Wedding Videographers Top 20 Gripes...
 

ok, we heard the guests gripe...

what about the videographers gripes??

I think my biggest gripe is when i spend 3+ hrs with a potential client, answering their q's, going through previous jobs and explaining how its all done, all the while theyre stringing me along and then have them go to the next guy (after they have their answers from me) and book him because he was "cheaper"

Another one is when brides call 4 days after the wedding expecting their videos completed (after being advised of SPECIFIC time of delivery...)

Family. When in laws and relatives of the clients call or email asking where the work is. They dont know the full story and they obviously dont know what was discussed so they have their own ideas as to what is expected for delivery times...

Back seat editors... need i say more...

producers who badmouth other producers. Noone has a right to do this. Its just bad business practices

People asking for cash discounts.. hey my work doesnt change, why should i charge u less?? Do u go to KMart and pick a hairdryer off the shelf, go to the check out and ask for 10bux off coz u want to pay cash?? No?? What makes me any different??

Tyrekickers.. umming and arring and wasting time..

capturing.. i hate it.. i have a dedicated capture/drafting system here but i still despise capturing.. bring on HVX with big assed P2 cards and BluRay..

Photographers who feel the need to bignote themselves

Reception venues which dont advise you that
-their dimming the lights at X O'Clock
-Speeches are about to start <meanwhile im about to have dinner in another room>
-the closest power point is in another room
-parking my ford workmobile will cost 40bux for the night, but the porche can park inthe valet area all night coz it makes the hotel look good (next time ill know to bring the ferrari)

All this after being told to give u a heads up 10 minutes before any event

umm.. Limo Drivers who speed past you when they KNOW youre stopped on the side of the road to get a shot of the cars as they come past...

priests who think theyre god.. dude, ur just an agent for him. Im religious, but some of these guys need to get out more... or have a brandy before comin to work.. lol

anyone else have any gripes?

a ceremony against a wall 40 feet tall and 200 feet wide of nothing but windows and having the afternoon sun blast right through them. All the while the bride and groom are getting married directly infront of them.. Pfft. View biew...Whatever..

Get some blinds are something..

I follow the HIPA laws..:) I'm sorry it's unlawful and against our privacy policy to divulge any personal information regarding care, treatment and discharge information about the video in question. I can only refer you to the patient err..bride for any further information. :)

ROFLMAO, damn thats a good call!!!
Love it..

umm heres another one...

when the pirest is adamant that you MUST shoot from over his shoulder... and then they dont stop getting into your shot...

mobile phones going off near my mics.. any powered mic WILL pick up tht infernal dadda dut, dadda dut, dadda dut....

1. Clients choosing songs for their videos that make you want to vommit not to mention they are almost unworkable for the edits.

2. "Wedding Coordinators" who do not know what the hell they are doing!

3. Photographers walking down the isle(prosessional) while the bride is marching.....(I wish my camera was a shotgun at that point!)

4. Multiple locations ie. 2xpreps, ceremony, photo shoot, reception all in different locations(far away too), in Los Angeles taffic...ikes!!!!!

5. Really bad speeches at receptions....I'd rather record someone sick after drinking 20 beers.

Snow
 

Snow filming is very screwy. My last wedding shot their formals standing in snow (I kid not). Talk abotu a blue cast on everything. I worked quite a while in Vegas to try and get those whites the correct color. Too long in fact. I think I need some educational material on color correcting so I can do it better / faster.

jason

Jason, with stuff like that and u need to get it out fast, grab a screengrab and post it here

there are other methods aside from colour correction...

moving on...

5. Really bad speeches at receptions....I'd rather record someone sick after drinking 20 beers.

AHAHAHAHA
No shit, i did one wedding and the speeches went for 90minutes.. they were all as boring as hell and each speaker thought he was a comedian.. and theres me and my wife standing by the tripods scratching ourselves wondering WTF were doing shooting this tripe and wasting tape.. lol
Oh ther wa sanother time that the speeches went for an hour and four minutes... again another load of tripe.. this guy thought it would be nice to thank everyone (almost everyone) by name.. then there were the spiels about their childhood and bla bla bla

Ive got a policy now, that if speeches go over 20 minutes, i hack em..

How about clients who ask a friend to sing something during their wedding ceremony, and said friend sings noticeably off key. Good luck making that work out in post...

:-)

oh god ive had that... no amount of Autotune (autotune is a ProTools plugin) can fix that crap.. lol

Oh whats worse.. i recently did a wedding where the bride sang some elton john song to the groom... beautiful in my eyes or something.. anyways... teh thought was tehre and it was for her to try .. but it realy sounded bad... no really it took alot for me to keep a straight face without bursting out in hysterics.. i know that sounds mean, but theres only so much one can take..

I actually *did* break out into hysterics once at a catholic mass with a very off-key priest.

I think it was the barking dogs outside that did it. :)

oh god..
hey i JUST finished cutting a job where the guests decided to play tarzan on the venue chandalieres.. lol Now i dont mind that, coz its not my stuff, but one guy decided he'd be a camera operator for a minut and started swinging my tripod left to right.. and this thing is like 8ft in the air... needless to say, that camera got packed up and locked away... funny though.. but i wasnt impressed at teh time.. and these were "upper class" clients too.. which is what astounds me.. absolutely NO respect..

and i guess my BIGGEST gripe, is people who dont read contracts...
im now refining mine for the last time. if i have to be any more obvious i think ill puke..

At the reception sometimes the guests are asked to sing a song with the word "Love" in it in order to get the B&G to kiss (instead of the traditional tapping of the champaign glass with silverware).

So I'm trying to get just 5 minutes uninterupted, just 5 mins! to throw some food down my throat and every 1 min I gotta get up to catch some ridiculously stupid rendition of Love Me Tender sang by 3 people that started cocktail hour with shots. I hate this because you've got to be ready and you can't relax for a few minutes to eat.

During my own tenure shooting weddings, not once did I ever let a customer sit in on the editing process.

- photographers who are constantly in the aisle during the processional

- photographers who constantly walk in front of me, even though I've been filming from the same spot for 5 minutes

- brides who change the wedding day schedule the day before the wedding and don't tell me and then expect me to somehow have known

- church officials who insist I not use my digital-voice-recorders because "they might interfere" with the church system; even though I've explained 3 times that this is impossible

- ceremonies that aren't conducted like they were at the previous night's rehearsal

2 fricken hour long ceremonys. With 4 cameras. Crikey!

Mike

Guys, don't sweat the off-key vocals. They did not hear them before the wedding or at the wedding. Chances are that they will not watch an episode of American Idol and suddenly learn that their friend/relative/etc are not in tune. In fact, watch the start of an American Idol season and you will be much relieved. There are tons of folks out there that have absolutely no ear for music and WORSE.

hehehe try an indian Hindu wedding mate.. 4 hours for the grooms part of the ceremony, 1 hour for the brides, then 40 odd minutes together.. then another ceremony at the house (another hour) ....

i had one guy want me to do this (2 cameras) and he didnt want to pay more than 2grand for the LOT... needless to say i walked away from that one..

As for those not wanting to use the mics coz of interferance. its usually THEIR systems ahich are inferior which are more prone to interferance from trucks and cars driving by than it is from our gear causing that interferance..

Either way, when this happens, i grab the groom aside, take him outside and plant a mic on him... even if I have to have the mic capsule pokng out of his pocket or whatever... Ill do what i have to..

Uneducated people making these type of calls really gets on my nerves

My favorite weddings to shoot are the ones outside of the grand Victorian houses, which are normally located about 1 mile from the local train yard. No microphone or dubbing can get rid of the damn train horns from their vows, especially since the typical horn blow lasts 5 - 7 seconds and there's 2 or 3 trains moving around.

-Michael

I stopped doing weddings. I do legal videography and live music shows. Both a lot less stressful. Not once has someone gotten someone "cheaper". For weddings "cheaper" usually means Uncle Bob with his fancy new camcorder he got at Best Buy. The one he has no clue as to how to operate. The sad truth is most people can't tell a difference in quality. Remember when you would hear people back in the early days of DVD claim that DVD didn't look any better than VHS. It's all just moving pictures to most of these knobs.

I did a wedding where I was guaranteed to be able to hear the ceremony from the great sound system (there was no place they would let me put a decent microphone as it would ruin the decor) only to have the preist unable to work his microphone and promptly give up wherein he spoke in the lowest monotone ever.

I've had this one just recently. A "friend" who is a wedding planner, this month, knew a few of the wedding planner basics to talk the talk. She claimed as a personal favor, she'd help me get some wheels under my new business endeavor. After probing her a bit more for specifics and getting a look at her so-called brochure and "website", I realized that she is pretty much full of **it.

Jeff

I did a one camera gig for a mates wedding, and even though I was a friend doing something nice, both mothers became directors. Imagine, two short, slightly plump Italian women clip clopping toward you, right infornt of shot and telling you where to shoot, how to shoot it and asking questions 5 minutes before and after the ceremony.

The most annoying thing about it was the bride's mother (sitting at the front row and I'm about 3 meters up so I can get a nice angle onthe front), leaning out and pointing, telling me to either move to the other side of the altar, or signaling to me "are you getting this?"