There are a lot of advantages to working from home. I get to spend some great time with both my wife and daughter. I can be home when our daughter is home sick from school. I get to do my errands and general running around during the day while most others are at work. One of my guilty pleasures of working from home is bad daytime TV shows. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not sitting at home all day watching TV but most days when I come into the office to get started on my editing I most likely have the TV on. This happened yesterday and it was by far the most interesting part of my day.
I had just gotten our daughter off to school and came out to my office to get started on some editing. The morning new show was on so I didn’t pay it much attention. Well, after the morning news show goes off in our area, there is one of those Judge shows. You know the kind, any judge with some personality trying to decide who did what to who and two people who are more than likely just wanting to get some face time on TV. Now I will admit there is one Judge show that I like to watch, but it is on mostly at night. Anyway, I was getting ready to turn the TV off when they introduced the case and stopped dead in my tracks. Seems this bride is suing her wedding videographer.
OK, you have my full attention! Seems this bride wanted someone to both photograph and video her wedding day. She wanted the same person to do both. Nothing unusual about that but I have to say, it is hard to do both so I don’t know some vendors do both like that. This bride ended up hiring her cousin-in-law because he said he could do both and not charge her a lot of money. Well, they played the tape of the video he shot and it was like looking through a set of blinds. Big black bars running across the screen. This is caused when the heads on the video camera are either dirty or damaged. Here is the funny part, the videographer said he didn’t know the camera was doing that because it looked just fine to him as he was taping it and he could fix it. First off, if you are looking through the camera viewfinder, you would not see any problems of a dirty or damaged video head. You should get a warning that the head is dirty, but not always. Second, you can not fix that problem. You can’t go back and add video to places where it was not recorded. But, what knock me off my seat was the fact he could not tell the Judge what type, brand or model of camera he uses. WHAT!! How can you NOT know what type or brand of equipment your using?
I can tell you not only the brand and model of every item I use on your wedding video, but I also know how each one works and how to make it do all the things it was designed to do. If your photographer can’t tell you what he/she is using, you need to run, don’t walk, but run away very fast.
This got me to thinking about one of the biggest excuse I hear from brides about not hiring a professional videographer. “I have a family member who will video the wedding for me.” Now, they may have a family member who is a professional videographer and that is great. But more times than not, it is just a family member with a hand held camcorder and that person has no idea what they are doing or what shots to get. This poor bride thought she was saving money by having a “family member” shoot her wedding when in fact, all she did was loose a very precious memory that she will never be able to get back.
One of my best training grounds in video was working for a local “Shop-At-Home” network. It was a live 24/7 shopping network. There was no stopping to reset a shot, fixing a light, or changing a script. I had to think on my feet whenever a problem would come up. It is the same thing with your wedding. You don’t want me to stand up in the middle of everything and yell, “CUT, we need to have the bride go back up the aisle because I didn’t get the shot of her smile.”. It is the same thing with your cousin, uncle or brother shooting your wedding. They don’t know where to be to get that image of the bride coming up the aisle. They most likely don’t have wireless microphones to pick up the sound of your vows to each other. And they sure wouldn’t know if the heads on the camcorder are damaged or dirty until it was too late.
I have a long list of things that have to be done BEFORE I ever leave the house to shoot your wedding. One of those things is to make sure the heads are clean and in perfect working order. But, I also have the knowledge to know what to do in the event it does happen. I also have the experience and knowledge to know what to do in the event there is a problem during the ceremony. I have had a couple of wedding where there was a problem with either the video tape breaking or a problem with the sound, but the bride never knew it happened. At one wedding, in fact, my wireless mics interfered with the churches sound system. As soon as I knew what was going on, I took the steps needed to fix the problem. The only other person who knew something was wrong was the gentleman running the churches sound system.
I ran into that bride just the other day and we were talking about her video and she just gushed about it. In fact, she has not even picked up her pictures from the photographer yet. Not because they are not ready, but because she loves the video more than the pictures. I told her about the problem and she looked at me and said, “I never noticed that there was anything wrong with the video and we watched it last night for the 900th time.” Now, if I had stopped her wedding to fix the mics, I would not be working today.
So, if your thinking of having a family member shoot your wedding, ask yourself, do you want to save money or do you want to save a memory? Oh, and for the court case on the Judge show, the bride won and got all her money back.
