In the Summer of 2016, I was offered to do videography for my coworker René’s wedding! We had been work study buddies at WWU’s College of Business and Economics where we aided the IT Specialist with troubleshooting for the faculty, it was a quirky little side job. It was an average day in the office when she asked me, I was embarrassed that I didn’t even notice she was engaged! She had seen some of the photos I had taken on Instagram and I had a small portfolio of wedding photos at the time. She decided to take a chance on me and offer up the gig. I was hesitant at first because it was a big thing to ask of somebody. I’d never done anything like it before. I was afraid to live up to her expectations (although she really had none)… Of course you want your wedding video to look super clean and have it tell the story in detail! I was super unsure of how to go about it … But I accepted. I thought it’d be a unique challenge and it was one of my first paid video gigs so I was super down to try it out.
She gave me the itinerary of the day and kind of just said “I trust your vision”… What vision (lol)? So in preparation, I watched many Youtube videos of sweet weddings (good and bad) and decided the kind of angle I wanted to approach the video from. The day comes; I’ve got a single Canon 6D, a 24-105mm f/4, a 24mm f/1.4, a 50mm f/1.8, an 85mm f/1.8, 3 batteries, a 64GB SD and a monopod. Gear wise I brought maybe too much for 1 person running around a venue. Although I was sweaty and tired for most of the day, the shoot goes without a hitch! I was shooting from the morning of, while everyone got ready, until nighttime when they ran through the sparkler tunnel and rode off in a convertible. I perform a run n gun fly on the wall guerilla style, shoot-everything type strategy and I filmed every little thing I could. I was 20 at the time so when I wasn’t shooting I made friends with the older ladies and got lots of free drinks. Safe to say I was definitely the best dancer at the whole event (refer to blog post 1 for elaboration). They take me to the Bolt Bus station the next day and it breaks down on the way home. Not the best travel experience but its all good.
Once I got home, having nothing but a chromebook at the time as my computing workhorse, I decided to edit the video on an iMac at the UW library with my friend’s login. It took me about 2 days of working there until I got it to a place on Final Cut Pro X that I was proud of. I send it off via Dropbox and wait for a reaction (as this is the most important part)! I was anxious to hear back, but it turned out that the video made them cry. That’s all I could ask for really. Check it out!