That's a wrap

Thats it, done, finished, finita, terminé, fertig, 完成した, законченный. I know, I know, my knowledge of other languages is mindblowing, in fact the reason it's taken as long as it has is down to the vast array of different language subtitles and dubs that have been done for it (listening to Pete dubbed in swahaili is brilliantly hilarious).

Like all of these types of projects it's had it's ups and downs but thankfully the ups have well outweighed the downs and like all good journeys I've learned things along the way, for example don't delete render files from final cut unless you want to spend the best part of a morning re-rendering the entire project again (that one is more for anyone who edits and is probably a schoolboy error on my part) also I've learned perseverance and to not give up looking for the old woman, because she is there and her inclusion is more than worth the effort it took to find her (this one will become clear once you see the finished product, it's not me stating my affection for the older lady) and lastly, that in the respect of putting together a wedding video there are only two people that matter and thats the bride and groom, there was a point that I was going to create two versions, one would be more like the one thats finished and one that had a bit more of a traditional feel to it (not that I'm too sure exactly what that would look like but I have an idea), but in the end I decided to stick to what i knew and what I knew Jo and Pete would like.

As is tradition for us we held our own mini premier, minus the red carpet unfortunaly, I did offer to spray paint a yoga mat red but it was met with kind of a muted response so I decided to give that one a miss. So with our small gathering we sat and watched the thing that I'd been working on for tha past 8 weeks, them nervous wondering if what they was about to witness was going to be somthing that they could treasure for years to come or if it would be somthing that they would watch, realise it was terrible, be polite about with a comment along the lines of "the lighting was great" and then never watch again hiding it away in a box in the loft. I was nervous thinking pretty much the exact same thing but with a few instances of worrying weather a whole host of technical things were right. Thankfully they laughed and they cried and in all the right places for all the right reasons and that told me that I must have done somthing right and that exact reaction was all I needed to know that all my hard work had paid off and that they had a wedding DVD that they can hopefully be proud of.

I Just want to finish this blog off by saying a huge thank you to Jo and Pete from Neil and myself for trusting us with this huge responsibilty of filming your special day and that we hope we've made you proud and we both wish you a lifetime of happiness together.

The Final Furlong

In the last exciting instalment I was just about to start the speeches and I now I can hear you all eagerly waiting to find out where I'm at now, well..........it's done, in as much as it has a beginning, a middle and an end, i'm told it had to have an end because apparently putting one of those cliffhanger, "will they won't they" endings on a wedding dvd isn't the done thing, so as it's not my wedding i've decided to stick to convention on this one. So all thats left to do now is to give it a run-through on an actual TV, which normally involves me sitting with a note pad picking out all the things that don't work so I can make any changes, which I know is going to include spelling mistakes on the credits.

After the final checks and changes we're onto the special features, which pretty much gives me free reign to throw together all the stuff that was a little bit risqué for the main feature and also everything that was cut for timing and just general behind the scenes stuff. 

To anyone who left a message to Jo and Pete, if you watch the dvd and your message isn't on there or it's been cut down, don't worry because one of the special features I do is of all the messages unedited so they will see your message in all it's glory, as much as I'd love to put them all in we would end up rivalling the film Titanic in terms of length and lets face it nobody wants to associate a numb Gluteus Maximus when they think of their wedding dvd. The other issue would be that I would probably be looking at my first dvd with something other than a U rating, i'm thinking at least a 12 certificate.

I'd better get cracking then, i've got some good ideas for some features that hopefully will pan out and if they do then they could be the best we've done.

Until next time

Steve

Limbo, Trailers and lots of talking.

Here I sit now in rendering limbo so I thought I'd update you all.

The First thing to report is that I've now posted a new teaser trailer on line, this can be found either on the website www.joandpetewedding.co.uk or on my youtube channel here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiDWzNBgqGs . I'd always planned on doing a trailer but knowing that Jo and Pete were both excited about seeing some footage spurred me on and it was a nice way to get me back into the editing frame of mind after a week off. The trailer actually turned out a lot different to the first cut of it. I wanted to use some footage that Neil (my fellow cameraman) shot on his journey over here and also some music he recommended but after having cut it together i couldn't quite make it work.

On to the actual DVD then. I've finished putting together the footage of outside the church which wasn't really a lot so it's not the longest segment in the dvd. I think this is another way in which this dvd differs from the others, normally the photos are taken at the church so the whole after the church and photos footage are normally put together in one whole segment. It actually turned out to be a good thing, not just because the Old Plough is a much better looking venue for photos but it gave me a chance to be a bit more creative with one of our normal wedding dvd staples. I'll explain, usually we film the journey from the church to the reception venue and speed it up and use it as a transition from the ceremony to the reception, because the bulk of the footage is at the reception I used it as an opportunity to show the reception/photo footage and breaks up the journey footage so it doesn't feel too much of a long watch and hopefully wont be one of those scenes thats always being skipped on the chapter select, If I do say so myself though it works really well.

So now i'm up to the speeches and the reason i'm in said rendering limbo (thanks for the long speeches guys) when I first skipped through the footage during my sorting phase at the start of al of this I was worried about the audio not sounding so great from the sound system, luckily though I've had another listen and all is well. This is the audio from the camera we had placed at the back, the sound is even better from the camera I was using since I was in the front row next to the top table, cant use it though, take this as a tip when filming any live event where audio is going to be the key element......move away from small talkative children!. Now I tend to not worry about kids making general kids noises because hey this is a live event and it's something I have no control in so I just carry on and hope it's not too intrusive with the audio. However when the child is your two year old who you have to sit next to because your wife is the chief bridesmaid and is on the top table things are different, and when that two year old is constantly declaring that they want to get out of the high chair that I put them in to stop them running around during dinner and that they want to go to the toilet, it pretty much makes that entire audio track unusable. On a good not though the audio quality is excellent so my choice in camera is justified.

So thats it for now once the speeches are done then it'll be on to the home stretch as far as the main bulk of it is concerned so hopefully I should have another update for you soon.

Steve

Confused about the picture? I typed "in Limbo" into google images and that was one of the pictures to come up, it completely irrelevant to the subject but hey who doesn't love Gizmo?

The Ceremony, The Affair? and a Zombie Movie

It's now the 16th of August and I know your all eager to find out what been going on for all this time since the last post and also why the delay, well don't worry I've have been busy working on the DVD this whole time......ok fine I did go a way for a few days but it was no where exotic I promise......and I was thinking about the DVD the whole time...Ok i'm going to get off this train of thought because now it sounds like i'm trying to defend my part in an affair which is probably inappropriate talk for a wedding DVD blog.

Where was I, so before I went off on my affair erm, holiday I can now report that I managed to finish the ceremony (pause for cheers and applause) now hopefully the next couple of sections should fly past as they don't really involve any need for synching videos and are more just about selecting clips. What I like about this part is again having time to look through the footage fully and discovering little moments that the couple will have missed because of the craziness of the day and anyone who's already had their wedding day will know that these things fly by so fast that these things are easily missed. On the flip side though I did see some things that have terrified me to my core and I'm still having nightmares about now (thanks Andy), still on the bright side it's another shot for my Zombie Wedding Movie.

So just a brief one for the moment but the next one will more than likely be when I'm doing the speeches so hopefully blog soon.

Steve

P.S. Sorry if the title sounds like a cross between a The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and a Richard Curtis movie

A Canadian Mountie and lots of Cameras

Here we are then on the 3rd of August and just over a week since I last posted, so for that I wanted to apologise for leaving you all waiting this long for the next thrilling instalment of this blog.......ahem.

So right now i've got a rough version of the introduction done, by rough I mean that it still needs some titles added and i'll more than likely throw a few extra bits in later down the line as I spot them whilst going through other footage. In case you're wondering, yes I did find the perfect music I was looking for but it was the one piece of music I wanted to avoid using, largely because I knew that I would be using it later on in the DVD and I avoided listening to it right until the end of my search but I knew from the second it started that it was the song I'd been looking for, in the end though I went with it, the way I see it other films can get away with repeating a song or part of the score over and over again, some of them so much that you want to press the mute button and then burn your remote control so that the sound may never be turned up again. There was of course a temptation to use another piece of music. I'll explain, as this is then end of our trilogy it's been quite tempting to put in a couple of throw backs to past DVDs we've done, either references to things from behind the scenes or to use certain songs that had been used previously. When I first started editing these I used to love using the insrumental version of the theme song from the TV show Due South, a show which I used to love and I think I used t a few times either for Intros or the background music for the DVD menus, so I almost used it for this...but rather than let this spiral into a nostalgia project I'm leaving this as It should be and that is Jo and Petes wedding and i'm going to try and make it as individual to them as I can and anything else can be left for DVD extras.

Don't worry because I haven't been working this long and only just finished the intro, I'm also most of the way through the ceremony, which I have to say has been more of a challenge this time. It's been worse, especially when at one point I was using windows movie maker which only let you work with one video and one audio track, which also needed the use of my limited maths skills, in fact looking  back now I'm surprised any of it was in sync or even made sense. This is the longest service i've worked on clocking in at around 45 minutes and it's also the first time we've used three cameras or four if you count the camera solely capturing audio. So this has seemed like a longer process this time around, on the up side though is that using more cameras means that everything is covered and in the event of a missed shot or some severe shaky cam i've always got two other shots to choose from so hopefully the whole thing will be a lot more varied by the end of it.

Conversion and the Intro music

First things first, for those of you thinking about correcting my use of the Cybermen, I'm aware that they upgrade and not convert but if you ever try typing conversion or file conversion into google images you get some pretty boring pictures come up.

Here we are then 26th July and 6 days AW and the file conversion is finally done, there were a couple of minor glitches along the way but panic attack over and it's all done. Now we move on to the next stage which in this case happens to be picking the music for the into. "Well thats easy you might say" I wish that were true, you see for me that first piece of music sets the whole thing off, its got to click and feel right. That first song sets the pace for the whole introduction, too slow and the whole thing drags right from the start, too fast and you stand to make the ceremony feel slow, you need something upbeat with a decent pace. I always know when i've got the right music because once the clips are cut together and the music is playing I can't but crack a huge smile, thats when I know i've got it and getting just that first couple of minutes right gives me that buzz for the rest of edit.

Of course the other thing that needs thinking about is the couples taste in music, the last thing you want is to find the perfect song only to find that the couple absolutely hate the song you've chosen, that shouldn't be a problem for this one because I'm pretty sure Jo and Pete love Jedward.

Anyway i've got a few selected I've just got to try them out and see how they work and just hope they like them. Hopefully by the next time I post the intro should be finished and i'm going to try and put a little clip on the website or at the least the link to it on youtube.

Steve

The Beginning

It's now the 22nd of July 2 days AW (after wedding) and so far i've managed to get all the footage transferred across and put into categories to make editing easier and renaming. For those who are interested i've 53GB with of footage all in stunning HD, now the next job will be to convert it all to a file format that works with Final Cut which should be quite straightforward but time consuming.

While looking back at the footage you come to realise how much of the day you've actually missed due to filming and if I think about it I don't really get to experience the special day that everyone else experienced until I sit and go through the various footage, because although you're there your not really focusing on the wedding but trying to get the best footage that you can to make the couple proud and being as they're your friends you put everything you've got into making it special for them. Thats not to say that I regret doing this because I really don't and quite honestly I wouldn't have it any other way.

On another note I've got to say, and this is by no means a criticism of other weddings i've done, this has been the most fun wedding i've shot, just in terms of sheer content and the amount of footage i've got to work with, in fact i've almost got to much. Normally the DVD I do clock in at about an hour, with this one however I think this will literally be our Return of the King in length alone and i'm talking the extended cut here. 

Anyway enough from me for now ad hopefully next time I post the conversion will be done adn the editing will have started.

Steve