Same Day Edit from this weekend

[Patrick Moreau]

I think this is our best same day edit/love story to date so I wanted to put it up and share it. We interviewed the couple separately, then did engagement photos and videos and put together what we would normally do for a love story. We then added in a final 3 minutes using footage from the wedding day and voice overs from the interview. The groom actually had the paper he wrote his proposal on, and seeing as the bride ha completely forgotten what was said when he actually proposed, when he read it for the video and we used that a s a voice over for her getting ready on the wedding day, it went over extremely well.

You will need to be able to view .mov files, which I believe is only quicktime. The file is also pretty large, but it loads very quickly with high speed internet. I tried exporting it a little larger this time, but I'm not too happy with the encoding so I think I will be switching it later today for a smaller but cleaner version.

For those interested and who do something similar to this often, there are only two small portions with childhood photos, each about a minute long, which can be easily scrolled through if need be. Other than that, we did the photo and video. Total length is just over 15 minutes.

Thanks to anybody who has the time to watch the whole thing and lets me know what they think.

http://www.smcouples.com/Samples/ThorSDE.mov

Patrick

[Peter Jefferson]

Hey Pat,
Ive always loved your thoughts and the work youve shown in the past has been inspiring, so im downloading as i write this.

Looking forward to checking it out :)

Can i ask, how much of this was actually edited on the day? Obviously youd set up the slideshows and V/O's prior, but im just curious as to how long it took <on the actual day> and what NLE you used to put it all together.

[Peter Jefferson]

wow..
loved EVERY second of it..

great editing.. some of the best ive ever seen.. with a nice mould into the slideshow elements.. good clear sound.. awesome exposures.. great interview lighting.. i particualrly like the black background as it forsces focus ONLY on them... if only corp clients could learn from this.. lol
no cheesy shots.. and the ones that could be construed as cheesy were (or seemed) to be natural events which the client initiated.. it shows, as these elements are not forced.. u can tell a staged shot froma mile away, and i could with this..

with the slideshows, i think having the pics with softened edges and a themed background animation underneath may have polished those elements a little further.. maybe a wide shot.. out of focus... looping... trees or a waterfall or something from the park during the shoot... either way, theres nothign wrong with any of this.. in fact, its some of teh best prewedding stuff ive ever seen.. better than my shit anyway.. lol then again, my clients are more into the "turn my car into a ferrari" or "make me pop out of a bottle" kinda stuff..

This feels natural.. elegant.. tasteful...

its a stunning piece of wedding video art... a documantary of life..
THIS is WHY we are here... THIS is WHY we do what we do..
FACTS..
REAL LIFE...

Awesome AWESOME work mate..

This is something we should all strive to achieve.

Thank you for sharing, its been enlightening :)

[Terry Esslinger]

Patrick,

Absolutely outstanding.

How long did it take you to edit and then put the ceremony footage with the preproduced sections. In other words how long did you need between the ceremony and the reception where I am guessing this was shown. And how did you show it. What media was it on and how was it projected/shown? You know, nuts and bolts.
Again, one of the best I've seen.
They must have loved it.

[Patrick Moreau]

Originally Posted by Terry Esslinger

Patrick,

Absolutely outstanding.

How long did it take you to edit and then put the ceremony footage with the preproduced sections. In other words how long did you need between the ceremony and the reception where I am guessing this was shown. And how did you show it. What media was it on and how was it projected/shown? You know, nuts and bolts.
Again, one of the best I've seen.
They must have loved it.

Thanks for the comments Terry.

Going into the wedding reception I had the first 14 minutes or so already completed with the first ten already exported for use in DVD Studio Pro. I had a gap where the groom was reading his proposal and I used text to mark what footage would go there, so the first 40 seconds had 'bride getting ready' which faded into the last ten seconds of the groom reading the proposal then the rest was all done on the day of. The voice overs, minus their vows, were already cut together prior to the reception but they were rather loosely placed so I could feel out the footage and make it work.

The original plan was that I was to be back at my hotel for 5 and have until 8 to complete the last three minutes, export the last portion, open it in DVD studio pro and tie the toe segments together and then build a DVD to the desktop. However, the photo-session ran about 30 minutes late and I kinda lost track of time there as I was doing photo for that part and had the other videographer covering it for video. It took about 1:40 to get all of the video footage in place, so everything except for the photos at the end (just 2) and the photo segment in the middle of the same day stuff. Turns out my USB cable was with my irivers, which was already at the reception, so I had to go grab that to be able to download the photos to fill in that 40 seconds which I had marked for photos. I arrived at the reception at about 7:40 and setup th elaptop there and finished the rest off in about 15 minutes, then left it to export the second portion (which took 8 min) and then build the DVD (5 min). While it was encoding, we set up a projector and screen and stereo system. Finished and was ready to show it at 8:10 with it scheduled to be shown at 8:30. We then filmed half the speeches and showed the presentation right around where it was supposed to be shown.

So, in the end, it was run from the laptop using the standard DVD player using a VGA out which was run into the projector and sound was run from the laptop into an amp and speakers.

Hope that helps.

[Patrick Moreau]

Originally Posted by Peter Jefferson

Hey Pat,
Ive always loved your thoughts and the work youve shown in the past has been inspiring, so im downloading as i write this.

Looking forward to checking it out :)

Can i ask, how much of this was actually edited on the day? Obviously youd set up the slideshows and V/O's prior, but im just curious as to how long it took <on the actual day> and what NLE you used to put it all together.

Thanks for taking the time to post Peter. Especially to write in such detail is greatly appreciated and really means a lot. I really wanted the raw life kinda feel, I wanted it to be very clean and tight but also very real, so I'm glad you commented on that especially.

I already answered most of your questionsin the above post to Terry. All the voice overs were already in place, all the music was chosen, and everything except for about 3 minutes of footage was completed prior to the reception. After the rehearsal I even dumped in the part with the bride walking down the aisle and timed it with his comments so that right after he finished talking it would transition into her walking down the aisle at the rehearsal which fased into her coming down the aisle at the actual ceremony. So, in the end, a lot of it was already in place and laid out before hand.

Everything on the day was cut on a macbook using Final cut pro with the photo animations done in a standalone program called photo to movie.


Thanks again for your time Peter.

Patrick

[Eric Gan]

Patrick, thanks for sharing this. I've got my first same-day-edit coming up in two weeks, and I have it planned much the same way. Hopefully, with most of the clip completed beforehand, dropping in the last 2 or 3 minutes of footage from the day won't be too difficult.

I'm still debating whether to stay and shoot the photo session, or start on the edit right after the ceremony. I'll have a second cameraman covering the photo session, so if I leave, I could get an extra hour or so for the edit. I might need that considering this will be my first time. The ceremony is scheduled to end at 2:30pm, and the presentation scheduled for 7:30pm.

Did you make any notes (either mental or written) during the day as to which shot is a "print"? There really isn't much time to review footage, so I hope I'll know exactly which shots to selectively capture for the edit. That should speed things up considerably.

Oh, and a smashingly fine job on this one. Bravo.

[Patrick Moreau]

The biggest thing that made mine work in such a short time was that I shot in the morning beside my other videographer and I shot only for the same day edit while he shot for their video in the end. After the preps but before the ceremony I then started the prep tape downloading which had about 20 min on it. After the ceremony but before the photos, I started the main camera form the ceremony downloading. When I was ready to start editing, I had a lot of the footage ready to work, and I had shot a lot less filler than if I was shooting normally.

From the sounds of it, you have more than enough time even if you shoot a lot, just try and get as much downloaded before hand OR selectively import a couple minutes here and there. Having a good idea of what you want to do and where it will go was a huge huge helper.

[Don Bazley]

Patrick,

What cameras did you use for this?

-Don

[Dante Waters]

Patrick,

Job well done... I'll give Peter Kudos for the good eye...

I haven't quite watched the whole thing in one sitting but the
clarity is not bad... For a SDE that's a wonderful job. I like some of what Peter suggested.

[Patrick Moreau]

Don,

The interviews were shot with a PD170 and PDx10. The main video was shot with the 170, x10 and two vx2100s and one vx2000.

Patrick

[Peter Chung]

Patrick, that was awesome! I loved your setup for the interviews!

How did you have your lighting and backdrop set up, if you don't mind me asking? How many lights did you use? How did you get the background black?

Thanks and kudos on the job well done!
Peter

[Patrick Moreau]

The interview portion was actually thrown together rather roughly as the space we have isn't quite big enough.

I used two lights, 600 from the front left and 250 from the rear as a hair light. I then use d areflector to the left to help fill in the shadows. There was a black backdrop about 8 feet behind the chairs and the cams were probably 12 feet away, just to make the interviewees more comfortable. I then pulled the blacks down a bit in post to help make the background so black, but with a little more room, the depth of field would have done it for me. An extra light rather than a reflector also would have been nice, and a softbox rather than the translucent umbrella we used.

[Peter Chung]

Thanks for sharing, Patrick! I appreciate you sharing your knowledge.

I really liked the look of your interviews :) So, no other lights besides those two were used? No room lights? I'm asking because I've never used controlled lighting but seeing your interviews definitely increases the production value and makes me want to take a second look. Thanks again for sharing your work! I've really learned a lot from the forums as to what is possible :)

Another question: during the interviews, did you shoot with two cameras? one medium wide and one closeup? or was that done in post?

Thanks!
Peter

[Patrick Moreau]

Hi Peter,

Yes, we used two cameras for the interviews. I spend a ot of time cutting the audio so it blends well between the two people talking, and I fnid the different angles gives you much more freedom to cut out pauses or sentences here and there to really tighten up the overall flow.

And yes, two lights total with one reflector and the room lights turned down as much as posisble, all windows blocked very well.