Just finished editing a wedding which I did last week, I was quite satisfied with the result so decided to make a demo which will be used on my "business" site (With the couples approval ofcourse)

Now for a demo the footage I choose is very carefully picked, I allways try to leave out the familie or friends as they have not signed an approval for that, if they are in the picure it's from a distance and the compression usually blurs out the details of their faces if they are far enough from the camera.

I also stay below 2 minutes and try to give a very short impression of the wedding day, the images also have to "fit" very well with the music, it's not the original music that I used on the dvd but due to the authorrights (Think you call it like that?) I use Sony cinescore for that purpose for display on the internet.

You might notice that I make some small horizontal moves with the camera when I zoom in, that's because I really like the look of it when the background moves a bit compared with the object in front. Those shots are very difficult to achieve since I am not working with a glide cam, that's the reason these shots are a bit shaky but I feel it's within limits.

In regard to effects I try use them with care, slomo's f.i. I only use when they add something extra to the picture, like the part with the bubbles which was done with twixtor. First it looks like a photo, then like some moving bubbles have been added to the foreground and then the picture comes alive.

Also a cool effect was with the appearing guests on the table, that effect was very simple to achieve, I justed panned the camera when the festivityhall was empty and did the same when it was full on a tripod which stayed in exact the same position, afterwards it's just a matter of putting the two clips on top of eachother, and finding the same position using a very simple crossfade.


Demo 1 - made about a week ago
Demo 2 - about a year old

The second demo below is now a year old, most of the comments above apply to this clip as well. Does anyone see a difference in camera-/editing compared to above one? I"m just curious.

You probably also noticed that I don't use the actual recorded sound in my demo's, for the Belgian wedding market I don't see any use in that for a demo, when I visit a client, then they get to see a complete dvd with all the aspects of a wedding, including the boring parts like the town hall ceremonie which is all speech and no music. Just for a demo I don't find it usefull as I only want to show the people how the "mood" was during that day. (I hope I express myself right, it's not always easy finding the right words in another language)

Do you think that in the UK you would get away with demo's like this or do you have another tradition in this? And do you think there is room for improvement?