I tagged along on a wedding shoot yesterday. The wedding party elected to buy the basic package, which includes a two-camera shoot of the ceremony, opening titles, ending credits with the names of the bridal party and special guests, editing, and one DVD copy with a custom album cover. This is the easiest shoot since it doesn’t include the reception.
The videographer is a really nice guy. We met this kid while shooting a short, and the kid is really talented. He won recognition at a local film festival for an art video he made. He was getting ready to go to Italy, and needed a tripod. Due to one thing or another, he was unable to get one. The videographer gave him one of his. Nice guy, but it left him a tripod short for his business. Fortunately, I have my trusty Bogen 3192/3066 so I brought it along.
I set my tripod up in the back of the stage, behind some trees that were brought in. The videographer’s wife would operate that camera. They had to check something, and by the time they got back I had the camera set up.
We set the jib up at the back-right of the church. The S-video cord had been damaged somehow (the plug had been crushed a little, and I used some pliers on the other shoot to get it back into its approximate shape), and the videographer was concerned that his back-up cord would not be long enough for the monitor. I plugged in the ‘damaged’ cord anyway, and it worked just fine. The jib wasn’t quite balanced, so I put a roll of gaffer’s tape on the weight-end. Not quite enough. On the last shoot I had my sandbags with me. They are still in my Jeep, but we went to the church in their car. Note to self: Always bring sandbags. Since we were using the long S-video cord, I made a loop with it, secured it with a rip-tie, and hung it over the clip that holds the weights. It was just enough.
After setting up, I had nothing to do. I was there as an observer. I watched the camera movements on the monitor. (The front camera was more or less fixed, except when the pastor moved in the way, when it would have to be repositioned slightly.) After the ceremony and during the slideshow, I quietly broke down the equipment.
I thought they should use a third camera for wide shots. There was no communication between the videographer and his wife, though they’ve been doing this long enough to know the routine. Still, it would be good to have coverage just in case. With two cameras, a pair of headsets might be useful. I shot a weekly in-studio cable-access show for a time. The director was in a booth, and we two videographers had headsets. The director could (duh!) tell us what he wanted on the cameras and tell the console operator which camera to use, so there was no danger of both cameras being repositioned at the same time. That didn’t happen on this shoot, but some communications or a third camera would be safer in my opinion. (I guess I’m a bit obsessive when it comes to live coverage.)
We went back to the studio and started downloading the footage. The videographer wants to get hard discs for his cameras to make it faster to get the footage onto the computer. As a rough estimate, they would pay for themselves in terms of his time in ten shoots. Fewer hours for more involved shoots. The cameras would also record on tape, so there’s a back-up.
I saw some footage the bridal party took earlier. This is why people should hire professional videographers. The footage was apparently taken on a ‘handicam’. No tripod. There was too much camera movement, both intentional and unintentional. Lots of jerky movement, and weird pans and zooms. It reminds me of when my mom and her husband went to his native Finland. She’d called me for pointers on how to make a good video with her new camera. I told her to at least get a tripod and gave her some other advice. She decided it was too much trouble, and the video turned out looking like a ‘home movie’ (which it was).
The studio is getting a lot of business lately. As I’ve said in other threads, they use actual professional video equipment; unlike other companies in town who use ‘prosumer’ gear. They’ve also sussed out the editing to a degree the other companies haven’t bothered to do. They’re building quite a good reputation. They want to add another crew. Gee, where will they find someone who can use a camera? 
The idea is that the videographer and his wife will be on different crews, and the two new videographers will go with one or the other of them. They say that they may need a total of four crews eventually to cover all of the weddings, depositions, commercial videos, etc.; to say nothing of the creative projects. Could it be that my new job will be with a camera? 
I’m going to the studio on Monday to start to learn the editing process. Should be fun.