Stop Motion Wedding

[Brian Manning]

Hi guys,

Marina + Andy's Wedding in Stop-Motion | Melbourne, Australia / NYC on Vimeo

Please see this link. It is a stop motion wedding video. I was asked to price a friends sisters wedding video. I have never done a wedding before excvept the photography once but I make videos as part of my job. I have a 600d, a gopro and Panny af101 at my disposal along with lav wireless mics but I thought this style of wedding video looked cool.Much better than the unromantic drivel that most wedding videos are.

I priced it at 600 euro for myself and an assistant to shoot the timelapsses all day(10+ hours) and me to edit(10+ hours) and make DVD copies etc. Graphic design for cover, expenses etc. If anything happens to the cams I have to replace them myself.

Have I overpriced do you think? Apologies for bringing up lame 'how much to charge' question but I couldnt find anything on pricing for this type of photo fusion video on the net.

Many thanks.

B

[Chris Harding]

Hi Brian

Not my idea of how a wedding should be done but I guess each to their own. I assume that your friend's sister has seen the style and prefers it to video?? How would you do the vows..just a DVR and add the audio to the still motion. The sample clip has most sequences seemingly at quite short intervals so I would suspect that this would be a AWFUL amount of extra work compared to just shooting video. Your camera has to be dead stable during intervals too!!

If it was my decision I would stick with video or charge a LOT more than 600 E (that's about $700) and that's for maybe 10 hours of shooting a very critical style ... I personally think you are way underpriced..if you shot that just in video a budget wedding price would be at least double what you have quoted and (if it were me) I would charge heaps more to do stop motion as it involves a lot more effort.

Chris

[Evan Bourcier]

Chris, I think a lot of people honestly aren't that worried about the vows and stuff.

I think it's super cool, I'd love to watch a behind the scenes of how you approached the whole thing. If that really is equivalent to $700 I'd say they definitely got a super good deal haha, that's easily a $2000+ video around here.

Did you shoot the whole thing as a series of stills, or shoot it as video and convert it to stop motion?

Thanks,
Evan

[Don Bloom]

Actually I think most people are more concerned with hearing their vows. At least around here. In the almost 3000 weddings I've done in my career I've never had anyone say they weren't concerned with hearing their vows. However for an art type piece (trailer or recap) it's pretty cool. Would I charge $700? Not a chance. It would be about $1500 to $2000-lots of work. Paying a second person for a 10 hour day, editing in 10 hours? I've been editing a loooong time and IMO unless you're the Flash (an old comic book hero for those that don't know) 10 hours aint gonna cut it (pardon the pun)
HOWEVER,,,,,If your client is happy with it and you're happy doing it and doing it for the money you mentioned, have at it.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Evan

As Don says in his area vows are important. Where we are vows and audio are also a critical part of the wedding and audio is also very important here. Sure, do an arty piece using stop motion but I would still do the ceremony normally ... it's still seems an awful lot of work and careful camera positioning to get a good result... I'm not sure how my brides might react to that sort of production but, who knows it may be the latest and greatest thing in wedding video technique and all you need to a still camera to do it.

I wonder how many frames were shot in that sample video...I suspect quite a lot?? ...Regarding price..IF you can actually finish it in 20 hours of work then that equates to a mere $35.00 an hour and you still have to factor in travelling costs, bride consultation time and DVD covers and the like unless this would purely be a Vimeo style delivery...One thing that does come to mind is what about the photographer?? If she has a normal photographer, then the videographer doing time lapse would certainly eat into his photoshoot and formal photo time so unless Brian is also the photographer too, it's something you might have to carefully consider?

Chris

[Brian Manning]

Thats very true about who the photographer is, thanks. If Im dragging the couple off to set up artsy set pieces, he wont be too happy.

Let me just clarify that the link the original post is NOT my own video.

The bride in question said she didnt want video at all but friends suggested she get video so she contacted me to throw some ideas at her. What I would do if I did this style would start at makeup etc in the morning all the way through but first I wouold like to do a set piece recreation of how they proposed to each other or even a timelapse of old photos of them as kids up to modern times, bit cliche but hey.

So, how did the videographers make the video in the O.P.? I have magic lantern on 600d and have used it for timelapses but it takes a shot every 2 seconds. From the look of the video in the link would you say they take a photo every second and replay it back at 4fps?

Question: Why do you guys think it is more work to do this compared to video. I reckon it is easier or the same. I would go about doing it by setting up the camera in one place im happy with and shooting say 1-5 mins of photo timelapse. then move it, set it up nice and let it work away again. And just do the same all day. Set pieces where I move the flowers or shoes around would require the assistant to move the items around for each shot, sure, but apart from that magic lantern could timelapse shoot most of the scenes, no? Then I would have all the shots in a numbered row and in folders. I could batch process a tilt shift look or other effects like colour grading in photoshop and then import to Premiere. Each sequence of photos could be nested and I just slot them together and do a bit of editing....ok maybe 20 hours of editing.

Am I mad? Have I gotten the method of how to make this sort of piece wrong?

ps Here in Ireland the budget videographers seem to charge €500 to film a ceremony or €1000 for the whole day. So I thought as seen as its my first wedding (though I do make films as part of my job) and its my friends girlfriends sister whos the bride that €600 was fine. After the 150 for the assistant, it isstill better than minimum wage or double minimum wage.

[Peter Riding]

Appears to be a low price but I can see where you're coming from and since you are not experienced in the demands of weddings its important that you don't over-promise.

You should also make very very very sure that the couple fully understand what they are getting and what they are NOT getting with this "video". The danger is that although the effect may be attractive in small doses how many people are going to want to sit through an entire day of it let alone watch it more than once - the more so since mainstream couples are most certainly going to want to hear audio as well from their vows etc and not just a trendy backing track.

Bluntly, if the couple like this sort of experience they could just sate their appetites by fastforwarding through a few Sky+ TV recordings :- )

Its an effect much used - some say overused - by stills photographers in the past to add a bit of apparent motion interest to slideshows. If this is the only product and no actual video is required you may find it simpler and quicker to shoot it as multiple stills.

Pete

[Chris Harding]

Hi Brian

I would say that the final video needs to be 25fps for either a DVD or a web video at least so more than likely, to me anyway, the guy has just placed each still frame on the timeline of his NLE for more likely around 12 video frames and then the next still taken a second later on for another roughly 12 frames..that of course when rendered as video will equate to 1 second of video so although the clips are jumpy it still acts as a sorta very fast slideshow really. Time laspes AFAIK only occupy a single frame so you have 25 frames every second which produces smooth video eg: a flower opening even though they have been taken maybe a hour apart. The guys video isn't smooth but if you shot say 200 exposures at 1 second intervals on the 600D and then dropped those in at 1 frame spacing then it would look like video but would be somewhat hard to do. I would say he has just taken a series of shots, from a fixed tripod position of the subjects and then dropped them onto his NLE timeline so each still ends up as a unique video and as you already have noted each still is between 1/2 to 1 second.

I'm sure everyone does realise it's not your video...it was done in Melbourne and you are in the Emerald Isle

I would, prior to the wedding, find some willing mates to pose for you and then experiment in your NLE to get the same sort of effect

Chris

[Nigel Barker]

It's a novel effect that could work well in small doses just like a slow motion confetti throw or gratuitous black & white cake cutting.

[Buba Kastorski]

Originally Posted by Brian Manning

Have I overpriced do you think?

Pricing is very tricky thing, but 22.50Hr for a very special skill and equipment is overpriced?
I charge $300Hr and I am still not charging enough, but that's what keeps me busy; don't sell yourself short, people caught in stereotype " it can't be good if it's not expensive",

[Long Truong]

Although this is not my style of wedding video, stop motion clips like these are super easy to make.

All you need is a tripod and a remote trigger (wireless by preference). Just have your trigger with you and snap a photo every now and then to capture a progress in the sequence. During more important moments, just take more photos in a row. You don't really need to shoot a timelapse because the goal is not to get a fluid video but rather get the skipping frame effect. This means that the frequence in which you snap a photo doesn't need to be accurate. Just keep in mind that depending on the length of your final video, you might want to take more or less frames from one scene.

Shooting in jpeg at 2MP will be more than enough to get a 1080p HD image for your video, so you'll pretty much be able to cover the entire wedding with only one memory card.

You can also get your camera off the tripod and walk around, snapping a photo every few seconds. It will create a skipping frame effect while you're walking around like this: http://tinyurl.com/7zx9vo5, which could be the desired result if you're following the couple around during the walk at the photoshoot.

If you feel like the couple are playful and like to goof around, you can even do funny things like this: http://tinyurl.com/2f2o8b5 or this: http://tinyurl.com/7qzvv58

When editing, I would recommend using a rather upbeat song to support the skipping frame effect of the stop motion.

With all that said, I believe that this type of service is definitely not a video service replacement, but rather an animated photo service that can be a cool option for couples who didn't really feel like spending the extra money to hire a real video team. Although the coverage of the event is very effortless, you still need to consider the fact that you're going to spend the entire day snapping these photos and also spend a few hours editing the clips so I personally think that you should charge way more than that.

[Aaron Mayberry]

Dude. This was AWESOME.

Charge 3-4 x as much and advertise this. The clients who want it will find you.

[Brian Manning]

Just want to clarify that I didnt do this video in the original post.I will start off cheap till I get my confidence I think. Thanks guys.

[David Stoneburner]

I think it's a great idea and good job. It would also be important to get the vows, but I honestly don't think that people sit and watch 2 hour epics of their wedding. Maybe the first year, but a cool recap that it was what people would share and take the time to watch. The one thing that could be added would be hearing a portion or all of the vows. It could be added just as audio under with some nice slow-mo, stop motion or pictures, or of course it could be added full frame. Either way that would be a nice touch to think about. Nice job!

[Damian Heffernan]

The original video (in the OP) has ome details in the comments about how they did it. And they have another wedding one the same on their video account with heaps more info in the comments. They operate as a team as far as i can tell with one of them shooting stills for the wedding and the other shooting the timelapse. They're quite an artistic pair by the looks of them.

They don't do timelapse but rather she states the shutter actuations are manual, every couple of seconds. She says she shoots for moments, action etc. So it's manual timelapse. They shoot DSLR and then encode as 1920 x 1080 and edit it together for the final video. I would take a wild guess and say they're doing it as part of a stills package i.e. pay $10,000 for the wedding stills and as a value add we can do the timelapse. This sort of bespoke, artistic stuff 'aint cheap.