Come along with me behind the scenes as I film Monica and David’s wedding in California. This is part three, the actual wedding day, and it is the one where a bear crashes the wedding. If you want the earlier parts first, here is part one and here is part two, and you can watch the finished wedding film here.
This video is sponsored by my friends at Musicbed, and I will tell you more about them in a little while.
Welcome To The Wedding Day
Good morning, and welcome to the actual wedding day for Monica and David. It feels like we have been in California forever. It has really only been about five days, but it is finally time to film a wedding.
Right now Rachel is up in the bridal suite filming the bridesmaids getting ready and we are about to head up there. The guys just woke up and look very hung over, so we will give them a bit of time. The petting zoo has arrived. Yes, there is a petting zoo. It is going to be amazing. I got a solid seven hours of sleep and I am feeling great. Had some Cheez-Its for breakfast. Champion. Let’s go film a wedding.
Bride Prep
The bridesmaids are all going to open their presents at the same time, and the plan is to have them sitting and standing in front of this couch, which should be a good setup for the photo too.
The Hoedown
There is a mechanical bull, and yes, I rode it. Worst case scenario, you get horribly injured and cannot photograph the rest of the wedding. I did not have the hip strength. I feel so alive. I highly recommend it.
Bridal Party Portraits
This seemed like a good Super 8 opportunity. Normal formal portrait stuff is just so stuffy and still, and Super 8 adds a little more motion and kinetic energy to things. I really like it.
Groom Prep
Time to film the groom getting ready. There is a nice side light coming in here, so I want to come in on this side. There is a hot tub in the room, which we will not show, but I will have him sit here on the bed to read his letter and get dressed in here. It should look really good. Clean up around here a little bit, move that and that.
Okay, so mess with your sleeve a bit, turn your body a little toward the light. There you go, right there. Now look down toward the window, and then look up out the window, and then down again, and then up toward the camera. Wow, blue steel right there. That’s it.
The Groom’s Letter
This is David reading the letter he wrote to Monica. Read through it here. You do not have to look up at me or anything like that, just keep going through it. If you mess up, just go back a little and start again. It is story time.
The Bride’s Letter And The Dress
Off to film the bride getting into her dress. We are doing really good on time here. There is not much left before the ceremony, a few little things and then a first look with her dad. Otherwise I am already starting to mentally prepare for the ceremony, like, I need to get my tripods out of the room and get those set up. The great thing about staying at the lodge is that I do not have anything in my car. Everything is in my hotel room, which is right here, and it is a three minute walk to the ceremony site. Love that.
The dress is a little sheer, so I think the mic is going to show through if we are not careful. We want to make sure we can actually hide the microphone. It is pretty ridiculous what you end up doing, but it does make a big difference in the audio quality.
Ceremony Setup
Time to mosey over with my tripods and get set for the ceremony. One of the best perks of this wedding is that everything is real chill. We have so much time. I have another hour before the ceremony starts. It is great.
Really basic ceremony setup here. One tripod on either side, then I will have a third camera roaming. A really simple three camera ceremony setup. You do not have to go too crazy.
For audio, it looks like there are wireless receivers running into the same speaker, so what I may do is plug my Zoom H4n straight into the speaker and record everything that way. Of course I will still be miking people individually as well. The bride is already miked, the groom will be miked, so we are going to get audio regardless. For now I put my tripod down to stake my claim on the location.
Looking closer, there are separate outputs for each mic rather than one universal output, so plugging into any single one of those is not going to work, because I would have to pick and choose. So my best bet, just like at the rehearsal dinner last night, is to plug straight into the record out on the back of the Bose L1 with the Zoom H4n. Super simple, and that will record all of these mics.
Then I need to go find Eric, the DJ. He is running away from me. He knows I am coming. I will wait over here to intercept, and then strike quickly. Eric confirmed I can plug right into the back of his mixer for the reception toasts too, which is usually what I do because it is super clean. Feeling really good about this.
Now I am thinking about lighting for the reception, because it can get dark pretty soon. Well, soon. A few hours. The DJ has his lights set up pointing at the dance floor this way, so I want to make sure my light is not competing with his. I want to be coming in from the other side. With this being a destination wedding I had to bring a smaller light stand, and I definitely want it away from the guests so nobody trips over it. Thankfully, with the 60x it has a good throw, so I can really punch it out there from further back. I am thinking around here somewhere by this tree. It is out of the way of the tables, and as a plus it is on a hill, which is going to help give me elevation, because my destination light stands are not the tallest.
Back at the ceremony, I am putting a mic on the officiant too. Please do not think I am a total diva, but it is kind of windy outside, so I have a second microphone I am going to put on you as well. That will be three on you, because it will be two for me and then one for the officiant. Thankfully you are ordained with the Universal Life Church, so you are expecting this sort of drama. The backup mic has a little sticky on it so it goes underneath the shirt, so whenever it is windy, which it is, it will not catch the wind. It is much quieter, which I love.
Then I put one on David too, because I am paranoid. Everybody gets a microphone. I am like Oprah, just handing them out. You get a mic, you get a mic. Mics on everybody, audio on everybody, audio recording. Love it.
The Ceremony
A side note before we start. With the Weebill gimbal, I have only used it for half the day so far, and by the time the ceremony was about to begin the battery was already down to about 15 percent. So I am really skeptical about this gimbal’s ability to make it through a full wedding. Thankfully, because we had an hour of downtime, I was able to plug it in for a good 30 minutes and it is back up to 75 percent. Not upset about it, but the battery life is concerning, especially because you cannot swap the batteries like you can with other gimbals.
The bride sang Katy Perry’s “Firework” as a surprise for the groom. Grandma was the flower girl.
Afterwards: I am left handed, so I should have had the gimbal in my left hand, but I was doing it the other way around. Regardless, I got the processional, I got it, I got it. Rachel held it together and did not fumble anything. Now I have mics on everybody, so we are making good progress.
Reception Lighting Setup
Now we have got to figure out lighting. There is a free plug over here, which is very intriguing to me, because that means I can hardwire in. Hardwiring is always better, especially for very long wedding receptions. The battery is going to last for a few hours, but not all night.
Couple Portraits
We had a little bit of time for portraits, so we might as well take it. They were really timid whenever we took them out in the mountains earlier in the week, because they were not married yet. Today is different.
Feeling really good about the portrait session. Nothing super crazy, three locations, and between all the portrait stuff we got out in the mountains and this, I am feeling really, really good about it. We made sure we got a lot more kissing this time, because they were not kissing as much before.
MacGyver Lighting Setup
Remember how yesterday at the rehearsal dinner I said there might be blackouts because of the forest fire? Well, the power just went out. The music is dead, the speakers are dead, the lights are dead. We have got candles. Thankfully my light has a battery and I have battery power for my microphone. And the DJ is walking over with a generator. Clearly California is used to this.
I need to show you my lighting setup, because things got really crazy at the reception and I did not get a chance to show you. I had it set up and plugged into hardwired power, but then we lost power, so it is on battery now.
I do not fully endorse this, but because this is a destination wedding I was not able to bring sandbags along, thanks to airline weight requirements. There is no better way to get in trouble with an airline than to have a bag of sand. “It’s 50 pounds of sand.” “Yes. I need it for my light stand.” So we did not do that, and I came up with this custom strategy instead, because the ground really is not even. My light stand is here, and I lashed it to this tree with an extension cord that I brought. Multipurpose. So it is super straight, and even if somebody drunkenly stumbles into it, it does not fall. I am basically MacGyver. Bearded wedding MacGyver.
Speaking of which, Wedding Filmmaking Behind The Scenes – Monica & David’s WILD California Wedding Part 2 is worth a look too.
Couple Canoe Portraits
We do not need power to go to the canoe. What is the canoe? There is a canoe over there in the pond, and we are going to go put them in it. It is canoe time, baby. How many weddings can you say that at?
Slide the canoe over here so you cannot see the dock in the background, and then you can get the shot from right here, and now it looks like they are out on the water. But it is a lie. It is called movie magic. That means we have now filmed two water activities on this wedding, rafting and canoeing.
Reception Toasts
The power is back on, so I do not have to use my battery anymore and I can control the brightness of the light better. Toasts are happening in nine minutes, so we have to prep for that. The struggle now is the sound of all the generators running everywhere and the smell of gasoline in the air slowly poisoning us.
Where would you like to have the toasts? As far away from the generator sound as possible. That is the goal. So back by the ceremony, I think. It is pretty loud over there by the speaker, so over here is probably our best option. I will move my light a little bit, and I will grab my other light to set up on the couple.
Cake, Bouquet And The Dance Party
Power has been back on and I think we are okay now. I am running out of space on my memory cards, it has been a very long day, so we have to do a swap on that. Once the dancing starts we will get there. But wow, fantastic so far. A little power outage. These things happen.
Shooting film at the dance party is scary. The struggle is that if you want to show the client something, you cannot, because you do not know what you got until it is processed. But I got the shot I wanted, and I really hope it turns out.
There’s A Bear
There’s a bear. He is big. He is over there. There he is.
There is a bear, and I got the 135mm out to get it, of course, because I was on a 24mm. You never notice a wedding crasher like that one.
What A Wedding
Just wow. What a wedding. What a week. What a party. We ended not with a bang but with a bear.
All of this needs to be packed up, and we leave to drive to the airport tomorrow at 7:30 in the morning. It is 12:18. Good job, everybody. Thanks for coming along with us for this nearly weeklong extravaganza. It has been a lot of fun. Take care, and eat some tacos.
Thanks To Musicbed
Before you go, I want to take a second to tell you about the amazing sponsor of this video, Musicbed. If you film weddings like me, which I assume you do considering this is a video about filming weddings, I am sure you need to license music for your films, and one of my favorite places to license music is Musicbed. I have been using them basically since I started filming weddings, and in my opinion they have some of the best music, from real bands with real emotion.
If you want examples, I am excited to tell you that you have already heard some, because every single song in this behind the scenes video is licensed from Musicbed. With over a thousand artists and composers offering over 40,000 record label quality tracks that cover a huge range of styles and genres, you are guaranteed to find something that matches the vibe you want in your film. There is so much good music, and it is not hard to find, because Musicbed’s search tool has so many advanced features and they update their curated playlists all the time, so it is really easy to find new songs that not everyone has used yet.
Musicbed’s Wedding Filmmaker subscription lets you download unlimited music from hundreds of musicians for your films, and they created a system called SyncID which automatically removes YouTube copyright claims for any music you license through them on your subscription. You and your couples will not have to deal with music copyright issues on YouTube, and that is amazing.
Sound cool? Use this link to sign up and use the coupon code WHOISMATT23, and you will get your first month of an annual wedding subscription free. That is 12 months for the price of 11 to license unlimited music. Thank you very much to Musicbed for sponsoring this video.
I also want to give a big thank you to my friends at Archaius Creative for helping me edit this behind the scenes. If they were not here to help me, you would probably never see this video, because these behind the scenes videos take so long to edit. If you need help editing your wedding films, corporate videos, YouTube videos, literally anything, they would love to help you out too. Use my link and tell them I sent you and they will give you 10 percent off your first edit. So if you are struggling with your backlog, or there is a part of the editing process you really hate, like color grading or sound mixing, no matter how big or small your project is, Archaius Creative would love to help you out.
All of the footage here was colored with my presets. If you want to go deeper, I have filmmaking courses here, and here is my full list of filmmaking gear.