So recently yet another idea was brought to my attention…maybe I could use my love of videography and editing to get into wedding videography. It just so happened that 2015 is a good year to try it out. I have three sets of friend weddings taking place, all of which were not planning on paying for videos and have agreed to let me film theirs for free.
Why do this for free you ask? Like any business in which people are buying your services, customers want to feel comfortable with your experience and previous work. So these three couples are helping me by letting me practice on them and build up a portfolio, and they hopefully will be getting great videos of their weddings that they will always cherish.
That brings me to today. Two weekends ago I filmed my first wedding, for Albuquerque friends Mike and Mel. The ceremony took place in Central Park in New York City and was a challenge for a first shoot. As weddings go, this was far from traditional. The ceremony took place in a park with locals, tourists and everything else wandering through the ceremony. The reception took place at a rental property and was more of a party without the pageantry of formal wedding receptions. In no way is any of this negative. It was a beautiful day and evening celebration with close friends and family.
Definitely one of the best weddings I’ve been to. It’s just that after doing research of wedding videos and watching all the standard shots you would normally find, I had to break off of that. For me, it was probably for the best. I am not traditional in how I film, and I want to be challenged and have some fun with it. This was the perfect outlet for me and I learned a lot. There were things that happened on the fly, things I wanted to do, things I missed, things I didn’t know I wanted and so on. As I imagine will happen every time I do this, I learned a lot and will probably improve from it.
Now I’m starting to go through the footage and generally quite happy with my first attempt of filming. I am seeing the result of that day and identifying more things to do and not do in the future. I plan on producing two videos for this wedding. One will be a trailer-like highlight film that will be short that the couple can share online with everyone. The second will be a full-length video of the day on DVD.
After these weddings I’ll decide if this is truly something I want to pursue…on the side of course. It could go the way of many previous endeavors and I could lose interest in it. I guess time will tell. I will probably chronicle my efforts and progress in this blog, and if things work out transfer it to a separate website. For now, I will put everything I can into giving my friends some beautiful visual memories they can enjoy for a lifetime.