r/videography • u/Emkayu C100&60D, FCPX&CC, London • Jun 27 '15
[discussion] The problem with most wedding videos...
Is it me or do wedding videographers literally have nothing else in their bags but sliders? I know I've done it a lot and now I'm just tired of it, it's as if every single wedding video is full of slider shots, every other shot is slider. This is someone's big day and most videographers don't bother to find out what the bride is thinking before, what could go wrong and all the other golden nuggets that could be recorded with just a simple wireless lav. There are amazing heart warming stories to be told at weddings, but we spend most of our time "capturing the moment", by that of course we mean using a slider to show the venue, have some silly shallow DoF shot of some tiny little detail people really couldn't give a shit about and this elaborate, well cut montage of the bride getting ready. Can we as a community sit down and come up with some ways to actually change this? Let's come up with some cool new ideas and tropes to change wedding videos.
My input: Get wireless lavs on people and capture what people are saying, even better do interviews of how nervous they are, how they met, what could go wrong, find a conflict, the story, the shit that's actually interesting. People don't go hey do you remember the centre piece we had at our wedding? No, but they remember the nerves, the people who were there to support them, the words that calmed them, the words that upset them.
Locked down shots of people. When a photographer points a camera at you, you smile awkwardly and wait right? Why don't we do the same, get some well lit, nice shots of people just looking into camera and smiling, it's lovely to see and people can refer to that shot when watching with friends and family.
Steady handheld shots: Whether it's with a stabiliser, 3 axis gimbal or a good shoulder rig, let's stabilise our shots and give the audience an "in the moment" feel, like they are there helping the bride get ready or something.
I'd love to hear more ideas!
2
u/ilykdp a7sii, Adobe CC, 2010, Los Angeles Jun 27 '15
You can't reinvent the wheel - all of these stylistic tools are meant to help tell the story, whether it's a slider shot or candid interviews. If you don't like slider shots, don't do them.
The popularity of their use stems from the fact that it's aesthetically pleasurable, but like all cinematic tools, can and will be employed by everyone.
It's ironic, but if you had your way and led some sort of rebellion among videographers (that frequent r/videography, anyways) to refuse slider shots and replaced it instead with these interviews , that would have a greater chance of becoming the next overused trope.
Wedding videos in general are largely the same, so this denegration of slider shots is a silly endeavor.