One Wedding and a Funeral

Life cycle events are always fascinating. I’ll start with the happy event.

One of my occasional camera operators got married last Saturday. I was asked to attend the rehearsal, although I’m not really sure why. After all these years, it wasn’t likely that the ceremony would have even one element that I hadn’t seen before.

The church was where Oak Lane and Mt. Airy overlapped, which was something of a treat for me. My mother’s parents lived in Oak Lane for most of their lives, and my father’s parents lived in Mt. Airy for many years. My family lived in Oak Lane when I was very young, and I have many memories of that area. Driving past our former homes was an interesting trip down memory lane, especially since I hadn’t been past our home on North 17th Street in a very long time.

Rehearsal was interesting, what with the cherry-picker inside the sanctuary. The roof had a leak directly above where the bride and groom would be standing, and the cherry-picker was there for the repairs. Ok, so that was something I hadn’t seen before.

I didn’t know exactly what was happening, as all of the participants started gathering in a circle. About the same moment that I realized that everyone was going to pray together, I was “invited” to participate. “You too, sweepea” was the command of the woman in charge. And who was I to argue? We all joined hands and prayed.

It must have worked, because the rain did not materialize on their wedding day, and the roof didn’t leak on them. Kimberly and Shawn had a great and happy day together. Their honeymoon was in Cancun, and they had stocked up on flu-fighting goods.

On Friday, the day between the rehearsal and the wedding, I got an email with a very disturbing subject line. A fraternity brother had passed away suddenly, and the email was the funeral information.

“Passed away suddenly” is, of course, a euphemism. There was a widow with two young sons, one thisclose to his Bar Mitzvah. The rabbi called it a tragedy, and, at least for the survivors, that’s pretty accurate. I certainly know about the kind of madness that leads to such an end, but that doesn’t make it any better.

On Monday, I took the ride to the funeral with three other Brothers, each of whom I’ve know for more than 30 years. We met up with many others at the funeral, some of whom I’ve also known for more than 30 years. I looked around at these guys, my good friends, and realized that we have grown old together.

So there’s no big philosophical conclusion here. This was a glimpse into my world from the last weekend. That will lead into this weekend, where I’m covering a second-generation event. I covered the parent’s wedding, and now it’s their daughter’s Bat Mitzvah.

The Wedding Video Business Needs More Challenges

Actually, the newest challenges have the potential to impact photographers, and other wedding professionals as well. Like so many interesting concepts, the business models I’ll discuss here started on the West Coast.

At least one video professional teamed up with roughly a dozen other wedding vendors to sponsor a DIY wedding video seminar. Their mission was to instruct engaged couples, and their friends, on how to shoot and edit their own wedding video. An afternoon of instruction would be followed by a “Meet the Professionals” segment, where the other vendors would be available.

While I know the person who coordinated this program, we have not yet discussed it, so I don’t know the motivation. According to the web site, the scheduled workshop was cancelled.

Places like Home Depot offer free classes because they know that they’ll sell enough product to justify the expense. Here, advance registration for the wedding video workshop was $49, and it was $69 at the door. Granted, that price did include a coffee break and a Wine and Hors d’Ouevres Reception. Regardless of whether the vendor partners made any financial contribution, this was going to be an expensive production. We haven’t seen something like this on the East Coast yet, but it looks like we could.

The other new concept impacts photography, along with video. There is a company offering to rent out digital still cameras, and those cameras are also capable of capturing video and audio. This is being touted as an environmentally-friendly improvement on the disposable cameras that have been so prevalent at weddings.

You can order packages of 10, 20, or even 30 of these digital cameras. They’re shipped to you just before the wedding, along with extra “eco-friendly” batteries. The company then hosts the photos and/or video on their web site, where anyone can access the files, and order copies. The claim is that each camera can hold more than 450 photos, or more than 15 minutes of audio and video. The images are available on the website for a month (included in the basic price), or for a year, for an additional fee of about $45. The photo and video files are then available for download-for free.

The wedding business has always been very competitive. With these two developments, I think that competitiveness ramped up a bit more.

May 10 wedding

May 10 was clearly a big day for weddings. I was working for Jillian and Chris, whose ceremony was at Old St. Mary’s, with the reception at the Radisson Warwick. This was a fairly recent booking, as they had originally contracted with a studio in New Jersey that shut down, unannounced. They came to me on a referral from their photographer, Michael Leslie. (The images here are courtesy of Michael Leslie, from his blog at http://www.michaelleslie.com/blog/?p=264).

Jillian’s biggest trouble was being uncomfortable at being the center of attention. That’s real hard to do when you’re the woman in the big white dress.

Although the day before their wedding was cold and rainy, their day turned out just fine. We had time to stop at the Art Museum after the ceremony, and that’s when we concluded that May 10 was such a big wedding day. There were 5 or 6 other wedding parties at the Art Museum while we were there (I knew one of the photographers, and two of the video producers). There were two other wedding parties near the Water Works, two more at the fountain in front of the main library, and one out front of the Union League (I knew their video producer as well).

Jillian and Chris had a rockin’ reception, with Rio, a band from EBE Talent, and about 150 guests. The wedding ended with Jillian being held up like she was in a mosh pit That’ll be a good wrap to the video.

Why Get A Wedding Video?

An associate from California posted this Youtube clip;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP0UHCVyvtU&mode=related&search

In it, a couple discusses their wedding, and their decision to not have a video recording of the day. It's worth spending the 5 or 6 minutes there is you're unsure about hiring a wedding video producer.

An Attempted Scam

I got a call this afternoon from a translation service, telling me that they were communicating with me on behalf of someone deaf or hard of hearing who was using one of those special machines. Whatever. He’s asking about video for his daughters wedding on 9/1, in Philadelphia. After a brief “conversation” through the translation service, I was asked to send information via email. As you see below, I did that.

His reply, however, is the classic scam spiel. I've shared this with as many industry professionals as I could. My original email is at the bottom.

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From: daniel collins [mailto:danielcollins777@yahoo.com] Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2007 3:24 PMTo: Steve@SteveWernick.comSubject: special favor needed from you

Dear Steve,Thanks for your response and kind effort,the quote you have provided is okay and i will like to book and make total payment with my credit card,i will like you to know at this point that i also hire the service of a African Traditional dancers who does not have a credit card machine to run my card for his payment,i was billed $3000 for this service and i have been able to send $1000 to him via western union money transfer and i do not have enough raw fund on me at present to pay his balance than paying with my credit card so i will like you to add up the remaining $2000 to your charges and charge my credit card details for the sum of $6000 and forward $2000 to him in return via western union money transfer at the nearest location,the excess fund will be for the western union charges and compensation for your time and effort i want you to get back to me with a response and let me know if you are okay with this arrangement so i can forward my credit card details for the payment,thanks for your co-operation in advance,stay blessed.RegardsDr Collins
Hi Daniel,

Thank you for contacting me regarding your daughter’s wedding. If you haven’t yet done so, please visit our web site at www.videoccasion.net. We have sample videos and more information there.

Our standard programming always includes two camera coverage for both the ceremony and reception. The videos are all fully edited, and you’ll receive three identical copies. My intent is one for the bride and groom, and one for each set of parents, but how you divide them is your decision. Our pricing, if the wedding is in the general Philadelphia area, is $3495.00.

Please let me know if you have any other questions. If you have access to Instant Messaging, you can find me at WernickSteve on AOL IM.

Regards,
Steve Wernick
Videoccasion, Inc.

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.

Video Tape Does Not Last Forever

I’m just finishing up part 2 of a massive tape-to-DVD transfer project for a client. They had more than 60 hours of home videos of their kids and vacations, another 10 hours of old movie file that I’d transferred to a pro format for them about a decade ago, and their wedding video. That brings me to the point of this post.

This couple got married in 1992, at one of the premier hotels in Philadelphia. They had one of the leading videographers of that time document the day on tape. Although they may have had the choice of buying the Master tape (a professional video version of the VHS tape that they received), they only had the VHS tape to give me for the transfer.

In their wedding, the Best Man’s toast went on for quite a while. This couple did watch their video frequently and often skipped over the toast by scanning on fast forward. The “scan” mode allows you to see the video as you move forward, so that you can go back to play more readily. On occasion, they left the tapein the VCR for a day or two at a time.

I’m not going to give you a technical explanation of what happened, mainly because I’m not an especially technical person. When they dropped the videos off, they told me that they weren’t sure what was going on with the toast segment, but they were concerned that they “wore out the tape.” When I transferred their wedding video from VHS to DVD, I discovered that their concerns were completely justified. The Best Man’s toast had basically vanished. Sure, every few moments you could see something, but you couldn’t hear anything. When I opened the shell, the tape obviously had been damaged over the years. So now an important memory from their wedding is lost.

The problem had obviously been growing for years. Let me offer a few observations:
-Always fully rewind a valuable VHS tape after watching it.
-Always return the VHS tape to its container after rewinding.
-Always store a VHS tape on its narrow end, with the tape side to the bottom.
-Always store a VHS tape away from any electro-magnetic source, like stereo speakers.

Most importantly, get your VHS tapes transferred to DVD immediately. And when I say “VHS”, I’m really referring to any home video format, including Betamax, Video 8mm, and Digital 8mm video. The longer you wait, the greater the chance you’ll have a problem like I’ve discussed here. Remember, that wedding video wasn’t quite 15 years old and an important segment was gone.

If you send me an email (steve@videoccasion.net) by April 15, 2007, you’ll receive a special discount on your tape-to-DVD transfer.

Videographer Education, Part 2

Third Trip: Orlando, Tampa, Baton Rouge, and Syracuse

My business trips over the last couple of years have often featured really bad weather at home while I’m on the road. On an earlier trip to Orlando, I was on the last plane out of Philadelphia before the airport was closed due to snow. That storm dumped about two feet of snow on my home town, and I just had to deal with setting up an outdoor registration desk in Florida.

This time, however, I was heading to Florida the very same day as Hurricane Wilma. When I’ve traveled to Orlando recently, the flights are always fairly full. Not this time. This day, there were only about two dozen people, including myself, who absolutely had to be on that flight to Orlando.

As we learned, hurricane Wilma raced across south Florida quite rapidly. Although it caused significant damage in the Miami area, north-central Florida was relatively untouched. The locals took most of the usual hurricane precautions, however, so that the school where the Orlando videographers usually meet was closed. To my surprise, the weather in the Orlando area during my stay was about perfect: cool, with low humidity.

Although the worries over the hurricane, and the eventual relocation of the meeting to a Perkins restaurant did have some effect upon attendance, at least the meeting was held. There were even a few videographers who came up from Tampa for the opportunity to network with their Orlando friends, and to hear the Video Critique (the Tampa program was “Do the Math”).

Since Tampa is reasonably close to Orlando, I decided to drive that night to my Tampa hotel. This was an extended road trip, so two nights in one hotel in Florida seemed to be a better alternative.

Road trip days are interesting in their own right. Since I didn’t arrive in Tampa until around midnight, I took the next morning as an opportunity to sleep in a bit. Then it was time to get back to work. Since I had my office calls forwarded to my cell phone, and I had full internet access, working at my hotel desk wasn’t much different than working from my home office. From there, it was on to the Tampa Bay PVA meeting.

The TBPVA leadership had chosen the “Do the Math” program, feeling that the membership would benefit from the business-oriented nature of the presentation. “Do the Math” gives videographers the tools to determine what their true costs are in producing an event video, and they can use these tools as an aid to properly pricing their services. While it’s a very detailed program, with mathematical formulas and such, the concept is vital to videographers. After all, a huge number of videographers entered the business because of the “cool” factor, and business considerations were often not a factor at all.

As happens everywhere “Do the Math” is presented, the attendees were surprised at the costs associated with producing an event video. It’s kind of fun to watch eyes glaze over a bit in the middle of the program, when costs are broken down into weekly and hourly rates, and to watch those same eyes widen dramatically when the final costs are tabulated.

There seemed to be no direct flights from Tampa to Baton Rouge, so I was out fairly early the next morning for the trip, with a connection through Atlanta.

Traveling into Baton Rouge so soon after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita meant that there were absolutely no hotel rooms available. They were all still filled with evacuees. After checking every national chain, and every local hotel that could be found, I received an offer of hospitality from Eddie Darbone, the association's past president. Eddie and I had been friends for some time, and I had to accept his gracious offer. He unexpectedly upped the hospitality ante by insisting on picking me up at the airport, driving me around town, and taking me back to the airport the next morning.

We went straight to lunch after I arrived in Baton Rouge. Having visited New Orleans many times over the years, I’d developed a taste for Cajun food, so Eddie took me to an excellent local restaurant. As we entered the restaurant, I was reminded of one difference between that area and my home town: there was a display case filled with about two dozen different guns and rifles. You’re just not going to find that at a restaurant in Philadelphia.

Eddie had hosted more than a dozen members of his family for a couple of weeks after the two hurricanes. Having just one house guest was, by comparison, no work at all.

The association in Baton Rouge meets in a local library, so there’s a definite ending time to the meeting. With an arrival time of 6:00pm, I had no idea how they handled eating schedules. Me, I like to have my meals at more or less traditional times. But since I’d had a late lunch, waiting was not an issue. What did catch me by surprise was the several members brought dessert foods. There was a variety of home-made cakes, brownies, and cookies available, and it was all very tempting. And it was all quite good.

Even with all the snacks, we still had a meeting. The “Video Critique” program was on that night’s agenda, and it was an entertaining program. Unlike Orlando, there were no local productions for me to review.

Dinner at a local Italian restaurant followed the meeting, and at least 15 people went there from the meeting. I think this kind of evening speaks to the best of what local videographers associations can do. They held a meeting with networking time and an educational presentation, and then followed it up by spending another hour or so together, sharing a meal. The friendships and business relationships that grow from nights like this are invaluable.

All too soon, it was time to call it a night. That set me up for one of the more challenging
Travel segments of this tour. I had a 6:00 a.m. flight back to Philadelphia, with a plane change in Houston. From Philadelphia, I was going to drive to Syracuse. With only thirty minutes to make the connection in Houston, and a little over five hours to drive from the Philadelphia airport to Syracuse (about 200 miles), there was virtually no room for any delay anywhere in that agenda.

The worst part of the schedule was that I needed to get up at 4:00 a.m., in order to get to the airport and go through the pre-flight process. And if I had to be up at 4:00 a.m., that meant that Eddie Darbone also had to get up at 4. That really was a shining example of Southern hospitality.

Fortunately, other than a little glitch in the directions when I was close to my hotel in Syracuse, I didn’t experience any delays. Let me say this about the flights into and out of Baton Rouge: they were on two very crowded, and very small, regional jets. A standard roll-on bag can’t be brought into the cabin, and there’s not enough room to open up most laptop computers.

Heading through Northeastern Pennsylvania in late October is usually a visual thrill. This ride was no exception. With lots of forest land, I spent as much time focused on the various shades of yellow and red leaves as I did on the road. Fortunately, it’s also not a particularly crowded highway, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only leaf-gazer anyway.

That little glitch in the directions cost me less than a half-hour, and that was about all the spare time available to me. Just a few minutes after I settled into the hotel, Syracuse association President Rod Salvilla was waiting to pick me up. Ironically, Rod served as a video awards judge together with Eddie Darbone several years ago, so I got to spend time with two old friends from different parts of the country on the same day.

Just like the group in Baton Rouge, the Syracuse association meets in a local library. Sadly, unlike the Baton Rouge association, no one at the Syracuse meeting brought any desserts.

Rod felt that the association would be best served by the “Do the Math” presentation. With some member being new to the video production industry, and some part-time videographers as well, this subject was an excellent primer on the important business issues all of us face.

Only a core group went out to dinner after the meeting, at a chain restaurant located in a nearby mall. As always, the talk turned to ways of improving the association by having informative presentations, and how to draw new members.