Wedding Shoot - The Day Before

"Game time!"

It's the day before my next shoot and it's time to get pumped!!

I've been at this now for about 5yrs and I still get nervous about shooting weddings. Weddings are so dynamic and a lot can go wrong (and have), so you really have to hope for the best and be prepared for the worst.

And that's the key for any wedding video shoot; being prepared.

There are few things I have to check and get ready before every shoot. Here are the main things I have prep'd and ready to go...

1) Tapes - And not just have available, but make sure they're rewound and ready to go. Also, good to have them prep'd with proper labeling (e.g., Smith Ceremony, Smith Reception)

2) Recharge batteries - Ok, ideally, you might not want to do this the night before, only cause you might not have the time to recharge them all. If your gig is on Saturday, recharging them Wed or Thurs should be good.

3) Camera check - Clean lens and make sure it works. I usually shoot a few minutes worth of video, just to see how the thing is working. You might find that you need to adjust a few things prior to your shoot. And sometimes shooting test video just gets me reaquainted with my camera and all the bells and whistles that it has.

4) Wireless mic - Test out to check audio levels and make sure you have fresh batteries.


5) Your outfit - Yes, I'm serious. You'd be surprise how much time and hassle this saves you. Imagine you have an idea of what you're going to wear, only to find out those clothes are in the hamper......and have ketchup stains (so going ghetto and pulling it out and ironing isn't an option).

It makes life easier knowing that you have your outfit ironed and ready to go the night before. There are waaaay too many things you have to think about the "morning of" as it is, so make life easier for yourself and get it ready the night or two nights before.

6) Projector, laptop, screen - I typically do a slideshow at my wedding shoots, so this stuff might not apply to you. But if it does, make sure you have all these things ready to go. Test the projector, laptop and slideshow before heading out. I tend to test and load all this stuff the night before. That way I can just get ready, grab my camera and head out.

7) Itinerary - Hopefully one was provided to you (you'd be surprised). Study it....visual the shoot....how you're going to navigate between multiple sites....where the optimal shooting spots are. If you have a partner, this is definitely something you want to go over and plan out together.

8) Petro - Most weddings take place someplace exotic and out in the boondocks. Be prepared to drive and have your car filled up the day before.


Like most things in life, being prepared is more than half the battle. Sorry I have to cut my parting shots, but I have to iron my shirt now : )

Wish me luck!

YouTube - Get Discovered!

Like most of you, I have my sites that I go to everyday; engadget, espn, craigslist, yahoo..just to name a few. But my fav of the bunch is YouTube. I can spend hours (and have) just watching random videos; everything from basic vlogs (video blogs), 'dancing with the stars' to home made variety shows.

Whatever your heart's content, you can find it on YouTube. I typically search for old standup comedy...UFC fights....how tos (great Photoshop tutorials)...and sports stuff. I also like to check the most viewed videos list, just to see what the latest and greatest is (lately it's been soccer highlights and foreign soap operas...haha).

The thing that blows my mind about YouTube and all the other video sites, is the ability for ANYONE to have their voice heard....literally around the world....in a matter of minutes.

Think about it.

If you have a camera, a video editing application (movie maker...incl. w/ XP), an idea and a little bit of time, you can blast your video to the world in a few minutes.

That's powerful.

It's so powerful, even the US presidential candidates are using YouTube to reach people. Although not all the viewers on YouTube are ideal (live out of the country, too young to vote), they're still able to blast their message across to anyone willing to listen that they would've never ever had a chance to reach otherwise.

Here's another thing YouTube has done away with:

EXCUSES.

Excuses for all the people who have dreams of being a singer (link is to one of the most inspiring stories on YouTube...posted a video of herself singing and a year later touring with Justin Timberlake), teacher, dancer, having their own cooking show...it's right there for the taking.





There are thousands (if not millions) of people watching YouTube videos everyday. Do you think that maybe, just maybe, a few of the people watching out there might have the right connection that could possibly lead to a big break? Ok, so maybe not so big in the beginning, but at least get you on the right track.


Of course there are! (please see singer)


If you have the talent, someone will take notice. And like anything that's hot the internet, the news spreads fast. It's the viral effect.

NO Auditions!

NO Traveling!

NO Agent (well, not right away)!


And that's powerful!


What are you waiting for? Who knows, in a year's time you too can be touring with your favorite artist or hosting your own show.

So go for it! Get discovered today!



*Wow, it's been a while eh. I'm still learning and understanding what it takes to keep up a blog, and let me tell you....it can be work. One of the keys to a successful blog is dedicating time everyday/week to write, so that's what I'm going to do...simple enought, right?*

Hard drive space

Megabytes....gigabytes....terrabytes. If there's one thing you have to know about desktop video editing...VIDEOS TAKE UP A LOT OF HARD DRIVE SPACE.

I remember the days when 20GB hard drives were considered huuuuuuuge. Yes of course, there are a few of you I'm sure that can remember the megabyte hard drive days. If you haven't noticed at your local Best Buy or CompUSA, the norm these days are 200GB.....320GB.....500GB...and now 1TERRABYTE hard drives!!!

And it's not hard to figure out why we need such massive hard drives these days. In addition to videos, there are a few other things we hoard that require all this space.. music and pictures to name a few.

Music file sizes have remained the same for the most part. But the space sucking issue is due to people having massive music collections. We've been enjoying the digital music revelation now for at least 10years now, so you can imagine the size of some of the collections out there (does anybody remember napster?).

Picture file sizes have seriously grown in the last 3-5yrs. I remember my first digital camera being 2mp, and the highest resolution picture would produce a 600kb file. Now I have a 10mp camera and the hi res photos (RAW) are somewhere in the neighborhood of 7MB.

Now videos on the other hand, can eat up hard drive space like there's no tomorrow. The breakdown for mini dv uploads is about 13 gigabytes for every hour of uncompressed video.

That's huge!!

Now if you're recording video from your webcam, chances are your videos are going to be a lot smaller. But for professionals like myself (did I mention I do wedding videography??), we eat hard drives for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Presently I have....give me a second.....80...80..200....250....250..250 500...500.....over 2 terrabytes of hard drive space. And I still don't think I have enough space.

Although most of it's archive wedding videos, I do have a bunch of crap that I know with a little bit of housecleaning, I could clean out a few gigabytes.

I'm what you call a digital pack rat.

All I'm going to say about hard drives is, if you need more space....think real hard about how much space you'll need.....then double that : )


Like the old saying goes..."its better to have more, than not enough".