What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?

[Vito DeFilippo]

Originally Posted by Craig Terott

Mine was saying "you must be the mom" to an older Bridesmaid.

I'm so frickin careful now. lol

You win.

Mine was one of my first weddings years ago. I was madly taping a first dance, going crazy getting interesting angles and nice moving shots, etc. At the end of the dance, I realized I had mis-pressed the record button, and the camera wasn't even rolling. I felt like such a fool...

[Chris Harding]

Hey Vito

Welcome to the "Double Pressed Record" club.... I once hit the record button twice after the bridal party had come in and was waiting for the bride (with the cam shooting the floor!!) As she was announced I hit record (putting the cam into pause) and carefully followed her to her seat.

It's not a good feeling at all!!!! However not as bad as one of my associates on his first wedding who was so nervous he double pressed record and filmed the entire ceremony (one camera shoot) in pause.....that would have been mortifying enough for anyone BUT he did it again with the FOB's speech!!!!

Chris

[Noel Lising]

Here's my embarrasing moment. Studio called me last minute to shoot an 18th Birthday, gave me the location, went there, shot some details, shot interviews with the Cotillion entourage, shot the entourage practicing their dance routine. Everything was going smoothly, until another team of videographer arrived. Turns out there were 2 18th Birthday happening that day and I was at the wrong one.

[Tim Bakland]

Ditto on the double-record. Missed the bridesmaids' entrances (NOT the bride, fortunately!).
Grabbed all the bridesmaids right after the ceremony, told them I wanted to get their processional "in better light" hmm hmmm, hmm, hmm, and had them process one by one again (shot close up so no one could see the empty church!). Edited the close-ups into the missed record and no one knew what hit them.

Sometimes the embarrassing moments work out and are learning experiences.

[Vito DeFilippo]

Yep, I'm with you, Tim. I immediately fessed up to the bride and groom, got them to dance together again at the next slow song, used a lot of close ups to frame out the other dancers, and filled in the gaps in the video using photos supplied to me of the real first dance from the professional photogs.

Worked out great, and the couple loved it. To this day, I'm not sure if they forgot that I screwed it up...

[Tom Phillips]

Originally Posted by Vito DeFilippo

You win.

Mine was one of my first weddings years ago. I was madly taping a first dance, going crazy getting interesting angles and nice moving shots, etc. At the end of the dance, I realized I had mis-pressed the record button, and the camera wasn't even rolling. I felt like such a fool...

Mines is pretty much the same (our second wedding). Normally we have 2 camera filming the 1st dance but we had decided to do a few interviews with b-camera. As the dance finished I pressed the button to stop recording and it started recording. The bride and groom were cool and did the dance again. The Mc let everyone know it was for my benefit. oops....

[Daniel V Bonello]

We trialed a freelance once, after the bride and groom took their seats at the reception, he approached the MC and said he wanted to take the bride and groom entries again because he wasnt happy with the shot.

So the MC announced that the VIDEO GUYS MISSED THE ENTRANCES SO WE ARE GOING TO HAVE TO DO THEM ALL AGAIN!

Thank God I wasn't there and my business partner got stuck with the egg on his face :)

[Chris Harding]

Hey Daniel

I was try a lady out and she seems fine so I decided to give her a real simple job. Go to the bride's house and film the limo arriving ..film the bride in her dress but don't wait for her to leave ..come down to the ceremony at least 20 minutes before her so you can film her arriving there. Gosh I figured with a 20 minute start (the ceremony was only 5 minutes away) she would get there so we could set up and wait for the bride.

Firstly she missed the limo arrival at the house...she filmed the bride from probably 50' away and even though the bride was nearly 30 minutes late she managed to get there 10 minutes after her!!!!

That was also her last ever shoot with me!!!!

Chris

[Philip Gioja]

My worst was a couple years ago - traveled about 4 hours for a wedding and completely forgot to bring my tripod. There was a Best Buy in the neighborhood so I bought their most expensive tripod but it was completely horrible. Never want to do that again!

[George Bean]

here are my favorite two:

One:
setting up in the balcony, single camera shoot. set up the tripod and jvc x3 camera. realize the tripod plate is back at the office on the copy stand. had been capturing photos for a montage and forgot to put the plate back on the camera. took several 9 volt batteries and filled in the gap between the bottom of the camera and top of the tripod plate and duct taped the camera to the tripod. usually i never sit down during a wedding, however after the stress of rigging together a heavy svhs camera to the tripod i decided during the homily to sit down in the balcony near the camera. when i stood back up to adjust the camera i noticed it was not recording, with all the excitement i had forgotten to switch from battery to power supply, the battery had run down and turned off the camera. i decided honesty is the best policy and during the photo session following the ceremony told the mother of the bride i did not record all of the homily. She said good, i met to tell you in advance we did not need all of it recorded.

Two:
at the reception the photographer has time alone with the bride and groom for photos at the golf course.
i have my cell phone in my shirt pocket and want to check the time to confirm when the photo session concludes. as i reach in the pocket to remove the phone my car keys also come out of the pocket and i watch them (almost in slow motion) fly from my shirt, through the air and fall into the storm drain. the photographer, wedding party and many others also watched the video guy drop his keys into the storm drain. of course, most of my gear was still locked in the van and that was the only set of keys.
fortunately it had not rained and i could see the keys at the bottom of the drain, the opening on the grate was wide enough one of the workers at the golf course was able to retrieve them. all ended well.

bonus:
showed up at the wrong church, the street and city names were interchangeable and both streets have a Methodist church. of course the church i went to had no wedding that day.

[John Crawford]

I've had some "oh !@#$" moments, but I think the most cringe worthy for me personally was a few years ago we arrived at the reception and we had two DVDs to play during the course of the night. We brought our projection system but this hall had big multiple screens all around the room that came down from the ceiling and therefore it would be much better. We had been to this hall before no problem, but I guess they had just "upgraded" their system.

We popped in an engagement video right before the B&G came in for intros and the video seemed to pause for a minute at the beginning but I thought nothing of it. Later in the night we had to play a montage of the bride and groom growing up (nicely done, no cheesy slideshow) and the video started skipping and pausing and getting blocky and as the video progressed it got worse and worse while over 300 people watched on and I died a little in my seat.

It turns out while the hall spent a lot of money on the projection system they neglected to buy a DVD player that was worth more than $20. It was one of those extremely cheap DVD players that always act up. We had tested it before hand but we didn't play it all the way through which was our mistake.

We will use systems like these still if they are available but I refuse to use any hall DVD players and will only use the ones we bring because we know they will be rock solid...however last summer I had a situation where I used a hall projector and it fell asleep during introductions so right before the B&G come in we had to play this quick montage so I start playing the video...and we get sound from the DJ feed...but no video, just black.

Both of our cameras are still running while I'm trying to signal to the DJ up on the balcony to stop the music while I turned the projector back on to warm up, totally killing the flow of everything, while taking cracks from wiseguys in the audience.

[Mark Holland]

Wow! I thought I was the only one who ever did a "double punch" on the record button...or tore my pants...or...well, you get the picture. Thanks everyone for sharing! I've figured out that if you're in this business long enough, all this stuff will happen to you, too. However, I've been doing this long enough, that now I don't get embarrassed, I just roll with it..... Throughout my carrer, when something has happened, I've tried to make it a learning experience. That's why my gig bag has a sewing kit, a "Tide" pen, safety pins, cold medicine, toothpicks, etc, etc...and I always have a change of clothes and extra bottles of water in the car!

...and no, I didn't contribute an embarrassing moment...yet...I'll wait until I get something original... :-)

[Chris Hewitt]

Imagine the scene....halfway through the ceremony, the quiet ambience is shattered by the voice of Elaine from 'Seinfeld' screeching ...."a dingo ate your baby!!!"....not once but twice. It was a mobile phone ring tone apparently.
This was told to me a few weeks ago by the photographer I was working alongside. Wish I could have seen the video of that.

[Roger Gunkel]

The most embarrassing incident for me, was a technical failure, not of equipment but my clothing. I was wearing a suit that I had bought before I put on a little bit of weight. While bending over at the front of the church taking a low shot of the register signing with my back to the congregation, I heard a lot of giggling from behind. I thought my shirt had come untucked as was hanging out until a bridesmaid tapped me on the shoulder and said rather uncomfortably: "You've split your trousers and everyone can see your underpants".

Sure enough they were split from waistband to crotch and I was mortified. Luckily a guest had a pair of Chinos in his car which he dashed out and got while the Vicar delayed the walk down the aisle until I had changed. As I came back into the church, I got loud cheers and applause from the congregation and the rest of the day was great fun. The fact that the chinos were two sizes too big prompted a number of comments from young ladies of "Nice trousers!!".

Roger

[Adrian Tan]

I think, so far, most people have interpreted "most embarrassing moment" in terms of videographer stuff-ups. But there's plenty of other times I've felt an emotion I think could be described as embarrassment. Eg:

-- Walking in on bridesmaid in her underwear.
-- Arabic-speaking father of groom yelling at and manhandling me for not providing real-time projector screen display of bridal party entry at reception. This wasn't my fault at all (no-one had mentioned that this was required), but it was a socially mortifying/awkward position to be in.
-- Getting into arguments with security guards about your right to record / where you're allowed to stand (happened at least four or five times).
-- Having male guests dance against me in a sexually suggestive manner.
-- Getting into arguments with guests about myself or a crew member recording things they deemed inappropriate (eg people fainting).