Experiences..!!!! at DVinfo.net

Ian OBrien · November 29th, 2004, 07:26 PM

I have previously registered to a British WEbsit, being from that
part of the Country Myself, one of the most popular parts of the
website was Weddings, not only the type of equipment You use,
but the actual experience itself, IE the attitude of the wedding
guests, the attitude of the stills photograther, the service at
the hotel, was the stills photopgrapher given prefferential treatment to what You were doing?
Did someone try to rip You off? There must have been times when
something has gone hillariously wrong and would like us to know
about it PLEASE SPILL THE BEANS!!!

THANKS LOADS

Jason Balick · November 29th, 2004, 09:00 PM

What is the name of the website? Love to see something that digs that deep.

Grinner Hester · November 29th, 2004, 09:13 PM

1998

I was hired to run camera at the Dallas Convention Center one bright early morning. I was shooting Bob Dole so a little more dress code than usual was required. One the way in, I grabbed a V8 for some early morning nourishment and headed into the men's room to ensure my full focus would be on the shoot. The inside of the convention center's bathroom was covered, ceiling, wall and floor with one inch tile which cleverly camouflaged the step up to the urinals. These we're no average urinals. They were as tall as me and each were a proud 2 feet wide. Anyway, I tripped on the unseen step, stumbled toward one of the monstrous urinals, paid way too much attention to my tomato juice, slipped on my never-worn church shoes and into a man-eating pisser. I spent the next five minutes bathing in the convention center sink, freaked out about what diseases I had to have just gotten. The irony?
Sen. Dole was speaking at a Urology convention.

Ian OBrien · November 30th, 2004, 04:54 AM

Hi Jason, the website is http://www.dvdoctor.net/
click Message boards, then DV doctors very own forums, followed
by Wedding and events videography.............there is one titled
invisable photographers,
A lot is informative, but you get some BAD EXPERIENCES which
can be very funny, let me know what You think

Regards

Ian OBrien · November 30th, 2004, 09:12 AM

Grinner, that was exellent, I would love to view other members
experiences, I actually havn't any such Myself ( yet ) but on event
videography, it's great to read other peoples mishaps and one
I have noticed appears fairly frequently, is still photographers
getting in the way ( on the U.K site ) I even noticed on one
occassion, someone told a CLEAN joke and that was it, there were posts galore of Comedians telling their favouites.

Ken Schreiner · December 3rd, 2004, 11:01 AM

I shot my first wedding last weekend. The minister's PA mic (which I was tapped into but also had my own mic on him), died mid-service. I was shooting when someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was the church coordinator crawling on her stomach handing me a handheld wireless mic and asking me to run it up to the minister who was about to perform the vows. I ran it up and handed it to him. As the church lady crawled away, she disconnected the AC cable from the camera right in the middle of the vows. Fortunately, I had two other cameras rolling on it (on batteries) and got the vows. Lesson 1: run all the cameras on batteries and have lots of batteries. Lesson 2: if someone asks you to leave your camera, don't. You're working. Lesson 3: always use at least two cameras and have a great multi-camera or color correction software.

Ian OBrien · December 3rd, 2004, 12:48 PM

Hi Ken first misread Your post and thought the Minister had died
mid-service!

It was My daughters first Nativity play today at the Church which
is next door to the playgroup she attends, I had pernission a few
days earlier to film the event and so got there this morning in
plenty of time to set up the camera equipment, the Priest very
kindly gave Me a hand moving a few chairs at the side of the
Church to make room for the tripod! TRIPOD!! don't I mean
MAGNET!! what makes a tripod attract Everyone with a still
camera? it like some sort of homing device! One kids Mother
decided to kneel right next to one of the legs ocassionally giving
it a nudge every time she moved Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
apart from that, all went well!

Cosmin Rotaru · December 10th, 2004, 10:18 AM

The worse ever (for me):

I was in a church, shooting a wedding (of course). I was located just in front, close to the minister and the grooms.
At one point I realize that I only have 5 or so minutes on the tape and decided to RUN get another tape from the bag. I haven't even managed to reach full speed when I stepped on a small carpet and the small carpet decides to run the other way, leaving me in mid air... head in front.. turn 180 in air so I can keep the camcorder above water lever... slide down some stairs on my right shoulder... knock down a couple that was standing on my landing spot! The very next moment, when the silence settled down, my mouth (not me!) yelled (with church echo): "damn carpet"

Worse ever!

I now carry all tapes and accus on me.

Ian OBrien · December 10th, 2004, 10:59 AM

Nice one Cosmin!!
Hey! it could have been worse,......... it could have been me!!

Have you ever noticed, whenever something like that happens,
it has to be in front of an audience!

Cosmin Rotaru · December 10th, 2004, 11:12 AM

"it could have been worse,......... it could have been me!!"

Haha! Good one! :)

"whenever something like that happens, it has to be in front of an audience!"

Talk about that! Actually, it was the wedding of some of our friends. The rest of our friends were invited, so now we all have something to laugh about! Yea...

My wife was a bit late at the ceremony, so when she got there someone told here about what happend.
Her first question: "is the camcorder allright?!" :)

PS: Ian, I also thought the Minister had died mid-service! :)

Michael Gibbons · January 3rd, 2005, 04:33 PM

03/20/04
I shot this as a wedding gift to my sister in law. If it could have gone wrong it did.
We live about 1800 miles from the church, and, although, it is my wife's family's regular church, I could not get any one to go and take stills of the interior for me.
Three days before the ceremony my wife tells me that my budget has been slashed in half. So much for renting a GL1 to do the shoot with. I'm down to my 1 Chip Panna DV53. Incedently, while it is a FINE cam in many, many ways the 53 has no external mic jack. No problem, my brother in law has a DV cam with a mic jack! Now I have two cams, right! Wrong! His cam is one of those crazy Sony DVD camcorder things. My brief tour of the manuel leads me to believe that is an utterly useless gadjet made for high dollar soccer dads- nothing wrong with that they need cams too, but it was no good for my wedding shoot. I decide to use it for sound capture, though, and I spend 80$ on a pos wireless lav at Radio Shack. At this point, I know some of you are grinding your teeth, and muttering words like pathetic and amature, but have mercy, I had what amounted to no money, so I did what I could.
I finally get to the church the afternoon before the wedding.
So many windows, such good light! I could have cried with joy. I shot some tests, went home and watched them, figured how to set the camera for the next day. This, btw, is the only thing I did right.
The actual shoot was a mess. I suck. I bumped my own tripod at least twenty times- once during the vows !arrrrrgh!, and for some reason, the still photographer could not get in front of me enough.
I lost battery power halfway through the reception. It was almost a relief.
The real horror came in post.
The dvd from the mini dvd camcorder can not be read by my mac. I don't know why. And after I listened to the audio I captured with it on another machine I really didn't care to pursue a solution. The Radio Shack System captured more hiss than voice.
The good news was that the aucustics in the curch were really fantastic, and the DV53's lame on camera mic actually picked up the audio pretty well.

My shaky camera work made me weep. If I had just stepped away from the pod...

I had intended to cut the wedding in fcp, it was to be my first fcp project. I found it impossible to read the fcp manuel through the endless flow of my tears, so I cut the b*tch in imovie.

About two days in I realized I had a problem that could not be solved by playing fair.

I got my hands on a DVD of the Wedding pictures. I cut about twenty of these into the ceremony, montage style, covering up my own ineptitude.
In other places where I had good sound and a bad picture, I looped video from ealier parts of the cermony- I used the same 30 second cu of the bride and groom from behind three different times. I used long transitions, fades and ovelaps to cover some more errors. I had one patch of really quiet audio during one of the scripture readings, I copied it three times and just laid one track on top of another until I could hear the girl reading.

I brought up the brightness on the reception and cut it into a series of montage shots with Sinatra in the backround...

At last, after seven months ( I work full time, have two boys under the age of four, and go to school full time at night) of fooling with it I burned it onto a DVD with a couple of custom menus as a bonus I made a series of slideshows set to music and slapped those on there as well.

Head bowed low, muttering an apology, I gave it to the bride just before xmass.

They loved it. the whole family loved it. They watched it non-stop for three days. I made a full disclosure of all my cheats and slights, they still loved it.

The only thing I did well was getting the exposure/white balance right.

Everytime the bride calls her sister (my wife) I get a gushing thanks. I want to yell at her and say "it's crap, crap, crap." But I don't want to ruin her enjoyment of the video of her own wedding...
ugh.

The whole thing just makes me feel dirty.

Ian OBrien · January 4th, 2005, 02:40 PM

Hi Michael, it sounds to me that you are a bit jammy!!
I shot my brothers wedding on an analogue no chip camera,
I tried putting it onto vhs tape, then read about analogue capture
cards, not having much money at the time, went out and bought
one, managed to capture all of the wedding, with just the
reception to go when I had problems left right and centre! the
capture was distorted and to make matters worse, the audio or
the music I was trying to add sounded like an echo the SOUND OF
MUSIC would have been proud of! I was constantly telling the
newly weds weeks later that it was all in hand and eventually
forked out nearly three hundred quid for a better caopture card
which worked well from day one, got all captured with music and even wedding effects, I had carefully edited the wedding as I
wanted to please, and make it worth waiting for I also did this as
a favour, I took the video cd oound to my brothers house on 11th
October last year, My brother seemed grateful and said he would
watch it with his new Wife later that evening, I said to let me know what they thought about it good or bad............ never heard
from them since.
I since found out that a reasonably well off sister had a digital
video camera all along though she didn't know it was digital at
the time... I have since spent ten thousand pounds on camera
equipment,tripods, glidecams, editing software etc, etc the
phrase "once bitten twice call to mind!! never again

Michael Gibbons · January 4th, 2005, 04:24 PM

<<<-- Originally posted by Ian OBrien : Hi Michael, it sounds to me that you are a bit jammy!!
If 'jammy' is Manchester slang for stupid/crazy you may very well be on to something.

I since found out that a reasonably well off sister had a digital
video camera all along though she didn't know it was digital at
the time... I have since spent ten thousand pounds on camera
equipment,tripods, glidecams, editing software etc, etc the
phrase "once bitten twice call to mind!! never again -->>>

I have also upgraded my entire kit since my own debacle. It's true that there is no way to learn like the hard way. I'd like to think that if I do another one it would be better, but there is no one I dislike enough to experiment on.

I would be interested to know how many professional wedding videographers get started with some sort of volenteer/family disaster...

Ian OBrien · January 4th, 2005, 05:40 PM

Hello Michael
No, the word jammy is a phrase given to someone who can
( not litterally ) "get away with murder".
If that was me in your situation I probably would be taken to
court, stood trial, found guilty, and thrown into jail with no
possibility of parole!! anyway I did get away lightly I only got sent
to Coventry ( English expression of being ignored!! )
You ever get the feeling, theres no pleasing some people, given
the situation I didn't think I did such a bad job.
But life is for living and learning
Ones thing for sure, you need a bloody good sense of HUMOUR!

All the best

November 29th, 2004, 07:26 PM	#1
Ian OBrien Regular Crew Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Manchester England Posts: 27	Experiences..!!!! I have previously registered to a British WEbsit, being from that part of the Country Myself, one of the most popular parts of the website was Weddings, not only the type of equipment You use, but the actual experience itself, IE the attitude of the wedding guests, the attitude of the stills photograther, the service at the hotel, was the stills photopgrapher given prefferential treatment to what You were doing? Did someone try to rip You off? There must have been times when something has gone hillariously wrong and would like us to know about it PLEASE SPILL THE BEANS!!! THANKS LOADS __________________ Ian

November 29th, 2004, 09:00 PM	#2
Jason Balick Tourist Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Toronto, ON, CA Posts: 3	You have my attention What is the name of the website? Love to see something that digs that deep. __________________ Jason Balich

November 30th, 2004, 04:54 AM	#4
Ian OBrien Regular Crew Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Manchester England Posts: 27	Hi Jason, the website is http://www.dvdoctor.net/ click Message boards, then DV doctors very own forums, followed by Wedding and events videography.............there is one titled invisable photographers, A lot is informative, but you get some BAD EXPERIENCES which can be very funny, let me know what You think Regards __________________ Ian

November 30th, 2004, 09:12 AM	#5
Ian OBrien Regular Crew Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Manchester England Posts: 27	1998 Grinner, that was exellent, I would love to view other members experiences, I actually havn't any such Myself ( yet ) but on event videography, it's great to read other peoples mishaps and one I have noticed appears fairly frequently, is still photographers getting in the way ( on the U.K site ) I even noticed on one occassion, someone told a CLEAN joke and that was it, there were posts galore of Comedians telling their favouites. __________________ Ian

December 3rd, 2004, 11:01 AM	#6
Ken Schreiner Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Salt Lake City, Utah Posts: 25	Wedding Hilarity I shot my first wedding last weekend. The minister's PA mic (which I was tapped into but also had my own mic on him), died mid-service. I was shooting when someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was the church coordinator crawling on her stomach handing me a handheld wireless mic and asking me to run it up to the minister who was about to perform the vows. I ran it up and handed it to him. As the church lady crawled away, she disconnected the AC cable from the camera right in the middle of the vows. Fortunately, I had two other cameras rolling on it (on batteries) and got the vows. Lesson 1: run all the cameras on batteries and have lots of batteries. Lesson 2: if someone asks you to leave your camera, don't. You're working. Lesson 3: always use at least two cameras and have a great multi-camera or color correction software.

November 29th, 2004, 09:13 PM	#3
Grinner Hester Regular Crew Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: services world-wide Posts: 118	1998 I was hired to run camera at the Dallas Convention Center one bright early morning. I was shooting Bob Dole so a little more dress code than usual was required. One the way in, I grabbed a V8 for some early morning nourishment and headed into the men's room to ensure my full focus would be on the shoot. The inside of the convention center's bathroom was covered, ceiling, wall and floor with one inch tile which cleverly camouflaged the step up to the urinals. These we're no average urinals. They were as tall as me and each were a proud 2 feet wide. Anyway, I tripped on the unseen step, stumbled toward one of the monstrous urinals, paid way too much attention to my tomato juice, slipped on my never-worn church shoes and into a man-eating pisser. I spent the next five minutes bathing in the convention center sink, freaked out about what diseases I had to have just gotten. The irony? Sen. Dole was speaking at a Urology convention.

December 3rd, 2004, 12:48 PM	#7
Ian OBrien Regular Crew Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Manchester England Posts: 27	Hi Ken first misread Your post and thought the Minister had died mid-service! It was My daughters first Nativity play today at the Church which is next door to the playgroup she attends, I had pernission a few days earlier to film the event and so got there this morning in plenty of time to set up the camera equipment, the Priest very kindly gave Me a hand moving a few chairs at the side of the Church to make room for the tripod! TRIPOD!! don't I mean MAGNET!! what makes a tripod attract Everyone with a still camera? it like some sort of homing device! One kids Mother decided to kneel right next to one of the legs ocassionally giving it a nudge every time she moved Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr apart from that, all went well! __________________ Ian

December 10th, 2004, 10:18 AM	#8
Cosmin Rotaru Major Player Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Romania, Timisoara Posts: 453	The worse ever (for me): I was in a church, shooting a wedding (of course). I was located just in front, close to the minister and the grooms. At one point I realize that I only have 5 or so minutes on the tape and decided to RUN get another tape from the bag. I haven't even managed to reach full speed when I stepped on a small carpet and the small carpet decides to run the other way, leaving me in mid air... head in front.. turn 180 in air so I can keep the camcorder above water lever... slide down some stairs on my right shoulder... knock down a couple that was standing on my landing spot! The very next moment, when the silence settled down, my mouth (not me!) yelled (with church echo): "damn carpet" Worse ever! I now carry all tapes and accus on me. __________________ Cosmin Rotaru

December 10th, 2004, 10:59 AM	#9
Ian OBrien Regular Crew Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Manchester England Posts: 27	Nice one Cosmin!! Hey! it could have been worse,......... it could have been me!! Have you ever noticed, whenever something like that happens, it has to be in front of an audience! __________________ Ian

December 10th, 2004, 11:12 AM	#10
Cosmin Rotaru Major Player Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Romania, Timisoara Posts: 453	"it could have been worse,......... it could have been me!!" Haha! Good one! :) "whenever something like that happens, it has to be in front of an audience!" Talk about that! Actually, it was the wedding of some of our friends. The rest of our friends were invited, so now we all have something to laugh about! Yea... My wife was a bit late at the ceremony, so when she got there someone told here about what happend. Her first question: "is the camcorder allright?!" :) PS: Ian, I also thought the Minister had died mid-service! :) __________________ Cosmin Rotaru

January 3rd, 2005, 04:33 PM	#11
Michael Gibbons Major Player Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Loveland, Colorado, USA Posts: 292	My first and possibly my last wedding 03/20/04 I shot this as a wedding gift to my sister in law. If it could have gone wrong it did. We live about 1800 miles from the church, and, although, it is my wife's family's regular church, I could not get any one to go and take stills of the interior for me. Three days before the ceremony my wife tells me that my budget has been slashed in half. So much for renting a GL1 to do the shoot with. I'm down to my 1 Chip Panna DV53. Incedently, while it is a FINE cam in many, many ways the 53 has no external mic jack. No problem, my brother in law has a DV cam with a mic jack! Now I have two cams, right! Wrong! His cam is one of those crazy Sony DVD camcorder things. My brief tour of the manuel leads me to believe that is an utterly useless gadjet made for high dollar soccer dads- nothing wrong with that they need cams too, but it was no good for my wedding shoot. I decide to use it for sound capture, though, and I spend 80$ on a pos wireless lav at Radio Shack. At this point, I know some of you are grinding your teeth, and muttering words like pathetic and amature, but have mercy, I had what amounted to no money, so I did what I could. I finally get to the church the afternoon before the wedding. So many windows, such good light! I could have cried with joy. I shot some tests, went home and watched them, figured how to set the camera for the next day. This, btw, is the only thing I did right. The actual shoot was a mess. I suck. I bumped my own tripod at least twenty times- once during the vows !arrrrrgh!, and for some reason, the still photographer could not get in front of me enough. I lost battery power halfway through the reception. It was almost a relief. The real horror came in post. The dvd from the mini dvd camcorder can not be read by my mac. I don't know why. And after I listened to the audio I captured with it on another machine I really didn't care to pursue a solution. The Radio Shack System captured more hiss than voice. The good news was that the aucustics in the curch were really fantastic, and the DV53's lame on camera mic actually picked up the audio pretty well. My shaky camera work made me weep. If I had just stepped away from the pod... I had intended to cut the wedding in fcp, it was to be my first fcp project. I found it impossible to read the fcp manuel through the endless flow of my tears, so I cut the b*tch in imovie. About two days in I realized I had a problem that could not be solved by playing fair. I got my hands on a DVD of the Wedding pictures. I cut about twenty of these into the ceremony, montage style, covering up my own ineptitude. In other places where I had good sound and a bad picture, I looped video from ealier parts of the cermony- I used the same 30 second cu of the bride and groom from behind three different times. I used long transitions, fades and ovelaps to cover some more errors. I had one patch of really quiet audio during one of the scripture readings, I copied it three times and just laid one track on top of another until I could hear the girl reading. I brought up the brightness on the reception and cut it into a series of montage shots with Sinatra in the backround... At last, after seven months ( I work full time, have two boys under the age of four, and go to school full time at night) of fooling with it I burned it onto a DVD with a couple of custom menus as a bonus I made a series of slideshows set to music and slapped those on there as well. Head bowed low, muttering an apology, I gave it to the bride just before xmass. They loved it. the whole family loved it. They watched it non-stop for three days. I made a full disclosure of all my cheats and slights, they still loved it. The only thing I did well was getting the exposure/white balance right. Everytime the bride calls her sister (my wife) I get a gushing thanks. I want to yell at her and say "it's crap, crap, crap." But I don't want to ruin her enjoyment of the video of her own wedding... ugh. The whole thing just makes me feel dirty. __________________ " When some wild-eyed, eight foot tall maniac grabs your neck, taps the back of your favorite head against a bar room wall, and looks you crooked in the eye, and he asks you if you've payed your dues, well, you just stare that big suker right back in the eye, and you remember what old Jack Burton always says at a time like that, 'Have you paid your dues, Jack? Yes sir, the check is in the mail."

January 4th, 2005, 02:40 PM	#12
Ian OBrien Regular Crew Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Manchester England Posts: 27	Hi Michael, it sounds to me that you are a bit jammy!! I shot my brothers wedding on an analogue no chip camera, I tried putting it onto vhs tape, then read about analogue capture cards, not having much money at the time, went out and bought one, managed to capture all of the wedding, with just the reception to go when I had problems left right and centre! the capture was distorted and to make matters worse, the audio or the music I was trying to add sounded like an echo the SOUND OF MUSIC would have been proud of! I was constantly telling the newly weds weeks later that it was all in hand and eventually forked out nearly three hundred quid for a better caopture card which worked well from day one, got all captured with music and even wedding effects, I had carefully edited the wedding as I wanted to please, and make it worth waiting for I also did this as a favour, I took the video cd oound to my brothers house on 11th October last year, My brother seemed grateful and said he would watch it with his new Wife later that evening, I said to let me know what they thought about it good or bad............ never heard from them since. I since found out that a reasonably well off sister had a digital video camera all along though she didn't know it was digital at the time... I have since spent ten thousand pounds on camera equipment,tripods, glidecams, editing software etc, etc the phrase "once bitten twice call to mind!! never again __________________ Ian

January 4th, 2005, 04:24 PM	#13
Michael Gibbons Major Player Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Loveland, Colorado, USA Posts: 292	<<<-- Originally posted by Ian OBrien : Hi Michael, it sounds to me that you are a bit jammy!! If 'jammy' is Manchester slang for stupid/crazy you may very well be on to something. I since found out that a reasonably well off sister had a digital video camera all along though she didn't know it was digital at the time... I have since spent ten thousand pounds on camera equipment,tripods, glidecams, editing software etc, etc the phrase "once bitten twice call to mind!! never again -->>> I have also upgraded my entire kit since my own debacle. It's true that there is no way to learn like the hard way. I'd like to think that if I do another one it would be better, but there is no one I dislike enough to experiment on. I would be interested to know how many professional wedding videographers get started with some sort of volenteer/family disaster... __________________ " When some wild-eyed, eight foot tall maniac grabs your neck, taps the back of your favorite head against a bar room wall, and looks you crooked in the eye, and he asks you if you've payed your dues, well, you just stare that big suker right back in the eye, and you remember what old Jack Burton always says at a time like that, 'Have you paid your dues, Jack? Yes sir, the check is in the mail."

January 4th, 2005, 05:40 PM	#14
Ian OBrien Regular Crew Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Manchester England Posts: 27	Hello Michael No, the word jammy is a phrase given to someone who can ( not litterally ) "get away with murder". If that was me in your situation I probably would be taken to court, stood trial, found guilty, and thrown into jail with no possibility of parole!! anyway I did get away lightly I only got sent to Coventry ( English expression of being ignored!! ) You ever get the feeling, theres no pleasing some people, given the situation I didn't think I did such a bad job. But life is for living and learning Ones thing for sure, you need a bloody good sense of HUMOUR! All the best __________________ Ian