Editing Hour for 15min Wedding Film

[John H. Lee]

Originally Posted by Frank Glencairn

I'm not able to remember my own phone number, or my girlfriend's birthday - but I never forget a picture - I seem to have (after all those years of editing) a very good brain for visual stuff.

So while shooting, it almost does an automatic rough edit (I n´know it sounds strange).
I try to edit as soon as possible after the shooting, while it is still fresh.
I dump all my cards to my Raid, and scrub through the clips. As soon as I see the part I want (i.e. remember it from shooting) I "in-out" it and throw it at the timeline. Rough cut done.
Than I look for music and pace my cut accordingly - some rearranging and fine tuning and that's picture lock.
Slap some titles on it and do the grading - done.

Thanks for sharing your experience. Do you direct the second shooter ( or other shooters) to get the footage you have in your mind so that you don't have to go through all the footages from them?

[Noa Put]

I'm not sure RAW shooting will be get popular in wedding industry but I think it's another area that you can separate from the peers to get ahead.

I don't believe in that, raw is ok in controlled shoots with a script, if I had to shoot raw that would result in 1 to 2 terabyte on footage alone and then starts the cumbersome workflow. A BMC camera is not something you would like to use at a wedding to shoot Raw with, prores maybe but even then it's not the type of camera to cover these type of run and gun events.

[Long Truong]

Hey John,

A practice I've seen some companies do is to:

1) Pay a little extra to your shooters and to have them rough cut their own footage and prepare a clean timeline for you. This can sometimes also be beneficial for the shooter because they can review their own footage and see what mistakes they made. If they end up with a lot of bad shots that will require them to spend more time cleaning up, they will most likely learn to shoot better next time and get more things right in camera.

2) Hire a freelance or part-time editor to only work on the rough cut and sync part and give you a clean timeline so you only need to work on putting the pieces together for your film

3) Hire someone to work on the entire edit from A-Z and you only act as a director who provides feedback and revision so they can modify the piece until you are satisfied.

All of the above suggestions will obviously save you a lot of time but will obviously require some monetary investment from your end.

As for directing shooters, it can depend a lot on the skill level and trust you have for your shooters. Some of them require little to no direction and will give you very solid footage and some will require a little more guidance. It also depends on how long they have been working with you and how familiar they are with your style. But in general, if you already have a little plan or vision in your mind, it is always good to brief your team prior to the event so everyone has an idea of what they should aim for and try to achieve.

Hope this helps,

Long

[John H. Lee]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

I don't believe in that, raw is ok in controlled shoots with a script, if I had to shoot raw that would result in 1 to 2 terabyte on footage alone and then starts the cumbersome workflow. A BMC camera is not something you would like to use at a wedding to shoot Raw with, prores maybe but even then it's not the type of camera to cover these type of run and gun events.

I agree with that. I don't mean to shoot the whole wedding with RAW. BMCC is not ready for that. But I think, when in Bride Prep or First meet, I can shoot with it for beauty shot, like posing her next to the window with natural light so that I can retain some highlight information. You can also get CU or ECU on Bride's face since it's resolution capabilities is just amazing. I guess 20 - 30 min footage will be good to be used in the edit.

[John H. Lee]

Originally Posted by Long Truong

Hey John,

A practice I've seen some companies do is to:

1) Pay a little extra to your shooters and to have them rough cut their own footage and prepare a clean timeline for you. This can sometimes also be beneficial for the shooter because they can review their own footage and see what mistakes they made. If they end up with a lot of bad shots that will require them to spend more time cleaning up, they will most likely learn to shoot better next time and get more things right in camera.

2) Hire a freelance or part-time editor to only work on the rough cut and sync part and give you a clean timeline so you only need to work on putting the pieces together for your film

3) Hire someone to work on the entire edit from A-Z and you only act as a director who provides feedback and revision so they can modify the piece until you are satisfied.

All of the above suggestions will obviously save you a lot of time but will obviously require some monetary investment from your end.

As for directing shooters, it can depend a lot on the skill level and trust you have for your shooters. Some of them require little to no direction and will give you very solid footage and some will require a little more guidance. It also depends on how long they have been working with you and how familiar they are with your style. But in general, if you already have a little plan or vision in your mind, it is always good to brief your team prior to the event so everyone has an idea of what they should aim for and try to achieve.

Hope this helps,

Long

HI, Long Thank you for your valuable and thoughtful information. I have my colleagues working for me for edit and second shooting full time. We both edit and shoot, but we might need to outsource the edit for the simple package that just need the standard editing since I'd like to invest little bit more time to develop different styles of film for the high-end package. Thanks for your suggestion!

[Adrian Tan]

Originally Posted by John H. Lee

You can also get CU or ECU on Bride's face since it's resolution capabilities is just amazing.

I actually had a groom say to me recently that a video on the website was too sharp, showed too much.

Only time I've ever had this feedback, but there you go. I was surprised he was picky enough to even notice, but maybe other people notice without being able to articulate it.

Was watching one of Nigel's videos recently that had a beautiful diffused look to it, glow around highlights, and slightly desaturated sepia tone. Made me even more aware of the value of softness.

Edit: For what it's worth, if you look at the John Brawley blog post for the "Leah" video (one of the first sample videos released for the BMC), he notes that you can see the pores of her skin and then adds, "Sorry Leah".

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Adrian Tan

Was watching one of Nigel's videos recently that had a beautiful diffused look to it, glow around highlights, and slightly desaturated sepia tone. Made me even more aware of the value of softness.

I know the one you mean but I am just the camera operator it's my wife Alice who edited & graded it. If you read her blog post the location leant itself to that oldie worldie rural look for the introduction before segueing into the more normal look on the Steadicam shot of the bride walking up the aisle with her father. That was all shot with the 5D3 or 5D2 both of which are amazingly flattering for close ups. Wedding Video and Photography Norfolk London and throughout UK

[Noa Put]

Nigel, the shots at 02:10 and 02:18, was that the c300? and was the shot at 01:30 when they entered the church from that same camera?

[Stelios Christofides]

Originally Posted by Chris Harding

I think I have said enough that is obviously falling on deaf ears so here is some even better advice.

Take as long as you like to get your edit absolutely perfect ... if guys want to spend 60 hours on an edit then shucks it's your time!! Thr OP was simply asking if his times were normal or not ...obviously normal for some is not normal for others.

Like Frank I also 'edit in my head' mainly because like people such as Don Bloom and that era we are used to shooting-to-edit so we actually have very efficient and compact raw footage then is almost ready to edit and doesn't have any bad, wobbly or out of focus shots in it. In the days on linear editing you just had to shoot that way.

Chris

I couldn't agree with you more!!!

stelios

[Noa Put]

This thread got me thinking a bit, I think I have an idea about the amount of time I spend on each wedding but it is still a guess. But today I read about a software that registers time and which is specifically build for freelancers that can track multiple projects the same time, calculate every step they take in a project and invoice accordingly, directly from that program.

Since there is a 21 day trial I decided to give it a try and to split up every activity I do related to a wedding and see how many hours I exactly spend on meeting with the client, writing emails, phonecalls, project preparation, editing, sound, cc and so on.

maybe interesting for some that like to keep exact track of what they do and to see how much they actually should invoice :), the software is very easy to use and runs in the background while you are editing.

Time tracking software. Mac, PC and iPhone App - OfficeTime

[John H. Lee]

Originally Posted by Adrian Tan

I actually had a groom say to me recently that a video on the website was too sharp, showed too much.

Only time I've ever had this feedback, but there you go. I was surprised he was picky enough to even notice, but maybe other people notice without being able to articulate it.

Was watching one of Nigel's videos recently that had a beautiful diffused look to it, glow around highlights, and slightly desaturated sepia tone. Made me even more aware of the value of softness.

Edit: For what it's worth, if you look at the John Brawley blog post for the "Leah" video (one of the first sample videos released for the BMC), he notes that you can see the pores of her skin and then adds, "Sorry Leah".

It sounds like the first debate when HDTV came out that people wouldn't want to see that much detail on their face!

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

Nigel, the shots at 02:10 and 02:18, was that the c300? and was the shot at 01:30 when they entered the church from that same camera?

The shots at 02:10 and 02:18 were indeed from the C300. The shot at 1:30 on the Glidecam was a 5D2. The online video is only 720p & the difference in resolution is even more noticeable in 1080p on a large screen.

[Chip Thome]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

...
maybe interesting for some that like to keep exact track of what they do and to see how much they actually should invoice :), the software is very easy to use and runs in the background while you are editing.

Time tracking software. Mac, PC and iPhone App - OfficeTime

Noa, it's been proven time and again that when people in business begin tracking everything associated with a deal, they are shocked at all they REALLY have invested in it. This is true in my day job, as well as anything else. An example would be when people print the DVD cover. They concern themselves, often, with time to create the image in the software. They DON'T consider the time it takes to walk to the printer, take the paper out, trim it to fit and slide it into the sleeve. Another example, no one ever even thinks about time to format their SD cards before heading out. Now both of these might be 5 minutes each, together they are 1/6 of an hour. Every business deal has numerous little steps in it, that people frequently ignore. Each must be done though in order to deliver the product.

I think what you are considering its a great idea and would be excited to see not only your results, but you initial estimation of the project, before actually tracking the time you do spend.

Good luck with it......and expect to be blown away. :-)

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Nigel Barker

The shots at 02:10 and 02:18 were indeed from the C300.

The c300 seems to be "too good" to mix with your 5D footage as the difference in quality shows, even after conversion for the internet. I actually also have problems mixing my canon 550d with my sony cx730 as the sony is sharper, colorwise they match quite ok but I need to be careful which shots to mix and when. That's why I do the church with small handicams only and do the reception with dslr's only. In that way it doesn't show.

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Chip Thome

I think what you are considering its a great idea and would be excited to see not only your results, but you initial estimation of the project, before actually tracking the time you do spend.

I know there will be a difference as I undercharge for weddings, the market here doesn't allow to charge your actual hours, if I would I wouldn't get any job due to the (cheap) competition.

For weddings a lot also depends what happens throughout the day, I just finished a wedding where there where no speeches, no powerpoint presentations or games in the evening and no photoshoot and it took me 2,5 days to finish it from the moment I started with importing the footage until I had the dvd's and blu-ray disks ready and printed. (not measured by that tracking software, but I think it was about 24 hours, will know much better soon :))

But now I start with a wedding where a second shooter was present and I have 3 times more footage to go through, this one I expect to take 3 times longer to finish completely.

I have been using that software all day and I think it's great, never even thought about using something like that but I find it very valuable to see what time is actually spend on every single process, there is also a great chart representing all parts visually and I see I spend quite some time writing emails :)
I will do a few projects, large and small, so I can get a very good idea about average time spend.