Wedding Video & The Dam Photographer

[DaveGardener]

Hi all, Thought I'd share with you the experiences of my first wedding video.
We run a small entertainment and event services company, and for the past year we have diversified the business to doing filming jobs. Over the year we have done a few projects mainly promotional and publicity stuff with our XL1s.
We all decided at the business that wedding videos would be a good line to get into, and so as my sister was getting married this at the start of June we saw it a good place to try it out and learn some things. Generally the filming part went really well, and I was quite pleased with the footage, but the thing that pi**ed me off was the photographer getting in the way of practically every shot. and so you either try and move and end up wobbling all over the place, or you miss the shot completely.
Anyway the point of me rambling on is to ask those who regularly do weddings, is how you overcome not just the photographer but others getting into a good shot aswell, do you just move and risk editing out the footage, or do you run a strict shoot and get your helper to stop anyone getting in your way just while you film?
Anyway sorry its so long.
Cheers Dave

[Marc Peters]

Look at it this way: you're there to record the day's events. As soon as you start "directing", you're no longer recording but dictating the day.

On the hand, photographer's job (even the so called "journalistic" photographers) is to stage manage shots. They are, by their very nature, staged for the camera.

Generally speaking you'll find the photographer will pop up at all the crucial moments. He or she won't consider getting in the way of your shots, but as long as you've chatted to the photographer and stressed what's crucial for your video, you'll be fine.

Key moments that I see as the photographer's domain are:

Arrival of the Bride
Signing of the Registry
Photo Shoot after the Ceromony
Photo Shoot of the B&G before the Speeches
Cutting of the Cake

I'd leave the photographer be here and work around them. But for the other parts of the day, it's YOUR turn to hog the best spots .