Author: Matt Johnson

Tell me if this sounds familiar. You decide you want to start filming weddings. You build out a website with info about you, examples of your work, and a contact form… but it’s been a while now and no one is actually reaching out to book you.

What the heck is wrong?

My name is Matt Johnson, I’ve been filming weddings for over 15 years now, and I’ve been teaching a lot of people how to do it too. In this post, I want to share three reasons why your website isn’t booking clients and give you some extremely practical things you can do to improve it right now.

Mistake #1: Treating Your Website Like a Portfolio Instead of a Sales Page

The first mistake I see so many wedding videographers make is that they treat their website like a portfolio page, not a sales page.

When I got started filming weddings about a decade and a half ago, my thinking was: I filmed a wedding, I better put that wedding video on my website. No thought whatsoever about how many wedding videos a couple was actually going to want to sit and watch.

This sounds like a good idea on the surface. You’re keeping your website updated with new content! But the problem is that it can actually hurt your sales. You’ve essentially turned your site into a museum. A couple could come and look at every single video you’ve ever made, five videos, ten videos, hundreds of videos, keep scrolling forever, maybe watch one or two, and then leave without booking you because there is just too much to sift through. And let’s be honest, not every one of those wedding videos is going to be your best work.

I knew a guy who had every single wedding he had ever filmed on a video page that felt like it scrolled forever. He had gotten better over the years, which meant some of those videos were from his first year of filming, and the quality was dramatically worse than his recent stuff. That is not what you want couples seeing.

The goal of your website is not to be a portfolio where people can watch all your work. The point of your website is for people to visit it, identify with you as a filmmaker, and then want to hire you because they can picture you filming their wedding. The entire goal of your website is for it to be a sales page, not a portfolio.

So instead of having 10 or 20 wedding videos on your site, start curating. Cut it down to three, maybe six if they’re all dramatically different from each other. Your goal is to show a very limited selection of your best work so that a couple won’t be overwhelmed and will actually want to book you.

If you’re building your wedding filmmaking business from the ground up and want to know how much you should charge to shoot a wedding film, I’ve got a post on that too.

Mistake #2: Having Too Many Pages on Your Website

This one may seem slightly counterintuitive, but once I explain the psychology behind it, you’re going to be like… oh, that makes total sense.

The second mistake many filmmakers make is having too many pages on their website and not embracing the power of a one-page layout.

When you first start building a website, it’s easy to want a homepage, a videos page, an about page, a pricing page, and a contact page. The problem with that setup, even if you have a very clear menu at the top, is that a multi-page website ignores everything we’ve learned about how people interact with websites over the last 30 years.

The statistics are clear: the vast majority of people who visit a website never click away from the page they originally landed on. If someone clicks through to your homepage, only a small fraction of them will ever navigate to another page. If they come from Google and land on your about page, the odds are they are never going to click anywhere else on your site.

Why? I honestly don’t know. Maybe it’s just human psychology and how we don’t like clicking on things if we don’t have to. But here’s what I do know: while the vast majority of people won’t click to a different page, if you put a lot of information on one page and all they have to do is scroll, people will keep scrolling basically forever.

Scrolling: good. Clicking: bad. Think about TikTok or Instagram Reels. What are those systems built around? Not clicking. Not tapping to navigate somewhere new. A simple swipe, a scrolling motion where you’re moving through content with zero friction.

I’m not telling you why it works. I’m just telling you that it works. And what it means for you as a filmmaker is that if you want to maximize bookings, you need to seriously consider moving away from the old multi-page website idea and instead embrace a one-page, sales-oriented layout.

The top of the page looks like a homepage. Scroll down a bit and there are your example videos. Keep scrolling and there’s information about you and your packages. And at the very bottom, as the natural conclusion of this journey you’ve taken the couple on, there’s a contact form where they can reach out.

You’re guiding them along a path. Introducing yourself, forming a connection, and then booking you at the bottom. Trust me. It works.

And if you’re groaning right now because you’ve already built a big multi-page website, don’t think of it like that. Just take your homepage and copy and paste all the contents from your other pages onto that one page. You’ll be turning your website into a booking machine faster than you think.

Mistake #3: A Contact Form That’s Way Too Long

The third mistake I see so many wedding filmmakers make is completely dropping the ball when it comes to their contact form.

For a while, there was this push in the wedding industry for you to “vet” your clients, basically to have them prove they were serious about hiring you. This resulted in contact forms that ballooned to 10 or 15 questions. Not just basic info like your name and email, but also things like: describe your entire wedding day, list all your other vendors, tell me exactly why you want to hire me… and on and on.

Here’s the reality: you’re going to annoy a ton of potential clients. When they get to the point of wanting to reach out to you, the odds are they’ll get halfway through your monster form, say forget it, and go to the next website they’ve already got pulled up, where that filmmaker is just asking for a name, phone number, and wedding date and the whole thing takes 30 seconds to fill out.

Who do you think they’re booking?

Look at your contact form and ask yourself: how can I make it as easy as possible for a couple to reach out to me?

Personally, I’ve always kept mine very simple: the couple’s names, email, phone number, wedding date and location, and an open-ended text box where they can tell me about themselves and their wedding with no requirement for what they need to write there. This gives them flexibility. If they just want to ask about pricing, they can do that. If they want to write me a whole book about their relationship, they’re welcome to do that too. And because the rest of the page has already built a real connection with them by the time they get to the form, a lot of them will end up telling me more without me ever requiring it.

Bonus Tips: Make It Easy for Couples to Reach You

Two bonus tips that are absolutely worth implementing.

First, include a regular email address typed out on your website that people can click or type directly into their email client, no form required. This is especially helpful for anyone who just hates filling out forms.

Second, and this is a big one: put your phone number on your website and tell people they can text you. You will be amazed at how many younger couples are going to text you because they hate email. And you would be shocked by the number of mothers of the bride who are going to actually call you, asking you to film their daughter’s wedding. There is a certain age group that still wants to make phone calls, and if you want bookings, you need to be ready to answer the phone for them.

Putting It All Together

If you can do all of these things, shift your website from a portfolio to a sales page, make it one page long, slim down your contact form, and make your phone number and email easily accessible, you are going to be amazed at how many more inquiries and bookings you start getting.

And while you’re working on getting more couples to your website, make sure the films you’re delivering are as good as they can be. My free guide Edit Videos Like a Pro will help you do exactly that. Check it out, it’s completely free.

Thanks so much for reading, and have a great day!

DaVinci Resolve 20 is here, and if you edit wedding videos, you are going to want to pay attention to this one. Blackmagic has packed in over 100 new features, and while a lot of those updates are great across the board, there are five in particular that I think are genuinely game-changing for wedding filmmakers specifically.

And even if you don’t edit weddings, don’t click away just yet. These tools apply to corporate videos, commercials, documentaries, interviews, and more. But if you are a wedding filmmaker like me, I think you’re going to be seriously impressed.

Let’s get into it.

#1: The AI Audio Assistant

One of my favorite new features in DaVinci Resolve 20 has to do with audio, and the reason I love it is simple: it takes a workflow that has traditionally been really complicated and uses AI to make it dramatically simpler while still giving you professional results.

The tool is called the Audio Assistant, and if you’ve edited video before, you know how involved the audio mixing process can be. You’re playing through your video, adjusting levels, adding effects to clean up voices, pulling the music down so it doesn’t drown out the ceremony audio. It’s a whole thing. And if you’re a wedding filmmaker, it’s even more involved because you’re commonly dealing with a ton of different sources at once.

Think about a wedding ceremony alone. You might have a lav mic on the groom, a recorder plugged into the soundboard, a mic on the officiant, ambient mics in the room. I commonly find myself recording five or six sources of audio for a single ceremony. When you import all of that into Resolve, getting it to sound great takes real work. I’ve talked before about how I approach wedding audio recording, and mixing all those sources properly has always been one of the more time-consuming parts of post-production.

That’s exactly what the Audio Assistant is designed to solve. Instead of going through that whole rigorous mixing process by hand, you edit your video like normal, and when it comes time to mix, you click a button. DaVinci Resolve analyzes all of your audio and mixes it for you in less than a minute.

If it works as well as Blackmagic claims, this has the potential to save wedding filmmakers a huge amount of time. I’m going to be putting it through a lot of different scenarios to see how it holds up in real-world wedding projects, so make sure you’re subscribed if you want to see a full tutorial on it down the road.

#2: AI Voice Convert (Voice Cloning)

Okay, this one is legitimately mind-blowing. Like, it almost doesn’t feel like it should be possible. But here’s the scenario that makes it make sense.

You’re filming a wedding and the groom is reading a letter to his bride. He misspeaks, says the wrong thing, stumbles over a line. If that moment is important to the story you’re trying to tell, you’ve historically had two options: track the person down and ask them to re-record the line somehow, or do serious editorial surgery, cutting up other lines they said to piece together individual words and sounds. Neither option is great. Both are going to cost you a significant amount of time.

The new AI Voice Convert tool in DaVinci Resolve 20 changes that entirely.

Here’s how it works: you use existing audio of the person speaking to create a clone of their voice. Then you re-record yourself reading the correct line and convert your voice into theirs using that clone. The result is the person saying what they meant to say, in their own voice, without them ever having to step in front of a mic again.

As editors, we can now fix mistakes, clarify moments, and help our clients actually say what they were trying to say. That makes our films cleaner and our stories stronger. I’ve already put together an in-depth tutorial showing exactly how to use this tool step by step, so check that out if you want to dig deeper.

#3: The AI Music Editor

This is a feature I have been waiting a long time for Blackmagic to add, and it’s finally here: the AI Music Editor.

If you’ve been editing in Premiere Pro, you might already know a version of this tool. But hold on, because Blackmagic has actually improved on it in a meaningful way.

The problem this solves is one every editor has dealt with. You have a song you love, but it’s the wrong length for your video. Traditionally, you’d duplicate the track, manually mix different sections together, find a natural transition point, and try to make it all feel seamless. It’s tedious and it takes time.

With the AI Music Editor in Resolve 20, you select your song, go to the inspector, enable the tool, and you can either type in an exact target length or use the live trim feature to drag the song to the length you want. In a few seconds, the AI remixes it for you.

And here’s where Blackmagic actually one-upped Adobe: instead of just giving you one remixed version, Resolve generates four different AI versions of the remixed song for you to choose from. You can click through them, give each one a listen, and pick the one that works best for your edit. That’s a genuinely better workflow than what Premiere offers right now.

I use this kind of tool constantly to adjust song lengths in my videos, and having it baked directly into Resolve is a huge time saver.

#4: Vertical Video Viewer on the Cut Page

Okay, I know what you’re thinking. The cut page? Does anyone actually use the cut page?

Hold on. Because this update might actually give you a reason to.

If you’re editing wedding films for clients, you know that delivering vertical content for Instagram and TikTok is basically expected at this point. Even if your main deliverable is a full horizontal film, your couple almost certainly wants vertical clips for social too. And editing vertical video in a horizontal preview window has always been kind of awful. You’re squinting at your footage crammed into a tiny preview, trying to judge framing that was designed to be seen at full height.

DaVinci Resolve 20 fixes this on the cut page. If you create a vertical timeline, you can now expand the video viewer and get a native vertical preview window that shows your footage the way it’s actually meant to be seen. No more trying to evaluate vertical framing inside a horizontal box.

If you’re not using this one, I went through DaVinci Resolve – A Premiere Pro Editor’s Perspective and Goodbye Premiere Pro! Why Editors Are Switching To DaVinci Resolve as well.

It sounds like a simple quality-of-life update, but if you’re outputting vertical content regularly, this is going to make your workflow feel a lot cleaner. It might even make you want to spend more time on the cut page. Maybe.

#5: AI Multicam SmartSwitch (Autopod, But Built Into Resolve)

A couple of years ago, a plugin called Autopod took the editing world by storm. It used AI to automatically edit long-form, multi-camera video like a podcast, cutting between camera angles based on who was speaking. It was incredibly useful and saved editors huge amounts of time.

I even made a video showing how you could use Autopod to edit a long-form wedding ceremony, letting it cut between cameras during the ceremony so you weren’t doing it all by hand. It worked really well for that use case.

But Autopod had two downsides. First, it cost money, which is a subscription I still think is worth it. Second, and more importantly for a lot of you: it only worked in Adobe Premiere Pro. If you edit in DaVinci Resolve, you were out of luck.

Well, Blackmagic apparently wasn’t going to wait around for Autopod to release a Resolve version. Instead, they built their own, called AI Multicam SmartSwitch, and it’s included in the free DaVinci Resolve 20 update.

Here’s how it works: you import your footage, create a multicam sequence, right-click on the sequence and select AI Multicam SmartSwitch. You choose your settings (I’d go with no wide angle and best quality), hit okay, and Resolve does the rest. It analyzes the audio to determine who’s speaking AND looks at the lips of the people on camera to confirm, which is actually something Autopod can’t do. Then it generates the multicam cuts for you automatically.

For wedding ceremonies with multiple cameras, this is enormous. And again, it’s free. You don’t need a subscription. It’s just part of the update.

This has the potential to save you a significant amount of time on every wedding ceremony edit you do. If you’re interested in other ways AI is changing wedding film editing workflows, I also did a full review of Plotline AI that you should check out.

Final Thoughts

Those are my top five DaVinci Resolve 20 updates for wedding filmmakers. And honestly, the fact that most of these are available in the free version of Resolve makes it even more impressive. Blackmagic is continuing to push this software into territory that was once reserved for expensive paid tools, and that’s great for all of us.

If you want to keep getting better at editing, regardless of what software you’re in, check out my Edit Videos Like a Pro guide. It covers the most important editing principles I’ve learned over years of editing wedding films and YouTube videos, and it’s completely free.

And if you want to see more DaVinci Resolve tutorials and breakdowns, including a deep dive into some of these new tools, make sure you’re subscribed over on the YouTube channel. There’s a lot more Resolve content coming!

Sigma just revived a legendary lens. This is the Sigma 17-40mm F1.8, and its release marks the return of one of the most iconic APS-C lenses they’ve ever made.

Let me explain by telling you a story about the birth of a legend.

The year is 2013. Up until that point, if you wanted a lens that performed well in low light, your choices were very limited. A fixed prime lens that doesn’t zoom was really the only viable option, because zoom lenses were at best F2.8 if you were lucky and had a big budget.

But that year, everything changed. Sigma realized there was a gap in the market and released what is arguably one of the most compelling zoom lenses ever made for a crop sensor camera: the Sigma 18-35mm F1.8. A relatively compact lens that, most importantly, did not compromise on low light performance. It had an extremely impressive constant F1.8 aperture on a zoom, which was basically unheard of at the time.

Oh yeah, and it had an internal zoom too, which made it basically perfect for filmmaking, especially on a gimbal.

Filmmakers loved this lens. They raved about it online. Left thousands of five-star reviews. It was, in a word, legendary.

But there were two limitations. Two flaws that this lens could never shake.

The first is obvious: there was no full frame option. It was APS-C only. (Sigma has since released a full frame version called the 28-45mm F1.8, which I’ve already reviewed and will link to below.)

The second flaw was arguably worse: this lens was only available for Canon EF and Nikon F mounts. There was no Sony E-mount, no modern mounts for mirrorless cameras at all. Over time, that limitation caused this legendary lens to slowly fall out of favor, not because it wasn’t good, but because filmmakers and photographers wanted native lenses they didn’t have to use an adapter for.

Now, 12 years after the initial release of the 18-35, Sigma is ready to show us what they’ve been working on. The successor to one of their most legendary lenses.

This is the Sigma 17-40mm F1.8.

A successor that improves on the original in every single way. And today, I’m reviewing it from the perspective of a wedding and freelance filmmaker. So if you make money with your camera and you want a super compact F1.8 zoom that gets you incredible-looking footage without breaking the bank, this review is for you.

Quick note on ethics: this is not paid or sponsored by Sigma. They loaned me the lens so I could make this review, and I will be returning it to them shortly.

It’s Tiny. Like, Shockingly Small.

The most obvious improvement whenever you actually hold this lens is the size. This thing is tiny. Ultra compact. I am genuinely shocked that, even though this is not a full frame lens, Sigma was able to make it this small and still keep the F1.8 aperture.

And they kept the internal zoom, too. So not only is this lens incredibly compact, it also doesn’t shift its weight around when you zoom in and out, because the barrel doesn’t extend. That’s a huge deal for gimbal work.

Compared to the original 18-35, the 17-40 is 4mm shorter and 5mm less wide, and the original wasn’t that big to begin with. It’s also very lightweight, coming in at only 525 grams, which is roughly 35% lighter than the original 18-35.

And keep in mind: this isn’t just a repackaged 18-35. Sigma has actually added more zoom range on both ends of the lens, picking up an extra millimeter on the wide end and five more on the tight end. You’re getting more range in a smaller, lighter package. If anyone tries to tell you lens technology hasn’t improved in the last 12 years, just show them this lens.

On top of the size improvements, Sigma included everything you’d expect from a modern lens: an aperture ring that can be made clickless (huge for video), an AF/MF switch, two programmable buttons, and a 67mm filter thread that is very easy to find adapters for. The 17-40 is extremely full-featured.

If you want to go deeper, I’ve also got Sony 35mm GM 1.4 Lens Review For Filmmakers – BEATS Sigma 35mm 1.2.

Image Quality, Autofocus, and the Stuff That Actually Matters

None of the size and weight wins would matter if the image quality took a hit. So let’s talk about that.

When I threw this lens on a rented Sony FX30, I was pleasantly surprised. The image quality is quite good, everything you’d expect from a modern zoom lens. It’s sharp, the colors are accurate and vibrant, and let me just say: that F1.8 aperture is putting in serious work once things get dark. It looks absolutely gorgeous in low light.

Autofocus? Really good. Fast, accurate, and I didn’t see it hunting at all. Solid work from Sigma here.

How about focus breathing? Minimal. It’s still noticeable if you do a full rack focus, but it’s very small and very acceptable in my opinion.

Is it parfocal? Ehhh, no. It’s close, but focus does shift slightly when you zoom in and out. Whether that matters to you depends on how you shoot. If you’re relying on autofocus, it probably doesn’t matter much at all.

Who Is This Lens For?

If I owned a Sony FX30 and wasn’t just renting one, maybe I was a newer filmmaker just getting started, looking for a super solid and extremely versatile zoom lens that would look incredible and still give me gorgeous low light shots, I would pick this Sigma up in a heartbeat.

Especially when you consider that Sigma is charging $920, which is kind of mind-blowing when you realize the original 18-35 is still on sale for $880 at the time of me making this video. Forty dollars more for all of these improvements? I’ll take it.

If you’re also in the market for something on the full frame side, check out my review of the Sigma 35mm F1.2 Mark II, another lens that Sigma improved in every single way over its predecessor. The pattern here is clear: Sigma is on a roll right now.

And if you want to take your editing to the next level once you’ve got great footage in the bag, my free guide Edit Videos Like a Pro is a great place to start.

The Verdict

The Sigma 18-35 is dead. But it had a son.

Long live the Sigma 17-40 F1.8.

Will you be getting one? 

The Sony a7S III has been the undisputed king of high ISO performance since 2020. It shares its sensor with the FX3 and FX6, and for years, no camera has come close to touching it in low light. But the new Panasonic S1II is here with a partially stacked sensor (the same one found in the Nikon Z6III), and Panasonic has a long history of squeezing every last drop of performance out of whatever sensor they get their hands on.

So I put both cameras head to head in a controlled low light test to see how the S1II stacks up. Here’s what I found.

The Test Setup

Both cameras start at the same base ISO of 640, which is a nice even playing field. The Sony a7S III is recording in XAVC HS 4K, which is H.265 and arguably the best quality codec the camera offers. A quick tip here: some people assume the XAVC S-I codec is higher quality because it produces larger file sizes, but in all of my low light testing over the years, the XAVC HS codec actually has slightly better noise reduction and produces a cleaner image at high ISOs. If you’re shooting the a7S III in low light, you want XAVC HS.

For the S1II, I’m shooting in MOV format with H.265 at 5.9K resolution. I know that’s a higher resolution than the 4K the a7S III is shooting in, but I didn’t want to introduce any potential image quality issues from downscaling in-camera, which can sometimes soften the image. So we’re comparing native resolution from both cameras, both in H.265, both in their respective log profiles (S-Log3 on the Sony, V-Log on the Panasonic), and no color grading applied so you can see the raw noise as clearly as possible.

The Lower ISO Range: Clean All the Way Up

Cranking through the early ISO values, both cameras look excellent. ISO 800, 1250, 1600, 2000, 2500 all look fantastic. At ISO 3200 the S1II is handling it with ease, which is impressive when you remember that on an older camera like the Panasonic GH5, ISO 3200 was basically the limit before things got too noisy. The full-frame sensor and newer technology make a huge difference here.

At ISO 4000, things get interesting on the S1II. This is the ISO right below its second base ISO of 5000, and that positioning shows. There’s some noticeable noise creeping in. It’s not unusable, but it’s definitely the weakest link in the S1II’s ISO range.

Dual Base ISO: Why It’s Such a Big Deal

At ISO 5000 on the S1II, something really cool happens. The image gets significantly cleaner. That’s because ISO 5000 is the second base ISO of the S1II, meaning anything filmed at ISO 5000 is going to look just as clean as if you filmed it at ISO 640. The camera essentially resets its noise floor at that point.

The a7S III has the same dual base ISO feature, but its second base ISO is much higher at 12,800. This is one of the most interesting differences between these two cameras, and it’s worth thinking carefully about which one is more useful for how you actually shoot.

The S1II’s ISO 5000 second base ISO is arguably more practical for general filmmaking situations. If you’re shooting in a dark environment where you need to push to ISO 5000, you can do it cleanly. The a7S III’s second base ISO of 12,800 is extraordinarily powerful, but there’s also such a big jump between 640 and 12,800 that it can sometimes be tricky to manage exposure between those two points. At ISO 12,800, you often need an ND filter to avoid overexposure, even in a moderately lit room.

ISO 10,000: A Weak Spot on the a7S III

Here’s a tip that I love to share for a7S III owners: ISO 10,000 is one of the noisiest ISOs on the a7S III. Just like ISO 4000 is the weakest on the S1II, ISO 10,000 sits right below the a7S III’s second base ISO of 12,800, and you can see the noise peak there. I’d also avoid ISO 8000 if you can help it. These are the spots where the Sony sensor looks its worst, and they’re easy to avoid once you know about them.

If you want a deeper dive into tips like this, check out my Sony a7S III review for wedding filmmakers and my full a7S III menu setup guide.

The Extreme ISOs: Sony Pulls Away

Once you get above ISO 12,800, both cameras are doing something genuinely impressive. At ISO 16,000, 20,000, and 25,600, both cameras are producing footage that I would call completely usable. Yes, there’s noise, but it’s controlled and workable. It’s wild to say that out loud when I remember shooting with DSLRs years ago where ISO 3200 felt like a gamble.

At ISO 32,000 and 40,000, the Sony starts to pull ahead more noticeably. The S1II continues to hold on, but you can see more degradation in the shadows compared to the a7S III, which stays remarkably clean.

If you want to go deeper, I’ve also got Panasonic S1II Review – The Best They’ve Ever Made.

ISO 51,200 is the maximum for the S1II, and at that ceiling, I honestly think you could still use the footage if you were in a genuinely dark environment and needed it. For a camera that isn’t specifically marketed as a low-light powerhouse, that’s a legitimately impressive result.

Where the a7S III Goes Into Another Dimension

The S1II taps out at 51,200. The Sony a7S III is just getting warmed up.

ISO 64,000, 80,000, and then 102,400, which is the standard maximum of the a7S III (anything above this is technically “extended”), and it still looks usable. I’ve been asked many times over the years what the maximum usable ISO is on the a7S III and FX3, and my honest answer is basically all of them. Other cameras force you to draw a line in the sand. The Sony sensor rarely does.

Pushing into the extended ISOs, things get progressively muddier. At ISO 128,000, you can see detail starting to soften and the image becoming overexposed even in a very dark room. At 204,800 and 256,000, sharpness continues to break down. And at the absolute maximum of ISO 409,600, the image is overexposed, swampy, and the noise is dancing everywhere. But here’s the thing: when you set that ISO 409,600 image from the Sony next to the S1II sitting at its max of ISO 51,200, the Sony is still dramatically brighter. It’s a remarkable engineering achievement.

The Sony sensor inside the a7S III, FX3, and FX6 is still the king. But the margin is smaller than it used to be.

So Which Camera Should You Choose?

This really comes down to how and where you film.

If you film in moderately dark conditions and want a second base ISO that’s practical and easy to manage in real-world situations, the S1II’s ISO 5000 second base is genuinely useful and less tricky to expose around than the Sony’s 12,800.

If you are a wedding filmmaker who regularly finds yourself in dark reception halls with limited lighting control, or you commonly film in extremely dark environments like night shoots outdoors, the a7S III and FX3 still come out on top. You’re going to lean on those upper ISOs more often, and the Sony handles them better. That said, the margin of victory is slimmer than it’s ever been. The S1II looking this good at ISO 25,600, 32,000, and 51,200 would have been jaw-dropping even a couple of years ago.

For more info on how the S1II performs as a full wedding and documentary camera, check out my Panasonic S1II menu setup guide. And if you’re looking to get your editing and color workflow locked in for either of these cameras, check out my color presets and LUTs that work across Sony, Panasonic, Nikon, and iPhone. Want to level up your overall filmmaking and editing skills? My Edit Videos Like a Pro guide is a great place to start.

I am about to show you how you can clone any voice in DaVinci Resolve. If you have someone mess up a voice line in your video, you can now clone their voice and fix it so it sounds perfect. This is a total game changer for video editors who need to save a scene where the audio just didn’t hit right.

Before we dive into the technical steps, if you want to learn some of my best editing tips, I have a completely free Edit Videos Like A Pro Guide that you can download right now.

The Real World Scenario

Imagine you are filming a wedding and the groom is reading a letter to his bride. He’s nervous, and he stumbles over a few words. Usually, you’d just have to live with it or try to cut around it. But with the AI tools in DaVinci Resolve, you can actually fix a mistake of virtually any size with very little work.

Step 1: Gathering Your Training Audio

To start, you need some audio of the person whose voice you need to clone. Ideally, you want at least five minutes of them speaking. In my case, I had about eight minutes of the groom speaking because I had a microphone on him well before he started reading his letter. Even if you have less, it is worth trying, but more data usually leads to a better voice model.

Step 2: Training the AI Voice Model

This part is incredibly easy. Right-click on your audio file in the media pool, go to AI Tools, and select DaVinci AI Voice Training. The first time you do this, you will likely need to download some extra files. Once those are ready, click it again, and you’ll see a warning screen. This tool is powerful, and Blackmagic wants to make sure you use it ethically.

Name your voice model (for example, “Paul Groom Voice”) and choose your training accuracy. I recommend choosing “Better” over “Faster” because you want the most accurate results possible. Your computer will then start generating the model. Since this happens entirely on your device and not in the cloud, it might take a while depending on your hardware, but you can keep editing in the background while it works.

I put together How to Clone a Voice in DaVinci Resolve 21 (Just By Typing) as well, which covers the part I skipped over here.

Step 3: Recording the New Line

Now for the part that sounds like magic: you need to record yourself speaking the line that the talent messed up. You don’t even need to use the same microphone or be in the same environment. I recorded my “clone” audio in a sound-treated studio with a shotgun mic, even though the original was recorded in a barn in West Texas on a lav mic. It doesn’t matter!

Step 4: Converting the Voice

Import your new recording into DaVinci Resolve and place it on your timeline. Right-click the clip, select Voice Convert, and choose the voice model you created earlier. Hit render, and watch as Resolve analyzes the audio and transforms your voice into the voice of your talent. If you want to take your visuals as seriously as your audio, don’t forget to check out my LUTs sales page for better color grading.

The Moment of Truth

When you play it back, the results are often insane. It sounds like the original person saying the words you just recorded. Now, keep in mind that this won’t automatically match the lip movements of the person on screen. This is where good editing comes in! Simply cover that section with some B-roll, and no one will ever know the audio was manipulated.

This technology is an incredible use of AI because it helps us tell stronger stories and make our videos clearer. If you found this helpful, definitely subscribe for more DaVinci Resolve tutorials and filmmaking tips.

If you have been looking for a full-frame Sony cinema camera but it is hard to stomach the price of an FX3, the Sony FX2 may be the perfect camera for you. That is, if you can look past one of its biggest compromises: a 1.5x crop in 4K 60fps. In this post, I am reviewing the FX2 from the perspective of a freelance filmmaker who uses their camera to film weddings, commercials, and documentaries to make money. I am going to tell you if this is the camera you should buy.

For the sake of ethics, this review is not paid or sponsored by Sony, but they did loan me the camera for testing. Also, if you want to see all the equipment I recommend for filmmaking, you can download my free filmmaker gear guide here.

The Sony A7IV Sensor in a Cinema Body

The first thing you need to know is that the FX2 shares its DNA with a very popular photography-focused camera. Just like the FX3 shares its sensor with the Sony A7SIII and the FX30 shares its sensor with the A6700, the FX2 shares its 33-megapixel sensor with the Sony A7IV. This means you are getting many of those same capabilities but in a body that offers features filmmakers have been requesting at a cheaper price than the FX3.

A Refined Cinema Body and a Tilting EVF

The body feels like a strong evolution of the FX3 and FX30. You still get that iconic gray cinema camera look with mounting points and plenty of customizable buttons. Sony even eliminated some of the flip-out panels, so the microphone and headphone jacks are now fully exposed and positioned so the screen won’t hit your mic jack.

However, the biggest difference is that this camera comes with an electronic viewfinder (EVF). Sony previously removed the EVF from their cinema line to make them more “video focused,” but they brought it back with a trick up its sleeve. This EVF can tilt up to 90 degrees vertically. As a filmmaker, you often have the camera mounted low at chest height, and having an articulating EVF feels much more natural. It is a game changer for confirming your shot when filming outdoors in bright sunlight.

Improved Ergonomics and Cooling

Sony also added a larger hand grip, which makes the camera incredibly comfortable to hold during 10 or 12-hour wedding days. Additionally, there is a larger cooling fan vent and an improved heat dissipation structure. While I never worried about the FX3 overheating, more protection is always welcome, especially for those of us filming in the Texas heat.

The “Mode Button” Frustration

One change I do not like is the elimination of the dedicated mode button. On the FX3, you could press a button to immediately switch between your 24fps and 60fps presets. On the FX2, you have to hold down the function menu button for a second to bring up the mode menu. It is a big interrupter to a fast workflow. You can remap a custom button to fix this, but it is still a weird step backward in design.

Speaking of which, F1.8 Full Frame Zoom Lens! Sigma 28-45 Review For Wedding Videographers is worth a look too.

Image Quality and Low Light

Because this sensor is from the A7IV, the image quality is excellent. You get 4:2:2 10-bit colors and S-Log 3 support. If you are editing your videos like a pro, you will love how this footage matches other Sony cameras. It even includes Cine EI mode and support for internal LUTs.

When it comes to low light, the FX2 has dual base ISOs at 800 and 4,000. This is a slight boost over the A7IV. While the FX3 is still the low-light king with its second base ISO at 12,800, the FX2 is more than capable for dark wedding receptions. I have pushed this sensor to ISO 16,000 before and the results were completely usable.

The Big Catch: The 4K 60fps Crop

Here is the compromise: while the FX2 can film in 4K up to 60fps, it has a 1.5x crop when shooting in 4K 60. If you want 120fps, you have to drop down to 1080p HD. This is the “big catch” that separates this camera from the more expensive FX3. However, if you mostly film in 24fps or 30fps, you actually get a sharper image oversampled from 7K, which looks fantastic.

Is the Sony FX2 Right For You?

The FX2 might just be the “Goldilocks” camera for many filmmakers. The FX30 sensor may be too small for some, and the FX3 might be too expensive. The FX2 gives you full-frame quality, a tilting EVF, and AI-enhanced autofocus in a refined cinema body. If you can live with the 4K 60fps crop, this is a powerhouse of a camera for the price.