Before you do anything else, go watch the wedding trailer this behind the scenes is about: “Not just in Love, in Joy with each other”. It’s one minute long. Otherwise you’ll spend this whole thing going “wait, what am I looking at?”
Done? Good.
I’ve wanted to make this video for about a year and a half. Back in my very first video blog aimed at wedding filmmakers, a review of the Sony a7S II, I said I wanted to film a behind the scenes of a real wedding so you could watch me work on a real day with real people and understand how I actually do it. So whenever my friend Noah told me he was getting married and asked me to film it, I brought along my friend Paul Bailey to shoot a behind the scenes of Rachel and me shooting the wedding.
And to be clear about scope: this is twenty minutes of behind the scenes covering one minute of trailer. I filmed hours and hours more. You can probably extrapolate how long the full-day version is going to be.
The Gear We Shoot A Wedding With
We’re both on the Sony a7S II. This one’s mine, that one’s Rachel’s. We always shoot on the same body. I don’t really know why we do that, that’s just how we do it.
I shoot wider, Rachel shoots tighter. I’m on a 24mm or a 50mm depending on what I need. She’s usually on a 50mm or a 135mm, and she loves that 135.
The lens set is a hodgepodge. A Canon lens, a Sony lens, two Sigma Arts, and adapters to make whatever we need work. Someday I dream of owning one cohesive set. Hasn’t happened yet. We’re not perfect, I’m sorry.
Honestly, if I have a 50 and a 24 I’m good all day. I could shoot the whole wedding on those two and be totally happy. That comes with a caveat though: I have a second shooter getting the tight stuff, so I’m free to be closer in on emotion, faces, hands, rings, the details, without ever getting in the photographer’s way.
What’s Always In The Bags
Rachel carries a lens cleaning cloth and I hand her a variable ND filter, a magnetic one so it fits every lens she’ll touch. She also carries a mirror for trick shots, because she likes them, plus her water and a couple of lenses.
My shoulder bag holds whichever lens I’m not currently using, with the caps already off so I can grab it fast, the adapter I’ll need for it, and a sensor air blower, because you never know when you’ll find dust on your sensor mid-day. And I carry Mr. Prism, because a prism is a cheap and effective way to get really pretty reflection shots.
We also carry a buttload of batteries. Twelve Sony NP-FW50s, all charged beforehand. That sounds like overkill until you’re twelve hours into a wedding day with two a7S IIs, and on this day Paul was on one too. So we charged all day long, which is easy enough whenever you’re at one venue: set the chargers up in a room, plug them in, and grab what you need.
Divide And Conquer During The Rehearsal
Nothing important is happening yet, they’re just running the rehearsal, so we split. Rachel goes to grab establishing shots of the grounds and to sit in on the rehearsal, checking whether anything about how people are standing needs tweaking before it counts.
I go fly the drone. Do I need an excuse? The sun isn’t high yet and the light is good, so it’s the right time. It’s also a drone.
On the Phantom 4 I run PolarPro Cinema Series filters, which have a polarizer built in alongside the ND. I put the ND6 on, because I’m shooting D-Log, which has a fixed ISO of 500, and I’m in bright sunlight.
I never know exactly what I’m getting until I’m up there. I know I want the buildings and the tree, but past that it’s a bit of a crapshoot until you’re in the air looking down going “oh, that’s pretty.” Sometimes a venue gives you something incredible. Sometimes you get a few nice shots of the buildings and you land without going crazy, and that’s fine too.
Every Shot’s Settings, On Screen
Throughout the video the lens, aperture, ISO, resolution, and frame rate are burned into the corner of every shot, so you can see exactly what I was on at each point in the day rather than guessing.
The Chandelier Problem, Solved Months In Advance
Here’s the piece I’m proudest of, and it happened long before the wedding day.
We’d filmed at this venue about four months earlier, and the chandeliers in the reception hall flicker horrendously. Bad enough that a photographer working that day was getting banding in her stills. That’s how bad.
So I told the bride and groom about it. And because they’re good friends who care about our creativity and about getting a good film, they said sure, we’ll just move everything outside. Toasts outdoors, bouquet and garter outdoors, dancing on the deck. Only the cake cutting and dinner stayed inside.
That’s the lesson. By talking to the couple early and building that relationship, you can make changes to the wedding itself that will make your film better. No amount of gear buys you that.
And Then Everything Went Wrong
So much for my dream of showing you a behind the scenes where everything goes perfectly and I have no problems at all.
The forecast that morning said a 10% chance of rain. By evening there was a severe thunderstorm watch on my phone and a wall of weather coming across the field that frankly looked a bit like a tornado.
We weren’t planning to take the couple out for portraits until after dinner, around 6:30. With the storm coming we asked instead: can we borrow you for five minutes right now? Grant took them out into the field, we followed, got some great stuff, and then he and I worked together to shift things and get images we were both excited about.
Then the whole reception moved indoors. Every single thing I’d spent months arranging to happen outside, back under the flickering chandeliers. Toasts inside, so a light had to go up. New angles to figure out. And you just roll with it, because on a wedding day you cannot predict anything.
Dancing, And ISO 16,000
That’s a Canon 50mm at f1.8, ISO 16,000, 1080p at 60fps. Which is exactly the argument for this camera: a dance floor at night is where an a7S II stops being a preference and starts being the reason you got the shot at all.
The Rest Of This Series
- 🎥 The trailer this is a behind the scenes of
- ❤ Noah and Mallorie’s full wedding film
- ▶ Full-day BTS Part 1: planning, gear, and establishing shots
- ▶ Full-day BTS Part 2: how I film bride and groom prep
Shoutout to Grant Daniels Photography for shooting this wedding and giving some great commentary in this video, and to Paul Bailey for filming the behind the scenes.
Gear Used In This Video
- Prism
- Think Tank lens carrier bag
- Sigma 50mm lens
- Sigma 24mm lens
- Sensor air blower
- Vizelex ND Throttle lens adapter
- Fotodiox Pro lens adapter
- Lens cleaning cloths
- Variable ND filter
- Xume magnetic filter adapters
- Xume magnetic lens cap
- Jupiter 9 85mm lens
- M42 to E-mount tilt lens adapter, which is what adapts the Jupiter 9 to a Sony body
- 📷 The rest of my filmmaking gear and my gear page
Music In This Video
“Anthem: Retrace” by A. Taylor and “On The Mountain By The Sea” by Utah, both licensed through Musicbed.
🎥 I also offer one-on-one filmmaker consulting if you want to talk cameras, lighting, or booking clients. ►► My free guide to booking more wedding clients is here, and ✌ the Learn Wedding Filmmaking Facebook Group is where the rest of us hang out.
