Friday, June 29, 2007

One Wedding, Two Firsts
















After nearly 24 years in the video production business, it’s rare that I have the opportunity for one new thing in a day, let alone two. That’s exactly what happened on June 23, with a wedding at the Ritz-Carlton in Philadelphia.

This particular wedding was referred to me by Sheila Corbett, who is a full-service consultant (http://www.elegant-events.net/). Although this was the first wedding where we worked together, I wasn’t counting that fact. This was the first Persian wedding we’d ever recorded, and it was also our first event recorded in High Definition (HD) video.

The photographer (http://www.alwaysandforeverphotography.com/) promised to supply a couple of pictures, and they’ll be posted as soon as I receive them. (UPDATE: They're posted!) It really was a visually interesting wedding, as the bride and groom sat on chairs placed on a riser, with a spread of various items in front of them. Some were clearly non-religious, like the two stuffed animals, and the honey was part of a ritual, where each dipped their little finger in the honey, to share with the other. And with much of the wedding ceremony in Farsi, well, I just hope there was nothing said that we need to bleep out.

Overall, they had a beautiful day. The weather was perfect, so all of their outdoor photography/videography will look great. It turned out that their Persian ceremony was not also a civil wedding, so they scheduled the civil ceremony for earlier that same day. So I guess they were married before they were married.

Oh, yeah, that HD thing. We were using Canon A1 cameras, on loan as part of the Iron Videographer competition. We ran three cameras during the ceremony: manned camera on a tripod at the back, my camera was hand-held at the front of the room, and an unmanned camera facing the bride and groom. As usual, we ran two hand-held cameras during the reception. With only about 60 guests, it was a remarkably fun party. I’ll post a short clip on our main web site (http://www.videoccasion.net/) after we’ve edited the full wedding.

The cameras were fairly easy to use, especially given how thick the manual was. The few adjustments we needed to make (setting the input for external microphones was an important adjustment) were simple changes found in the menu. Both of us had used the camera before, which certainly helped. Still, the cameras offer something like a zillion things that can be adjusted, tweaked, or refined, and it’s easy to make a mistake if you're not careful.

Cheers to Ghazaleh and Jahan, who had a wonderful wedding day.

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