Educational resources for wedding videography

[Adrian Tan]

I noticed that Craig M asked about this in the "photographer walks backwards into water" thread, and thought it might be worth starting as a separate topic. Would be really interested to hear what people say.

Personally, I've never read a book on wedding videography, but I've seen on Amazon that there are a bunch out there.

So, what would you recommend in terms of:

Blogs
Forums/Facebook groups/chatrooms/newsgroups
Youtube/Vimeo channels
Mailing lists
Courses
Websites in general
Books
DVDs
Other

My list would go:

-- Blogs: I don't follow any, but obviously there's Still Motion's blog, and then a bunch of general filmmaking-type blogs -- Shane Hurlbut, Philip Bloom, Vincent Laforet, Cheesycam, Andrew Wonder's blog, Videocopilot
-- Courses: Creative Live, then for filmmaking in general -- Lynda, Adobe videos, AE tuts...
-- Youtube channels
-- Forums/Facebook groups/chatrooms/newsgroups: for Australia, apparently there's some sort of Australian Wedding Cinematographers group.
-- Mailing lists
-- Websites in general
-- Books: I get inspiration from photography books, and occasionally from American Cinematographer
-- DVDs: one I'd recommend for filmmaking in general is the Hollywood Camera Moves series.
-- Other: I guess there's simply inspiration from life, or any art -- take a walk in an art gallery, watch a movie, read a novel, enrol in a sculpture class.

I'd want to add:

-- I'm not sure there's any substitute, or any faster way to learn, than: (a) simply studying the work of other videographers and photographers; (b) learning on the job, following a more experienced person around.
-- I haven't found anywhere wedding-specific that's more informative than this forum.

[Daniel Latimer]

love24fps.com is a blog that puts up high quality work everyday and some instructional post.

[Craig McKenna]

Great post Adrian!

Originally Posted by Daniel Latimer

love24fps.com is a blog that puts up high quality work everyday and some instructional post.

This is a brilliant resource - thank you for sharing it!

I can recommend the following courses at CreativeLive:

Ray Roman's Wedding Cinematography Course - perhaps the best that I've seen.

Rob Adams and Vanessa Joy's Wedding Cinematography Course - this was pulled as Rob stole some of the content from the course; nevertheless, Rob created a great course, even if I find him a tad condescending in his mannerisms. I believe the course that he stole ideas from is available here: Download Full Workshops | Pennylane Workshops

Final Cut Pro X - Rob Adams with Vanessa Joy - Another great resource, allowing you to get to grips with working on the FCPX timeline.

Susan Stripling - Creative Wedding Photography - Although a photo resource, the detail shots can really help to bolster your understanding of creative macro photography. Susan is a very talented photographer.

As for other resources:

Wedding Videography: Start to Finish. Author: Joanna Silber. I've yet to read all of this, but it's OK for some light reading if you're new to videography. I am sure that Joanna is a successful videographer, as she sums up the common problems that videographers run into well, but I don't think that she's adding anything to someone who has shot a wedding before. Later in the book though, she does have sections on pricing, business ideas and maintaining the business, which may or may not be useful to you.

--

Looking forward to seeing any other recommendations!

[Peter Riding]

Susan Stripling's hubby - Cliff Mautner - is also the real deal when it comes to wedding photography. He's a case in point where he has all the infrastructure in place for high end clientèle but sometimes comments that he wonders if it makes him a better living than being mainstream would :- ) Both he and SS are reliable quality sources for sure.

As for other resources. No, I don't think there are any specifically for wedding videography. There are all the dSLR video enthusiast quasi-educational sites that sprang up but they just seem endlessly to repeat what they told each other the previous week. Same old same old about 24fps being the only legit fps because you absolutely must have the film look, what flat profile to tweak etc.

As regards the shorts, I'm of the opinion that when you've seen one you've seen them all :- )

Even for stills online resources specifically for weddings are few and far between. For year the Digital Wedding Forum was excellent and had thousands of members, international conventions, seminars, the works. I was active in it for 10 years. But it more or less imploded with the recession - it is a subscription site.

Fred Miranda forum is free and has a dedicated wedding room that has been active for years. Don't expect it to be of any use for video though - you're more likely to encounter hostility than help with that :- ) But the valuable discussions on this and on the old DWF revolve around the matter of running a business and dealing with clients - and thats the same whether its stills or video or both.

Likewise with video shorts, on Fred Miranda when browsing the members galleries for critiquing, its soon apparent that they all look the same :- )

Pete

[Craig McKenna]

Originally Posted by Peter Riding

Susan Stripling's hubby - Cliff Mautner - is also the real deal when it comes to wedding photography. He's a case in point where he has all the infrastructure in place for high end clientèle but sometimes comments that he wonders if it makes him a better living than being mainstream would :- ) Both he and SS are reliable quality sources for sure.

Pete

Yes, I was recommended Cliff at the same time as hearing a recommendation for his wife, but I decided to go with Susan Stripling's courses (I also got her "30 Days with..." but have yet to watch it!) as she was said to be able to get great macro shots and I figured I could use that as a "Wow" moment for my films...

Do you have any favourite courses from Cliff? I've considered buying the, "Texture, Dimension and Mood" course, but it seems to be a lot of money for 80 minutes, so I'm going to buy the 25 PhotoWeek courses when I have the money for $249 and Cliff's course comes as part of that (and is $79 on its own).

Thanks for the recommendation Pete! Such a shame that the best forum seems to have perished (the one you state was a subscription site).

[Robert Benda]

Check out photographer Scott Robert Lin's Creative Live Course. Great info on posing and lighting, if you're into the creative glamour shots.

[Peter Riding]

Craig, I'm not a courses sort of a person so I can't comment on the content of anyones products. But I can say that SS and CM are solid reliable sources of information and of course work to a very high standard. SS was a moderator on DWF, maybe she still is. Cliff was a frequent poster providing lots of detailed technical information.

I was a monthly subscriber to Lynda dot com for many years. Again that is a top notch source for technical training in the industry standard software tools. I learned Dreamweaver from scratch on using it and wrote my site from a blank page up. My site is messy compared to off the shelf solutions but I have advantages such as it looks like no other Wordpress template, I can amend and customise it to my hearts content, experiment, make any changes I want immediately etc, all at zero cost. Lynda lacks some courses it ought to have such as advanced up to date Vegas Pro.

There is a disconnect between the photographic styles popular in the USA and in the UK. The "great" USA stills can to us look overdone with the off-camera flash, eyes over-sharpened and over whitened, skin over-smoothed and so on. Then there is their love of getting subjects in front of graffitied walls, inside abandoned factories, up rusty fire escapes, trying to be cool but trying too hard and having the opposite effect :- )

I don't consume much photo training at all. Rather like driving a car - what is there to think about once you've got a lot of miles on the clock. Thats partly why I incorporated video into my business - to increase my personal interest with some new challenges.

Pete

[Craig McKenna]

Originally Posted by Robert Benda

Check out photographer Scott Robert Lin's Creative Live Course. Great info on posing and lighting, if you're into the creative glamour shots.

Which one do you have Robert? The Crazy, Stupid Light, Crazy Stupid Wedding Light or the Think Like a $10K Photographer?

I have watched him talk in some of their free videos promoting these courses, but have never purchased one from him.

Originally Posted by Peter Riding

Craig, I'm not a courses sort of a person so I can't comment on the content of anyones products. But I can say that SS and CM are solid reliable sources of information and of course work to a very high standard. SS was a moderator on DWF, maybe she still is. Cliff was a frequent poster providing lots of detailed technical information.

I was a monthly subscriber to Lynda dot com for many years. Again that is a top notch source for technical training in the industry standard software tools. I learned Dreamweaver from scratch on using it and wrote my site from a blank page up. My site is messy compared to off the shelf solutions but I have advantages such as it looks like no other Wordpress template, I can amend and customise it to my hearts content, experiment, make any changes I want immediately etc, all at zero cost. Lynda lacks some courses it ought to have such as advanced up to date Vegas Pro.

There is a disconnect between the photographic styles popular in the USA and in the UK. The "great" USA stills can to us look overdone with the off-camera flash, eyes over-sharpened and over whitened, skin over-smoothed and so on. Then there is their love of getting subjects in front of graffitied walls, inside abandoned factories, up rusty fire escapes, trying to be cool but trying too hard and having the opposite effect :- )

I don't consume much photo training at all. Rather like driving a car - what is there to think about once you've got a lot of miles on the clock. Thats partly why I incorporated video into my business - to increase my personal interest with some new challenges.

Pete

That's really interesting... they've clearly made money out of posting on forums eventually then!!!

Would you recommend re-subscribing to their forum (DWF)? I would definitely hunt down their threads and posts.

It's amazing what you can learn online, and also how much other tutors are able to captivate your mind from their experience in the field, unlike teachers who only have the classroom experience to discuss, life experience in general and the ability to discuss other friends' experiences in a range of different industries. I honestly think that online resources could easily take over the Education system if people were rebels and didn't require qualifications... just let people follow their dreams and become as skilled as they can be in something that drives them... that was a little off-topic, but your ability to learn Dreamweaver from scratch is just one minute fraction of amazing learning that takes place online... the only problem is searching for it, finding it and then finding the time to go through it!

As a Comp Science Grad (Internet Computing, which is Comp Sci with modules in the Internet rather than Maths), I can understand why you'd be really pleased to be able to change site design and other things at the drop of a hat... after all, there are a lot of things that can go wrong maintenance wise and functionality wise.... but my main preference is for my website (which doesn't exist yet) to display on mobiles and websites equally beautifully and brilliantly, with a focus on minimalism. I would like my customers to digest everything about me in minutes, so that I recoup their attention and interest... but that's another subject altogether!

Hahaha @ the opposite effect mentioned in your post!

Interesting to see how video has provided you with more of a challenge Peter! Do you still find that you're learning from experience in both fields? Part of my growing/obsessive interest in wedding videography is due to the endless possibilities to learn.

Not to sidetrack the thread... keep the links and resources coming!!!

[Peter Riding]

Would you recommend re-subscribing to their forum (DWF)? I would definitely hunt down their threads and posts.

You can join with a monthly plan and I think there's no commitment so it would only cost $10 to get in. There is / was an approval process but that was very lax at times.

There are tens of thousands of posts in the archives. That makes it an excellent resource . The majority of posts though are from previous members who were only active when things were very easy, so you need to identify them and take what they say with a very large bucket of salt :- ) But at least its lots of different opinions on just about all the issues that ever arise.

DWF did add a section for video called Fusion but it was never very active. The guru on there was Chris Mann. He is very knowledgeable in both stills and video and he also uses the type of cams for video that you favour. He is based near Guildford now having previously worked on a tropical paradise island for years. He would be worth contacting direct if you have specific technical questions.

Pete

[Craig McKenna]

Thanks Peter, I'm going to consider it!

I wish this thread had grown 3 pages deep by now - surely there are more resources available to us?!

No wonder a few videographers are killing it in the Education sector.

[Noel Lising]

Originally Posted by Craig McKenna

Great post Adrian!



This is a brilliant resource - thank you for sharing it!

I can recommend the following courses at CreativeLive:

Ray Roman's Wedding Cinematography Course - perhaps the best that I've seen.

I was looking into this course. How did it change your shooting style or did it?

Thanks

[Leon Bailey]

I personally want to do more wedding video blogs and tutorials, I just need to get more work and work with vendors more locally. Could be a good niche with it!

Originally Posted by Daniel Latimer

love24fps.com is a blog that puts up high quality work everyday and some instructional post.

Great site! They posted one of my wedding trailers before. They passed on the actual wedding film because they said they posted it before and was the same, which it was NOT. I didn't argue with them, because you don't want to burn bridges, but blah lol. Other than that, the site could be a lot bigger, but don't know how dedicated they are into it.

Originally Posted by Craig McKenna

Rob Adams and Vanessa Joy's Wedding Cinematography Course - this was pulled as Rob stole some of the content from the course; nevertheless, Rob created a great course, even if I find him a tad condescending in his mannerisms.

I watched their creative live and enjoyed it, but something seemed off to me with how he was acting. It didn't seem genuine and then bam a few weeks later he as well as Jasmine Star and others were exposed lol...That would be why!

Package wise, I don't think what he was showing in his course is what he is actually offering, but that is just my thoughts. I did adapt their movie poster idea, which I have printed for brides and they loved. :)

[Adrian Tan]

Random thought... If you break down a wedding into scenes or even specific shots, there's lots of inspiration to be found outside wedding videography.

For instance, big wedding moments really are a staple of TV and film. I remember getting inspiration from I Give It A Year and Midsomer Murders for covering speeches, and the Guns N' Roses November Rain music video for ceremony.

For some of the other random stuff that happens during weddings, here's some examples from television: Wheeler Dealers (cars), Restoration Home, Homes Under The Hammer (houses), random commercials (accessories), Nigella Bites (food). I mean, I often think, "How could I shoot this car in an interesting way that I haven't done before?" And then I just shoot it like I've always done anyway. But, if I could be bothered trying to lift my game, what better place to look than a car program, where the camera operators are continually faced with the problem.

Photographers are maybe more inclined to think "look outside the wedding context" than videographers. It's useful to have a styling/product photography background for the accessory shots, it's useful to have a fashion background for posed shots, a journalism background for candids, etc. Jasmine Star writes in one of her blogs that, when looking for inspiration as to how to pose groups of groomsmen, she looks at band photos.

[Robert Benda]

Originally Posted by Leon Bailey

I watched their creative live and enjoyed it, but something seemed off to me with how he was acting.

Was it all the sniffing? I bet it was all the sniffing he was doing.

[Leon Bailey]

Originally Posted by Adrian Tan

Random thought... If you break down a wedding into scenes or even specific shots, there's lots of inspiration to be found outside wedding videography.

For instance, big wedding moments really are a staple of TV and film. I remember getting inspiration from I Give It A Year and Midsomer Murders for covering speeches, and the Guns N' Roses November Rain music video for ceremony.

For some of the other random stuff that happens during weddings, here's some examples from television: Wheeler Dealers (cars), Restoration Home, Homes Under The Hammer (houses), random commercials (accessories), Nigella Bites (food). I mean, I often think, "How could I shoot this car in an interesting way that I haven't done before?" And then I just shoot it like I've always done anyway. But, if I could be bothered trying to lift my game, what better place to look than a car program, where the camera operators are continually faced with the problem.

Absolutely right!

Originally Posted by Robert Benda

Was it all the sniffing? I bet it was all the sniffing he was doing.

LOL!