How wedding cinematographers can get along with photographers (and vice versa)!

If you’ve watched my previous two wedding cinematography vlogs, you’re probably aware that they are on the technical side. I’ve covered topics like bit-rates, color depth, picture profiles, and battery life for both the Sony A7Sii and FS5. Both are amazing cameras that I was more than happy to review and share with other wedding cinematographers. If you are looking to switch or upgrade to these cameras, I would highly recommend watching both of those vlogs.

Clearly, my beard and I are excited to share this tip with you.
Clearly, my beard and I are excited to share this tip with you.

Now, I would like to take a step back from the technical side of things, and share something that, in my opinion, has a far greater effect on how you can create great wedding films. Wedding days at their core are about relationships. The bride and groom’s relationship, the parents of bride and groom and their relationship with their children, the minister’s relationship with the couple, and many more as these two families connect on the wedding day. Let’s talk about another relationship that will affect you, the cinematographer, even more than all others on the wedding day, your relationship with the photographer.

For years, I would go show up to a wedding with no knowledge of who the photographer is, much less anything about them. All I knew is that the bride and groom had apparently hired them. Now I’m a relatively friendly guy so we would usually hit it off and work well together, but it was always a strange experience. See, weddings are unlike other 9-5 cubicle jobs where you work with the same people for long periods until they or you eventually quit or get fired. With weddings, we work with a different co-worker every week! Would you go to work without getting to know your co-workers? No! Then why would you film a wedding without getting to know the photographer beforehand?

Special thanks to Upper Torso Alex for his assistance with this VLOG.
Special thanks to head and shoulders Alex for his assistance with this vlog.

In this video, I share an amazing tip that I learned from my friend Alex Maldonado that will help you instantly hit it off with any wedding photographer. When he first showed this tip to me it completely blew my mind. And if you’re a wedding photographer, this works for you too!

Remember, everyone wins when the wedding cinematographer and photographer get along. There is a free flow of creative ideas, both of your portfolios get amazing visuals that look better, and the bride and groom get better film and photos. It’s a win all around.

I hope this vlog helped you learn something about wedding cinematography that you didn’t know before. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to get in touch.

A Wedding Cinematographer’s Review of the Sony A7S II

The first camera I ever owned was a little Sony point and shoot that could record up to 12 minutes of video to a 512mb memory card. I’ve come a long way since then, and up until October I was shooting with the Sony FS100. It has been a real workhorse that was capable of handling weddings, corporate promos, and short films (not to mention, this review vide0). But lately I have been feeling the limitations of not being able to record in higher resolutions than 1080p and with Sony’s newest color profiles such as S-Log3.

When the Sony A7S2 (or ii, or mark 2, or whatever else you wanna call it) was released by surprise in September, I was one of the first to pre-order from B&H. Thanks to B&H’s excellent shipping, mine arrived on the same day the camera was released. Over the past month and a half, I have used it to film multiple weddings in a variety of conditions, both indoor and outdoor.

Sony A7s2 4k

The same week that the A7S2 arrived, I was having a conversation with my friend Chris about cinematography, and he suggested that I start creating reviews, tips, and training videos aimed at wedding cinematographers. I realized this was a pretty good idea, and that when I was starting to film weddings I had wished I could have free training that would help me get better. Fast forward two months, and this is my first vlog, of what will hopefully be many, aimed at helping wedding cinematographers. So if you are a wedding cinematographer/videographer/friend that was randomly asked to film a wedding/uncle bob in the back of the church with a camera/whatever, and you want to get better at filming and editing weddings, I hope this series will be helpful to you.

With that in mind, I wanted my first video to be useful and specific. Too often I find myself watching a review video of a camera where the reviewer is filming a wall, plant, or test chart and talking about settings for 15 minutes. I want real world examples! Show me what the image looks like on a real shoot! I have tried to do this for you with this review of the Sony A7S2.

Thanks for watching! Please let me know if you have any questions or comments about the review video or the camera. If I don’t know the answer, I will do my best to find it out for you.