost 1500 views. Facebook is by far the most powerful free way of getting your work out there and the only thing it requires me to do is give the couple a link.

[Adrian Tan]

Random comments:

The trademark Noa slow-motion-in-reverse shot was pretty "wow!" like always.

0:28 -- like this shot of the bride with the misty white foreground elements.

0:41: interesting coordination of tinkling sound in soundtrack with this transition. But is the transition too big? Feels like it's more the sort of transition to use to join two sequences together, instead of occurring among a series of detail shots.

Something interesting going on in the shot at 1:47. Looks tilt-shifted!

During the ceremony, it seemed like you had a magical ability to keep cameras out of shot, especially with the young boy speaking. No idea how you managed that one.

I do like your deep depth of field, since I overuse shallow. During the kiss at the ceremony, for instance, I think the bride is going to be looking at the people in the background -- her father clapping, people taking shots with cellphones, etc.

How did you get that cellphone selfie during ceremony? Did you actually ask him to email you a copy at the time? If so, that's both quick-thinking and very innovative; never seen it done before.

With the Italian music, it suits the mood, and you do a great job of capturing the emotion for the reception and remainder of day, but is the music too stereotypically Italian? Or does the couple like that sort of music?

GoPro and gimbal shots were awesome.

Reception -- I like the feeling that you're amongst crowds of happy and excited people, and it feels like a lot of things are going on.

3:34 -- empty reception room shots felt a little out of order to be honest, because presumably we've already seen people having fun at the reception.

Nice moment to finish on.

[Noa Put]

Thx for your reply Adrian, much appreciated

"The trademark Noa slow-motion-in-reverse shot was pretty "wow!" like always."

I wasn't planning on doing much reverse shots but while circling the couple they shot those confetti like things in the air, when I reversed that particular shot it looked a bit magical with all those, actual little paper hearts, would rise up from the floor as that was something no-one would expect.


"0:28 -- like this shot of the bride with the misty white foreground elements."

That was those threaded curtains that where hanging in front of the windows, I had to squeeze myself between the window and curtain and then shoot wide open to get that misty effect. The curtain was actually touching the cameralens.

"0:41: interesting coordination of tinkling sound in soundtrack with this transition. But is the transition too big? Feels like it's more the sort of transition to use to join two sequences together, instead of occurring among a series of detail shots."

That tinkling sound just happened to be at that point where the sun appeared behind the wedding-dress in the edit, a different sequence probably would have been better to transition to but I found it a bit difficult to choose which one and I wanted to show the jewelry at that point but it has given me ideas to try to find such a separate tinkling sound to add in a edit where I want to make a transition to another sequence, it has a magic sound to it where you would expect something special to see. :)

"Something interesting going on in the shot at 1:47. Looks tilt-shifted!"

Actually that was a simple blur I applied to hide some of the interior stuff as I didn't want to reveal too much from inside their parents house, I do find that blur a bit too distracting though but decided to just leave it in.

"During the ceremony, it seemed like you had a magical ability to keep cameras out of shot, especially with the young boy speaking. No idea how you managed that one."

Ha, you did notice (or didn't notice) that :) I actually was leaning against that pillar on the left side of that lectern, I was standing almost right beside him and in full view of my other 2 camera's that where on a tripod.

What I did to hide myself was to duplicate the layer from a camera, put it on top of the first layer but scrolled a bit back or further (before the boy was speaking) to find a moment that had exactly the same frame but me not leaning against the pillar and then in Edius layouter I did crop out the pillar only and applied a smooth edge transition so you didn't see any straight lines from the crop. So I just replaced the pillar, where I was leaning against, on both camera's with footage recorded at another time which allowed me to hide myself. It actually is very fast to do, if your camera doesn't move, and takes maybe 2 minutes to achieve.

"I do like your deep depth of field, since I overuse shallow. During the kiss at the ceremony, for instance, I think the bride is going to be looking at the people in the background -- her father clapping, people taking shots with cellphones, etc."

In church it was one ax100 and 2 cx730, the only shallower dof I had was when shooting the close up of the singer because it was fully zoomed in and shot handheld, eventhough I do prefer the look of my dslr's I decided not to bother anymore and take unnecessary risks, because I operated 3 camera's at the ceremony I just want ease of use and reliability and that's what these camera's provide me. Something I happily will trade for a dslr kind of look.

"How did you get that cellphone selfie during ceremony? Did you actually ask him to email you a copy at the time? If so, that's both quick-thinking and very innovative; never seen it done before."

I saw that picture on the brides facebook and just asked if I could use it :)

"With the Italian music, it suits the mood, and you do a great job of capturing the emotion for the reception and remainder of day, but is the music too stereotypically Italian? Or does the couple like that sort of music?"

Yes, it sounds too stereotypical but I had spend quite some time on envato trying to find a upbeat Italian sound but they all sounded alike! So I decided just to stick with this one, my trailer starts of very slow with lots of slowmotion and music to match and I wanted to have something just the opposite.

"GoPro and gimbal shots were awesome. "

Yes, I"m very impressed at what that little box can do, the major limitation is that I can't lock the aperture but beside that and in the right circumstances it produces a image that easily matches my other camera's and even outresolves my 1080p camera's. Now that I have seen what it can do I plan to use it more in locations that are too difficult to use with my blackbird. I recently posted another video with all steadicam moves done with the gopro as well on that 3 axis steadicam (http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/show-you...uillemins.html) and I think the footage, even after stabilization, just looks great.

"Reception -- I like the feeling that you're amongst crowds of happy and excited people, and it feels like a lot of things are going on."

Italian weddings are never boring though here the crowd was not as exited as I have experienced at some other Italian weddings where they where dancing on teh tables even before the DJ had arrived :)

"3:34 -- empty reception room shots felt a little out of order to be honest, because presumably we've already seen people having fun at the reception."

Yes, you are right, I probably should have moved it more to the front before the reception shots.

"Nice moment to finish on."

They where looking at a powerpoint presentation and I always place a camera in front of them to capture their reaction, later on I add the power point in the edit so they can see their reaction together with the powerpoint presentation .

[James Manford]

Refreshing to see a sample trailer/highlights with minimal use of 'shallow depth of field' - it's good to have variation. All I ever see now in online samples are shallow depth of field shots continuously.

Everything looked pretty much on point as usual. Good job.

[Noa Put]

I at least get noticed now as the guy without the shallow dof films :) I do try to use shallow dof whenever I can with my 25mm f1.4 lens which get's used during brideprep and for all other eyecandy shots and I have a 85mm f1.8 that has a nice bokeh which I use at the reception for talking heads. But for any other "you only get one try to get it right" shots I prefer camera's with a much deeper dof.

[Clive McLaughlin]

Getting the guy to send you that selfie was a great move!

[Noa Put]

It actually had not crossed my mind to do that until I ended up on the brides facebook and saw the picture posted there, I just copied the photo from there and asked the bride for permission to use it :)