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Shoot: Reception Part 2

Lesson 22 from: Wedding Cinematography

Ray Roman

Shoot: Reception Part 2

Lesson 22 from: Wedding Cinematography

Ray Roman

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Lesson Info

22. Shoot: Reception Part 2

Next Lesson: Reception Q&A

Lesson Info

Shoot: Reception Part 2

and now you can continue with your speech so the first time I heard about lena I had gone down to visit my brother in olympia and we decide to go out for lunch and we're out there and he is unable to even touch his salad he's just this sad hapless man pile and I asked him jamie what's what's happened to you what's wrong are you feeling well he said don't til I I met this girl and she's sweet and beautiful and her hair smells like cinnamon I just don't know what to do man so let me get this straight your problem is that you've met a very attractive young lady who likes you what on one in heaven's name is the matter with you I wish I was that this one and this this sounds like a blast right so you know it I said jamie you don't have any problem you go talk to that girl a year later here we are and this this isn't me trying to say you know taking credit for his bravado this is just me saying you're welcome perfect all right cool all right so how does how does a couple look right now how t...

he skin tones do we have a lot of work in post not at all okay so as I told you yesterday she shoot it right or is close to perfect in camera this is just me there's no there's no rule book there's no guidelines I'm really just dying everything in with my kelvin not sure if you can see it on a live woman ether do you know what doesn't can anybody guess what my kelvin temperature is right now what would you think it us during a wedding reception about thirty five hundred right I'm at fifty nine hundred do you know why because I have all these daylight temperature coming into the shot so if I had it on automatic I don't know let's see what happens on automatic just did she would happen it cooled it down do you think it looked better before on automatic was it more vibrant yeah too cold not accurate and this looks like what we're seeing here know exactly so always try to deal with manual kelvin and not stay off auto if you can because I don't think otto is that accurate for the most part so have beautiful couple now what happens if they have a tall centerpiece going on in the center and you can't see their faces we'll actually have them move so we'll tell them I said I said listen just for the speeches and they're usually out greeting guests anyways before the speeches and then finally come and sit down so I will tell them I said listen just for the speeches again because we can't see your faces with all these obstructions on your on your head table is it okay if I just have you sit out in front of the table I will move your chairs for you just have to physically sit here just for the speeches and then what do you guys say yeah it's all good okay cool um now you're also going to have a situation where there is no sweetheart table there's ah head table and the entire broader party is sitting at the same table and sometimes for instance can you guys can both of you stand up do we have one more chair we don't we don't have another chair right or actually can use one of your chairs because I'm gonna have you guys I'm gonna have you guys stand up and this is gonna be very common and I'm probably you guys have seen this before where I'm gonna have you sit here I'm gonna have have you sit there and then have you guys sit in on the two inchers not you uh the bride and groom got confused me with a black suits okay facing in this is gonna be very common to you're going you're going to counter this and there's more broader part of people using this big long had table so what do you do here because now he's going to give a speech here and then what's gonna happen you guys are just going to kind of turn and and lean out and try to see what he's saying right and it's really not going to be a very good reaction shot for you guys because we want a nice solid shot so what I'm gonna do I'm gonna talk to the bride and groom and I must say listen just for the speeches is it okay if you swap with chris chris and tessa is ok if you swap with chris and tests and have them sit over here that way we can have like a clear reaction shot of you guys during the speeches and they're going to say what exactly you know what I'm gonna tell chris and tessa so I'm gonna go to chris and tessa and I must say listen just for the speeches the bride and groom want you to move to their seats right and tell him just like that because if it's a request for the videographer they're less inclined to want to move and they're going to suck their cheeks or something like this uh as soon as they know the bride and groom want them to move they're like okay where do we go you know things like that so I just hung chris and tessa just for the speeches the bride and groom want you to swap places with him the bride and groom always want because the bride and groom they're the boss on the wedding day so whatever they want they get you know whatever the videographer wants he generally doesn't get our or there's a there's a big delay so it's always the bride and groom wants you to move the bride and groom want this the bride wants a high chair remember that the bride wants this the bride wants it's not the videographer that wants us of his bride because the bride is the boss and I'm not the boss so a lot of times they're less inclined to maybe accommodate the videographer than they are the bosses of the day that's happened things so remember that because it will help you out so I'm gonna have you guys swap places now with a christian tessa and and the beauty of this is I'm already gonna have this kind of pre positioned exactly where I want it ok so you guys sit here now remember you have a head table now so you don't have a sweetheart table so these speeches would probably be happening um tolerant dylan okay is anybody named tyler tyler there you all right yeah um so he would probably be around here uh dylan would probably around here and now they have like a clear unobstructed view of dylan and then now I could lower this camera or I could just I can just no tilt this in and I can also have I can also have this light right next to the tripod and you're going to see how this works good and now you're just looking over dylan you know like so we get our light turned on nice and subtle guys remember you don't want this to be so bright toe where they're squinting or the lights really annoying them now looking over at dylan does this light bother you exactly so so remember nice and subtle now this is a little bit warm so I probably I probably want to cool it down just a little bit and you want to focus always check focus on were pretty good and how are we looking at the monitor way on there yeah she's out of focus exactly so so what can you do in this situation can you raise your aperture and also raise your eyes so maybe to compensate or even brighten the light a little bit so maybe if we go to say ah four point five and maybe we just were shooting very clean we have four hundred s o and we can always come up to maybe a thousand and let's see how we're looking there perhaps did that make things better yeah so you're gonna have to compensate and that's the great thing about having this light is that you can compensate a little bit okay and now she's pretty well in focus you guys were looking over dylan and dylan go ahead and uh speak to them so thanks again for having me be your best man guys I know you were a little bit nervous because I just turned twenty one and given me a microphone was kind of a risk but you know it's it's it just means a lot to me that you trusted me toe speak it you're very special day and thanks again guys your you know the best siblings I could ask for and thanks again to all the family for coming out tonight okay perfect so dylan looks great the couple looks great right remember of you khun if you can ever make a situation look better do it just make the request I made the request for them to swap chairs and they said yes the worst that they can say is no not does this situation here look a lot better than if they were kind of faced in on this table ten times better so remember we're professionals based on our experience in train we're you know whats going toe look best we just kind of got offer the suggestion to the couple say listen guys have you sit over here it's just going to make you look a lot better for the reaction shots will be able to see dylan a lot better so this camera here as I told you before is a static camera what am I doing all the while b roll because we're looking for what content as much content as we can possibly get that's what we're looking for so so now I'm gonna start going around with uh can you give me one hundred I'm gonna start going around with his camera and the mono pod will probably won't need you I'm going to swap out lenses here on di generally have the cannon one thirty five on the on the camera this is a hundred just don't have the one thirty five here but the cool thing about the cannon one d c is it has a super thirty five mode and it actually has one point six prop on there so that it's almost like having it like an internal um extender on your camera so I'm gonna look around I'm not going to like the guests so the guests in this case you're just going to kind of be focused on uh dylan at this point and let's see what we can do with some reaction shots and you go ahead with your speech all right might have started again thank you for being here everyone jamie and lina feel just blessed to have you here family from near and far and forget too far into things especially want to thank our parents for their financial and genetic contributions that have you brought us here today it's way really appreciate how all this came together and uh area oh I also want to point out our cousin who has come all the way from rhodes greece to join us tonight uh straight up give it up for area any people okay so remember a lot of times you're anticipating the shot you're waiting for you're waiting for grandma too do something you know applause laugh for something once you have the shot three to five seconds you use it on to the next person you know you can bounce around again if if maybe um leading his mom is a little bit animated she's copping issues she's laughing the jokes and things like that maybe you want to direct the camera towards uh lena's mom so we'll do that and then leanna's mom is just kind of tuned in tow dealing up there yeah and you go ahead uh area at me I'll say something angry for ah so you say a more fair pops came is here almost their policies don't mind us ah if you escape first to make purple she speaks english folks feel free to introduce yourselves I was just warning her who to watch out for when the when the wind starts pouring so we have the ration and you can also as you're coming around the room you can also get some nice shots off um of the couple even though you've got a camera already established maybe you get some shots like this you can rack focus over and then back that's everything just whatever you can get just make sure you're in focus obviously that's it you keep talking now the beauteous keep keep talking for me uh I want to draw attention for a moment tow all the flowers and decorations that jamie lena themselves put together they put so much effort with their own two hands into making this wedding come together if we could have just a quick round of applause for them for how much effort they put in today yet you're you're four more creative than I am lena from jamie you're you're in good hands here so again that just thanks everyone for coming out and I hope you had a great time I hope I didn't bore you uh will be signing autographs after the speech uh don't bite I promise and there are there's some food in the back and a little bit more wine if you're feeling as nervous as I am so uh again help yourselves have a good time and let let's just celebrate jamie lena's special day together a perfect so as you notice you can kind of float a little bit look for reactions look for some laughter look for applause you can shoot the couple I can actually shoot the person giving a speed giving a speech from a different perspective from the primary shooter which is always great so as long as he's well lit remember you can shoot from anywhere in the room which is great as always you have the light you could shoot from anywhere in the world I have this light I can shoot the couple from anywhere in the room I have that light I can shoot the speaker from anywhere in the room and it's going to give me a different perspective than what say my primary shooter's getting with a with a nice solid lock down shot on the tripod a lot of quite a few people including pablo asked about preferring to have two pan handles on the mono pod and people are talking about I use one for stabilization is there some reason why you're only using one of the panhandle's why use two or one yeah if you could just talk about using one or two I have to because a lot of times I feel as though having two on their kind of have a lot of movement in my shot and I feel that's just a little bit more fluid than using a left or a right handle where may tend to kind of pull to one side maybe it's just psychological I just feel a lot more comfortable having the two handles on there that I can pull forward and backwards and it just feels a lot a lot more fluid a lot more even doing it that way great thank you and ray from jonah desilva do you always shoot with letterbox crop in mind when you frame your shots I only use that for online stuff like trailers and highlights okay but our main features so we don't have none of that okay on actually tomorrow if anybody is interested in learning how tio not only crop their images to send a scope like that but also export to send a scope I'm going to be covering that in the editing portion of the workshop fantastic luis torres asked or says all this set up and sit downs is great when you have control of the wedding but on a more common ceremony organizer zoran planners and relatives are pushing and pulling the couple around how do you manage that that's fine they're always going to push and pull the couple for photo ops and things like that the only thing that's on your mind is controlling what the speeches and where they happen we just have these things are gonna happen naturally we just have to control where they're goingto happen because we've already prepositioned lights we've already kind of predetermine where the bride and groom are going to sit for the reactions so we just need to be able to control the situation's a lot of times it's best just to talk to the coordinators and until the coordinates exactly what you're doing so they're not wondering like oh my god why is he moving to core around why's he moving these chairs ron and things like that so I just I always emphasize to the coordinators this is all just for the speeches in fact I had a wedding in kabul mexico and I have predetermined everything I knew exactly where the couple needed to be I knew exactly where the speaker needed to be and a coordinator came around and she said that's not how I do my weddings you know I have my uh couple stand behind the people have given the speech and that's just the way that it's going to happen and I told the coroner says it's not gonna happen that way today like I've already predetermined with lighting and this and that and there's really no outlets for meat even to direct the light back your weights to your plan so we did it my way but we kind of but it has a little bit but in the end I had to have it my way because these speeches were so critical to what I was trying to do once she saw the speeches happen she came running up to me after the speeches were done and she's like oh my god I'm so sorry I feel like an idiot those speeches looked incredible with your light because we even had hair lighting we have a key light and it just looks so incredible and the couple's reaction looked amazing and you know the reality is that we know video production ah coordinator does not sotto let somebody like that make those types of decisions for you could mean the difference between having good imagery and bad imagery so just always try to be in control always try to be assertive you know listen if a coordinator tells me to do something a certain way and there's a good reason for doing it that way I'll do it that way and I'm a team player like that but if it's just because she feels it's the best way of doing things without knowing anything about video production that's probably not going to end up being the best imagery for you so just assert yourself use common sense try to be you know try to be tactful but in the end you have to get what you've been hired to get which is the best footage based on your own experience and things like that so ray we got a question in the studio oh cool I had a question about toast time some of the weddings that I've done I've had toast go upwards of forty minutes for just the toast portion uh in one way I found to help that is just limiting how many toasters I will film how do you approach that again if you limit the amount of toasters that you film and you don't record some of that you're you're essentially just throwing away product you know so we record absolutely every think now what do we put in the film everything that's related to the wedding and I remember there's a forty minute speech and the final film is twenty minutes twenty five minutes it can't be all about dylan speech you know for thirty minutes of ah you know thirty five minute film it's got to have balance even if they have you know performers that come in our singer that comes in our headliner that comes in it can't now be about that headliner that performer it's still got to be about the bride and groom's wedding day so the films always have to have balance but beyond the film that you're delivering you may have some parents that say hey you know what this twenty minute film was cool and everything but we want to see the whole ceremony we want to see all the speed you should want to see all of dylan's speech and things like that so if you don't record that stuff you're not gonna have it to provide to them later on for a price of course no good yeah that's everything but it's same with photography photographers are are going to record as much as possible all these prints and all these albums they're going to able to design they're going to sell that afterwards you know this is all product so they want to record as much as possible you know we want to do the same thing we want to be able to provide that stuff to the families so I'm going to start with a question from photo lot we learned you let you talked yesterday that you shoot it about twenty four frames per second do you ever shoot at sixty frames per second on then it's to use him in slo mo no emotion no way and that's just not our style there are times in post where we will slow things down with a you know with a ramping filter but we don't we don't we don't shoot for that in our style is very much as it's happening so we're just not in the habit of shooting anything that slow motion great thank you I think have audience questions yeah if you're right now you've got three cameras rolling we've got one on the couple one on the speaker and then you're roaming with a third exactly who's putting the laval ear microphone on the next speaker my my audio tuck but just because she not operating the camera every everything's already been taken care of before the speeches even start everybody's already been miked up so everyone has a micro absolutely everybody okay now if it's for instance there's been there's been situations where we're working with a band that we always work with and we rely heavily on their feet and it's always a clean signal sometimes there's been situations where you know there there's eight people going to give a speech we don't even have eight recorders to put on them would just rely and hope that that sound board's going to cover us enough teo so where we don't have to make every single person you know there's a doubt if you're not sure you never work with a person before and maybe the the feed that you've monitors sounds kind of iffy you don't want to risk you know definitely I would definitely recommend having a backup mike on each and every person that's going to give a speech and generally there's not that many people that give a speech but I've had weddings where fifteen people gave a speech so it really just depends and sometimes it's just ah maid of honor and a best man maybe a thank you speech at the end of the night from the couple or maybe the parents get up there and they give a thank you speech are welcome speech that's very common but those things happen kind of sporadically so a lot of times you'll see speeches they're kind of staggered throughout the evening they don't happen like all at once you know so maybe the first set of speech is going to be a welcome speech from the parents then the next speeches you're going to see is the best man in the maid of honor then end of the night maybe a thank you speech from the couple on things like that so you don't always have to have like all these recorders readily available for like ten different speeches all at once yeah yeah so you kind of already tackled one thing I was going to ask if the speech is air all clumped together you know we've shot the dancing dinners happen at some point and most of the dialogues happen would you ever consider repositioning that main dedo light so for like the cake cutting or any of this extra you know extra things where the sweet spot might be elsewhere in the room or would you still try and position say bouquet toss in the sweet spot area and and try and keep it a static as possible no we just once we position that key light we leave it alone and generally like this key light right now it's ah it's set on spot mode for the speaker the only thing that will do will probably actually at that distance will leave it on a spot mode will probably just adjust it now for the dance for and that's probably something that we can do next susan is just show some dancing coverage the dance for coverage that'll be pretty cool just to show you how we do that are we getting the students up for the dance party yeah we can probably get everybody on the dance floor yeah crank the music up are we good with that so we're good with that and so if there was any if there's any need to say the cake cutting table for extra phil you just position the light stand and or jessica you would have we won't even use light stands for cake cutting at all it'll just be I I generally feed off jessica ll having led light on her camera and I'll just feed off of that because she's giving me enough light on the couple anyway so with that where I can just kind of bounce from the room or shoot wide get a really nice shot while she's getting a nice tight intimate shot of the couple going through the cake cutting school thank you yeah cool so um so joe we're gonna position the satellite probably closer than ask for um amy more down yeah the question while we're changing our set up when you're adjusting your tripods and your cameras and you're not worried about the time that it's taking to do that let's say when you want to get a video light on the couple because are they normally typically just having fun and talking to each other and they don't they're not bothered by this setup or they're sitting and watching you set up they're not even they're not even sitting down because they're generally going table to table greeting all the guest of the wedding generally have to like pull them back to their seats toe what to watch the speeches or the deejay makes an announcement everybody have a seat there's going to be some speeches and things like that generally people always pulling at the couple trying to get them to take pictures and things like that and they're not even at they're seats so something sometimes I'm talking to them just standing up and say hey guys for the speeches I'm going to do this I'm gonna do that and they're like ok do whatever you need to do and then I'll coach up you know whoever I need to move just for the speeches but they're not they're not looking at anything in fact when they get to their chairs everything's already set up and ready to go on dh there already aware of it because I've already spoken to them of kind of like let them know what I'm doing so they're not surprised by anything or looking at anything strange it's ah it all runs very fluid you just have to explain to the couple exactly what you're doing because they don't know again they don't know anything about video production and they're going to show up and now there's an led light and there's a static camera and all this stuff so you just want to put them at ease and natural and as you saw on the monitor they were very relaxed and they were laughing they were having a good time because they knew exactly what was going on and that was fun yeah yeah and then yeah and then we're gonna crank that up as high as possible flooding it out put it on floor moan now when you position your lighting for any type of dancing whether it be first answers or just the dancing throughout the night you want to try toe crank your life stand up as high as possible because what happens is if you just if you just put your light up at about six feet or so you're going to cast a lot of shadows onto the couple if you if you create your life stand up very high maybe twelve or thirteen feet it's going to tend to cast the shadows more into the ground which is what you want because you're not going to see that as you're filming that's pretty good can I get you guys to stand up and then just um maybe get some some family around them just kind of just just to kind of flood the dance for a little bit I'll get you guys kind of up in iraq is that is that on flood can we get that up any higher that's what it okay and that's fine and you can see what happened he actually crank it up a little bit higher and actually cast the shadows even lower than what it wass here is casting their shadows very high is there one more level could go yeah yeah yeah exactly now are coming we'll keep that going and now you can really see where it's kind of casting the shadows lower onto the ground toa whether or not really visible dylan you're gonna grab your date go grab your date yeah this is what we're talking about you guys can't see that at home they're cranking that light up pretty high okay so this is really good um that's it and then joe I'm gonna get the fifty lens okay and you guys can just kind of ah just float around the dance floor ready for a question while you're changing yeah you talked yesterday about the fact that thirty percent of your final delivery available video is of the bride what percentage is the reception in your final cut where you have all the speeches yes you're gonna have some limited dancing in there I would say just enough until they're tighter seeing the same people dancing in from the camera that's everything but the main focus for the reception is obviously going to be first answer's speeches cake cutting some dancing and I would tell you you know that's probably about thirty percent you know I'll tell you it's probably thirty percent perhaps thirty percent ceremony thirty percent reception and ten percent just random random days okay sauce cake cutting and things like that you know it's pretty even it's pretty it's pretty well balanced thank you for that that's awesome alright cool okay so uh you guys come on out yeah so you can see here and I'll get this up on the live you wei have any music we're gonna play for these folks yeah okay so as you can see here I don't have I don't have a light on my camera I don't have a lot of my camera I just have an off camera light and everybody's looking really good not quick question are any of you guys just looking at each other and enjoying each other are any of you guys affected by the light is the light annoying euro exactly look how even the lighting looks for my camera and I don't even have a non camera light I'm just relying on the deed a light flooded out providing this awesome light I'm about a thousand eso and four point five aperture so just imagine if I was at say like a two point oh I could film at like four hundred s o which is very very clean and and I could still go upon my aperture a little bit now they're going to fall out of focus back there so if you are doing some rack focuses a lower a lower apertura would be great it just depends on the shot that you're going for or if I wanted to raise my so to maybe a thousand and then also raised my raise my aperture so I keep more things and focus here and you guys we can crank up the music a little bit on you guys you guys can love each other on the dance floor yeah yeah exactly exactly and this looks awesome this family is like having an awesome time and remember we can we can always move around waken compose different shots right and this is perfect now you get us some nice dan shots and you know the beauty of this is that um I don't have an off camera light so they're not even feeling me what would happen if you had an on camera light they're looking at the camera like oh my god they're filming us and now they're not acting natural but here um everything that you're getting is really really natural which is great is that you move around you can see who's being a goof exactly this's awesome all day long eh you did awesome all right cool you guys are amazing yeah you're really good okay cool thank you so much yeah just relax yeah how great has his family been yeah they've been really really good so did you see how good everything looked low I s so I get asked a lot hey what I so do you shoot at because I'm like a thirty two hundred s o or twenty five hundred eyes so an image looks kind of iffy okay and I sit there and I'm like how the heck are you have thirty two hundred eyes so with lights and you saw it firsthand here I just had the data like going I'd even have an led light going I just said off camera light I didn't use any light and now I'm getting natural emotions and that's how I like to kind of float around the dance floor just getting these natural emotion because I don't have a light on the camera and they're kind of oblivious to me I didn't have a light on my camera picked period if anything they think I'm a a photographer so sometimes you'll see him in the well pose and things like that that's the only downside but other than that I'm really getting a lot of natural emotions because they're not feeling the light there they're not giving you that look like oh my god we're being filmed anything like that I'm just getting natural raw emotions which is what we're looking for and as you could see here very very clean image at sometimes for hundreds so sometimes a thousand just depend what death you wanted but you saw it here I mean it's just it's easy to do I'm not a magician I'm just kind of employing these lights that I've shown you using it in this way and achieving these results I mean this is ah israel ah scenario as we could possibly throw at you I've shown it to you first hand so you know I'm not lying to you when I say I can shoot low iso's at a reception you've seen it here first hand so I hope that's that information's been useful to you guys

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Ratings and Reviews

Lee
 

The content provided here is great for videographers starting out in the wedding industry and also for pros/semi-pros fine tuning their video skills. In fact this is the only course in wedding videography that I can find on Creative Live. There are a couple other for corporate or film making video course, not dealing with wedding video. Also an HDDSLR course is available. That said Creative Live needs to put out a couple more updated wedding video courses, as this one is a several years old now and many pros are now using Dual-Pixel autofocus or fast sensor auto-focusing in Canon, Sony, Panasonic, and now Nikon also in Z cameras with great stabilization in many cameras (which should be discussed affecting the shots and video coverage). Although the rest of the course is great on how to plan out video coverage at your wedding, with the advent of great autofocusing systems today in DSLRs and mirrorless that could make some difference to how video is shot. I still give this course a thumbs up, as it is the best course (and only course) currently on CreativeLive for wedding video/cinematography, however I would encourage CL to create a new course being developed and recorded as much as happened in the last 5 years in video DSLRs and mirrorless, which makes a difference to shooting video. How wedding video coverage is done and planning the shots and angles of view, and equipment is still useful information to buy this course. The presenter Ray Roman is also an excellent teacher. So get this course now, and another one once an update is made. CL has lots of photo courses on wedding, not many for wedding video.

a Creativelive Student
 

A couple of years ago, I made a bold and somewhat wreckless choice to take out a home equity loan in order to help finance my son's dream to start a wedding cinematography business. Together, we embarked on a journey to learn everything we could about the business. The most important choice we made was to purchase the Ray Roman Wedding Cinematography course. This class saved us so much money as it helped us understand our camera, audio and essential and non-essential gear. We were inspired by the artistry in Ray's work and have implemented many of his techniques in order to Improve the quality and production value of our films. In under three years, we have filmed over 50 weddings and our company is well established in our area. Buying Ray's class was easily the best investment I made for my son's business, One Night Only Films. Thank you Creativelive and Ray Roman for helping us start a successful and profitable business.

a Creativelive Student
 

WOW!!! What an amazing experience. I had the opportunity to be there in studio with the creative live team and Ray and all I have to say is it was amazing! The creative live team was FIRST class and this course was jammed packed with information!!! Forgive me if I asked to many questions but I wanted just to pull all the info I could of out of Ray. From being there in person and owning the course itself I have to say that this is a MUST have for all cinematographers of any level! Buy it and watch it again and again! Thank you creative live for this amazing opportunity! -Aaron gracemedia.info

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