This is William from Tree studio. Today, I want to give Melbourne wedding videographers the guideline about how to give the bride and groom direction at the wedding photo location session . We use the Parliament house as a sample, Parliament house is most famous landmark in Melbourne city, it has lots of staircase in font of building, marble floor on the top of staircase, and Roman style of pillar give the videographer creativity. Parliament house is one of my favour wedding photo location, compare with other outdoor photo locations, such as Carlton garden, Port Melbourne beach, the shelter of Parliament house provides the good light condition, no matter sunny day or raining day.
I would suggest wedding videographer bring 35mm lens if you are solo shooter and you can switch the full frame senor to crop APS-C mode to get 50mm effect. If you have a second shooter with you, he can bring the 50mm or 85 mm to capture some close-up shot, please don’t bring the same focal lens.
In this lesson, you will achieve three goals.
- how to give the bride and groom effective direction
- Which lens you can get certain composition
- The certain shooting distance between the videographer and the bride and groom
First of all, when we film the bride and groom, please keep in mind the composition, so you need to know which lens you give you the best result before you rolling the camera. At the same time, you need to keep a good distance with your subject, the bride and groom. Most of circumstance, I would like to keep 2-4 meters with the subject, it is easy to communicate with the them and meanwhile, the subject can stand out from the backdrop in your frame. Please don’t leave too much space for the composition if you want to focus on the bride and groom, because the audience attention would drag away.
I use one of first sample, I will ask the bride stand at the staircase, I use the DJI gimbal, and 35 mm lens and keep 3 meters to film her full body shot. You can ask her walk towards to you, and you can keep yourself backwards to have a continues walking shot. Some little tips, you can ask her look outside at the beginning frame, and when she walk one or two steps, you can ask her look front. I call the movement as key frame. It is not necessary keep the bride walking too long if she keeps the same gesture, the footage will look the same, you can ask her to look different direction to get the key frame for the post editor.
For this shot, you can have some variation, you can use the 50 mm to film her upper body or her dress. But 50mm is hard to keep a good composition than 35 mm when the videographer use gimbal, so you just need to focus on the key frame.
For the next shot, I will ask the bride and groom go to the top of the stair case. To emphasise the space of Parliament house, I will ask the groom to stand at the left of frame and walk a diagonal line instead of straight line. I use 35mm lens and keep 3.8 meter to the subject. You will use the gimbal to follow him from left to right, but you don’t need to move too quick, just using a little bit movement of camera to create some dynamic movement of the shot, we want to see the movement of the groom not the camera movement.
For the next shot, we can use the rightmost at Parliament house, it has the armrest. We can ask the bride stand at top of the staircase and ask her walk down 2 or 3 steps. I use 50mm lens and keep 6.5 meter to the bride. She can hold the armrest. At the beginning, she can look down and then she can look her left side. For this shot, we can use 35mm lens.
For the next shot, we want to exhibit some connection between the bride and groom. We ask the bride and groom come to top of staircase, I use 50 mm lens and keep 2 meters to the front people. To make the shot creativity, we can ask the bride walk in the front of groom, and the groom one step behind her at the beginning. After 1 or 2 seconds, the groom can walk faster and hold the bride hand from back, and then they can keep the same position and walk towards to cameras. You can ask them to have some reaction, for instance, look each other, talking and laughing. In here, I want to discuss about the lens, 35mm can capture more atmosphere, while 50 mm will focus on the people and the 50mm can reduce the feeling of distance, that means 50mm can create some intimate between the bride and groom than using 35mm, so please think what kind of shot you want to create.
For the next shot, it is bit of unique movement. We use the staircase again. I use 50mm lens and keep 3.8 meter to the front people. We can ask the bride or groom stand in front of a pillar, and she can look one side, I would suggest her head opposite the camera position, and the groom walk down from the stair case and the groom’s head can turn to the camera position, thus the bride and groom’s line of sight can be intersected.
And the similar shot, we can change the bride stand in front of the pillar and lean her body to the pillar. She stands far end of our frame, on the right side of the frame. And this time the movement of subject, the groom is close to the camera, and walk down to the staircase, and he can look one side to other side.
For the next easy shot, we can ask the bride or groom come to top of the staircase and stand in front of wooden door. I use 35mm lens and keep 3 meters to the subject. The bride can stand in mid of frame and we use gimbal to have 180 circle movement, at the same time, the bride look our lens to create some connection between the subject and the filmmakers, I would suggest the videographer to capture from the low angle, and she can slight look down the cameras.
For the next practice, we can shot individual people, we can use gimbal to create following shot, the first shot, I use 50mm and keep 3.9 meters to the subjects. And we can give the subject some direction, she can turn her sight from looking cameras to looking outside.
For the next shot, we can use 50 mm and 3.1 meters to the subject to have some close-up shot and capture the shot slight below eye level. The bride looks her right side at the first frame, and then she can turn her body to another side. Please ask the bride always look the cameras when she turn her body, she can always look down the cameras to create some cool shot.
For the last shot in this video, we want to create some intimate connection between the bride and groom. We use 50 mm lens and 0.8 meter to the front people, the bride can lean her body to the wall, she can look slight up and pretend to think something, and at the same time, she can play her hair. The groom stands right side of the frame, and he can turn his head to the bride and look her and talk to her. We want to get the key frame when the groom engages with his bride.
We can use have some variation, instead the bride looks up and she can also look the camera to create some connection with the audience.
Thank you for watch my video, this is William from Tree Studio. For the next video, I will show you how to film the groom get ready. See you at next episodes.
