Clip for review

[Rich Sheikh]

A friend asked me to shoot some filler shots as a 3rd camera at her sons wedding 3 wks ago. I'm not in the video business but do produce short video's as a hobby. I have a Sony one chip DV camera and use IMovieHD for all my editing. I took some of the shots I took and put together a 4 min video. The mother asked me to try to capture shots of the groom. I e-mailed her this 4 min video and now she wants me to edit the whole wedding-recept video. I'm fairly new at this as many keep telling me I should go into business. Your thoughts?

Here is the link
http://homepage.mac.com/richsheikh/iMovieTheater48.html

Here is some of my other work
http://homepage.mac.com/richsheikh/Menu17.html

[Anthony Mooney]

Hi

I don't know your age or what you do for a living, so what I am going to say it only relates to your message.
Yes you can become a wedding videographer. The question here would be, why you want to become one?
If you live with your parents and afford to spent 10k to begin with (plus another $200.00 monthly) you can start your only business.
If you have your own family, then you should consider that wedding videography (besides that is "cool" because of the "gear" that we use) it is a risky business.
Why? because as I am writing this, there is more supply than demand. I personla believe that a 50% of new guys will quit in the next year or so.
The other 50% will become professional and survive for a few years or maybe forever.

All the best

Anthony
Jersey Shore Video

[Mike F Smith]

You have done and outstanding job fresh out of the gate. No ifs ands or buts.

Mike

[Matthew Ebenezer]

Great work Rich. No wonder they want you to edit the whole thing. You certainly managed to capture some great moments. My favourite shot was
of the little flower girl running away from the bridal party.

I would also exercise caution regarding going into the wedding video business. Most would agree that it is one of the most work-intensive and stressful parts of the industry. But, it can also be quite rewarding.

I would suggest doing a lot of research into your market. i.e. how many other videographers are there in your area? How much do they charge? What is the quality of their work? What other video opportunities other than weddings are available? etc ... etc ...

I've been 'testing the water' with my business for the last 6 months by doing it part-time (1 day a week and heaps of my spare time) to see if it can fly. Over that 6 months my video business (doing weddings, TV commercials etc ..) has made almost twice as much as my 4 day a week 'real' job. In the next month I'm quitting that job to go full-time with the business.

Keep in mind though that I am in a small city of 120,000 people where all the other videographers in the area are pretty average and the quality of local television is very poor. We are able to come in and offer a high quality product that blows away the competition.

The more research and testing you can do the better equipped you'll be to make the right decisions. You seem to have a good eye for it and it'd be interesting to see what you can do with better quality gear.

All the best,

Matthew.

[Rich Sheikh]

Thanks a bunch guys. I've decided not to go into the wedding business. Instead I've been taking on other jobs like birthday parties and other events. Here is some of my recent work. Still much to learn.

http://homepage.mac.com/richsheikh/iMovieTheater53.html