Last weekend I had the pleasure of shooting a same day edit wedding fusion video for Southern California wedding photographers gabriel.ryan.photographers. Gabriel and his wife and partner Carlie Renee were the photographers for the wedding and they brought me on with the sole purpose of shooting and editing a wedding video the same day.

The wedding floral and design was by Carissa Jones and the wedding coordination and planning was by Jesi Haack. It was great to work with such a magical team.

A few days earlier I was talking to Aaron Dieppa about photographers offering video products to their clients and I ended up wondering if I could show up to a wedding by myself and make a wedding fusion video same day edit. The goal would be to offer photographers a cost effective way to add video to the day without adding much expense or effort.

So… after talking to Aaron I tweeted to see if anyone had a wedding coming up… I got a number of responses and the most promising one was with Gabriel Ryan. So began the planning…

How could I possibly shoot high quality video from multiple angles, capture sound, bring tripods and stedicams and other video stabilization gear, shoot video of everything… then capture it all and edit something together with photos from the photographer? I was thinking about it all wrong. A same day edit wedding fusion video would have to be less complicated.

My first goal to make this fusion wedding video a success was to gear down to the bare minimum. That would be the only way a crew of one could pull this off. So I set out to have only one camera bag and just bring pretty much what I could fit in it. The following is what I ended up with in my wedding fusion video camera kit:

- Canon 5D Mark II
- Canon 28mm 1.8 lens
- Canon 50mm 1.4 lens
- Canon 100mm 2.8 L IS lens
- Steadicam Merlin
- Zacuto Cross Fire
- Zacuto Z-Finder
- Tripod with Manfrotto 301 fluid head
- MacBook Pro

I’m sure you noticed but the tripod and the Zacuto rig didn’t really fit in the camera bag… but that was fine. They stand on their own.

My second goal was to shoot for the edit. So while I shot I would delete clips that were bad, I would only shoot things I knew I would use and I didn’t waste any recording time. I did end up with over an hour of recorded video but in the final wedding fusion video I think I did a good job of shooting for the edit.

My last goal was to make sure I had enough time to make the edit. My plan was to stop shooting and get started editing during the portraits session and that ended up working perfectly. If you are really interested in the editing workflow please let me know in the comments below and I’ll make a post about it if you all really want to know how the editing went.

Over all I am very happy with what we ended up with and I think I will do this again. If you are interested in hiring me to come and shoot a same day edit wedding fusion video please contact me with our contact form.

Lan and I were flown to Cancun by Doug and Lawrence (Furious Photographers) to shoot a photographer’s promo video of them. They somehow booked two weddings back to back in Cancun… with a Day After session after the second wedding (which actually won’t happen until tomorrow).

As part of our project we were also delivering a short video for each couple, so we were essentially shooting two videos at each wedding. For Tiffany and Ly, we decided to do a same-day edit of their AMAZING wedding incorporating photos shot by Doug and Lawrence. Their photos were great, and we got some wonderful footage. I suppose you’d call this a same-day fusion-video, using both photos and video together instead of one or the other or two separate presentations.

We’ll be doing a full edit in the coming weeks, but this is what we showed at the reception, thankfully to a oohs and aahs then a wonderful applause at the end. Tiffany and Ly were literally a dream couple to work with… not just by having a gorgeous wedding but as people who were genuine, easy going and just plain fun.

TECH: Obviously there was no time for adjustments, effects or transitions, those will come later. For those wondering, it was shot on a 5D mark II and a Canon HV20 on a Steadicam Merlin, edited in Final Cut Pro, exported and sent to iMovie to add the photos (because it’s easy!). The video was presented on a MacBook Pro to the guests and delivered to the couple on an iPod Touch. Furious Photographers don’t fool around.

MUSIC: 2012 – Story of A Boy – music.podshow.com
(the song is temporary, we actually used a Sigur Ros song for the presentation, but needed to quickly choose something else for us to post online)

Enough talk, watch the video.

-Vu