Something a little different...plus my first SDE

[Eric Gan]

So this weekend was my first same-day-edit. Tried to plan ahead as much as possible, but I was still sweating it as the showtime drew closer and closer. I left the church at about 3pm; furiously reviewed and captured footage until 4:30pm. Edited till 6:30, then render to DV, encode to MPG, burn DVD. Just in time to show up at the reception at 7:30pm.

My question to you folks - how much extra (if any) do you charge for a same-day-edit? It's not actually any extra work, since they would have had second camera coverage at the photoshoot, but instead, I left and worked on the SDE, leaving only one camera for the photo session. But it's definitely a lot more stress! The good thing is that it's a fantastic opportunity to show your work in front of a large audience. It's also quite satisfying to be able to see the audience's response, which was overwhelmingly positive.

I was determined to get good audio for this one. For the most part, it was a success. I had the following setup:

1) UHF Wireless on camera 1, mic on the groom.
2) iRiver and lav on the Pastor
3) Line-in to my Powerbook from the house mixer
4) Onboard audio from camera 2

We had a couple days of pre-wedding shoot. One day for the little short film. It runs over 10 minutes long and has lots of inside jokes, so a casual audience might not find it so funny. Another day for interviews and B-roll fillers.

Equipment: 2 FX1's, Glidecam Smooth Shooter (yeh, my first wedding shoot with the vest), 12" Powerbook G4.

Lot's of things I wish I could've changed for the SDE, but as Jack Bauer would say "There's no time!"

Alright, on with the show. As always, constructive comments are most appreciated.

http://weddings.brainzstorm.com/stananduna.html

[Peter Jefferson]

Eric, im downlading now, but im just curious why u encoded it to DV then MPG...

why didnt you just run it as QT AVI full screen off the laptop?

For SDE's what i try to do is collate all slideshow and preshoot material and have those prerendered on the timeline, before i even start on the actual days material. Can you not do the same with FCP? ie render it out in chunks, then do a final render of the finished piece, in turn, those prerendered bits dont need further processing... I'll be back once the downlaods are done.. nice looking site by the way :)

[Peter Jefferson]

i started downloading the survivor intro. started playing when the download hit 50% and then it nuked all my explorer windows...
Im running QTPRo V7, and this is the first ive seen this happen...
From what i saw, and cosnidering im running a calibrated monitor watch ur exposure. On PC, it looks nice, but when i change to a TV gamma, it blew out... might be an idea to run a broadcast colours filter... thats jsut on the survivor clip though..
another thing to watch out for is copyright..
I wouldnt recomend breaching copyright and making it public mate... its just something to be aware of...

[Monday Isa]

Hey Eric,
I viewed your Love Story/SDE and first off good job over all. The love story part was very nice and easy to follow, it wasn't that long which I thought was pretty good. The SDE was very simple but it was solid. That's where anyone starting their first one needs to do with one (including myself I have one Oct 28). Just make it solid and clean and as you gain more experience make them more fanicer or so forth. Thanks for sharing and you have a solid piece there. Keep up the good work.

Monday

[Patrick Moreau]

Hi Eric,

I believed we talked about this a couple weeks ago before it was shot. I think you did an awesome job, especially considering it was your first SDE and it was cut on a 12" powerbook.

I thought some of the love story footage was really well shot. The interviews were simple but it worked very well. Fitting the actual proposal footage into the presentation was also a great touch. A couple minor suggestions, I would watch out for distractions. Some of your interview shots had junk in the background, which I think can take away from the interview itself. I personally go for a black background to keep attention on the story, but even a simple background works very well. Mixing in the love story footage with the interviews was a great idea, I thought, but I would have used less motion and less shots during the proposal portion as some of the great love story shots can distract the viewer from the story. I personally find that those types of shots work great for smaller interview segments such as how they met, or what they love about each other.

I thought the ending with the photo idea was great, buy I also thought the fast scrolling text took away a bit of the power from your ending, and didn't add too much to the overall production. The show is mainly about the bride and groom afterall, and everybody there should know their name.

In terms of pricing for the SDE, you may be there for the same time, but I think there is a lot of value in what you are doing, the stress is also worth something, plus the talent and equipment and planning required to pull it off. We try to make it a reasonable upgrade as I too love the audiences reaction and it is a great way to share your work.

Thanks for sharing.

[Eric Gan]

Originally Posted by Peter Jefferson

why didnt you just run it as QT AVI full screen off the laptop?

Peter, that's what I normally would've done, but they had someone else responsible for a slideshow and he was in charge of the A/V stuff. Since he was using a PC, I figured it was easiest to just hand him an MPG file and have a DVD as backup. I did bring my computer with the QT AVI just in case. The MPG rendering from the DV file only takes slightly longer than realtime, so it wasn't a big deal.

Thanks for the warning on copyright. I'll plead it as parody. I guess this forum is public, but the page is not advertised on the site. It's a private link for the couple, which will probably be removed after 60 days.

Not sure what happened with your Explorer there. I've watched all the files successfully on a PC and Mac. Probably a one-time fluke thing.

And yes, I didn't bother to throw on a broadcast safe filter before I rendered out. I figured it was going to be shown off a PC anyways. I'll definitely do that before the final DVDs go out.

Originally Posted by Monday Isa

Thanks for sharing and you have a solid piece there. Keep up the good work.

Thanks Monday. I always enjoy watching your clips as well. We talked about iRivers in a different thread - I did get one off eBay and have found the Music Manager software to be perfectly acceptable. I don't know if you're still using the UMS firmware which limits you to 96kbps recording, but you can easily change the firmware to the latest Manager version and record up to 320kbps. The files can easily be transferred off the player as MP3s.

Originally Posted by Patrick Moreau

I also thought the fast scrolling text took away a bit of the power from your ending

Yes I agree, but the couple asked for some credits at the end to acknowledge the actors for the short film, so I figured, scrolling text was the quickest and easiest. Your work is an inspiration and I hope you don't mind me copying some of your style. I struggled with lighting the interviews because 1) I don't own any proper lights, and 2) it was done quickly during a barbeque at their house. Not really the ideal setting. I think my next purchase will be a simple lighting kit. Maybe just some DIY lights from Home Depot.

[Jonathan Nelson]

I thought it was great stuff!

Extremely creative.

[Eric Chan]

Hi Eric,

Nice work... I used to do SDE, but quit doing it now because it is too stressful. And I used to charge $500 cdn for it here in Vancouver.