Part two of three on Holly and Luke’s wedding. Part one was the couples shoot up in the Colorado mountains. This one is the rehearsal dinner back in Texas, which means establishing shots, a drone flight, setting up lights and audio for the toasts, and most importantly, breadsticks.
Breadsticks
We’re out here early because the weather is semi-decent right now, and semi-decent is all we’re getting. Two weeks before this wedding, nothing but blue skies. The Sunday after the wedding, blue skies. The Friday and Saturday of the wedding itself, horrible, cloudy, rainy. There’s a 70% chance of rain today and it isn’t raining at this exact moment, so this is our time to shine.
Also, Rachel is in charge of breadsticks. This is very important.
New Gear
Sony a7S III today. Any day I get to shoot on the a7S III is a good one. But I’ve also got a few new goodies to try out at this wedding.
- CinePacks split diopters. You hold them in front of the lens and they give you some really nice distortion effects. Plus the whole thing doubles as a sort of brass knuckle attachment, so if a drunken guest is giving you problems at a wedding, they’ll back off. Or they’ll get cut.
- The Sigma 85mm f/1.4 DG DN. A lot smaller than you’d expect for what it is.
- The Sigma 35mm f/1.2. Look how big this thing is. It is a monster of a lens and I’m so excited to try it.
Venue Establishing Shots
For this sort of thing you start really basic. Nice wide, here’s the chapel, and thankfully there are no cars parked out front. Get a bit of the sign in the foreground so the rocks give you some parallax as you move.
Then, because that first shot was so wide, I want to go closer, so I move around and do a reveal. Little chapel reveal. What’s that? Oh, it’s a chapel. Same idea again once we’re inside, a push in and a reveal.
If you want to know how Texas this venue is, all you have to do is read the signs. “Please remain three feet from Longhorns.” That’s how you know.
For the reception building, I like this angle because you get the lights and the trees in it. And as always, I’m filming buildings from a corner rather than flat on, because the corner gives you a more three dimensional look.
The genuinely useful thing about the rehearsal dinner being at the same venue as the reception is that you get a preview. Lots of warm incandescent light to work around, and I can already see the toasts are going to happen up at that end facing out into the room.
Drone Time
We have time and it isn’t raining, which means it’s drone time. What else would it be?
Mavic 2 Pro with an ND4 on, because it’s cloudy and I’m always kind of guessing on that. This venue is very flat, so I’m going low key with it. A simple reveal of the chapel from low down, in tripod mode, real slow and chill, and there’s a nice little tree reveal to be had if I keep an eye on the tree I’m flying past.
I’m not flying out over the far field either, because I don’t want to bother the Longhorn cattle. One of the best ways to get yourself in trouble at a wedding with livestock is to fly your drone near the livestock and get yelled at. I’m not saying that from personal experience.
Drone flight complete. Did not crash, did not get struck by lightning, did not anger any cattle.
Lighting & Audio Setup
Cheetah stands, which collapse, and which I love. The new light is the Aputure 60x, which I’m very excited about, and for fill I’ve got a little torch LED, which is compact and bright.
I put together My a7S III DIED Wedding Filmmaking Behind The Scenes: Holly & Luke’s Wedding Part 3 as well, which covers the part I skipped over here.
While I set up, Rachel goes and observes the wedding rehearsal. We always try to do this, because there are always moments you’d otherwise miss or not know were coming, and watching the rehearsal means you see the whole thing once before it happens for real.
The lighting logic goes like this. I know where people will be sitting, so I know which side I want my key on to get light on faces. I’m not putting a stand by the entrance where guests will trip over it. For the toasts, I want one side of the face lit and one side in shadow, and then I film into the shadow side, which is what makes it look cinematic rather than flat.
For the couple I use the smaller light, because that one sits closer to the guests and is more visible to them, so a small profile matters. Tiny, still plenty bright, tucked off to the side, lighting their faces subtly while they react to whoever is speaking. Then I can film the couple reacting while Rachel films the person giving the toast.
Audio is where I get properly paranoid, and I ended up with four sources.
- The father of the groom is also the DJ, and he showed me the soundboard, so I ran a line out of it into a Zoom H4n with a power cord, because it’s the old trusty and it has never failed me.
- Left channel is monitor out from the board, right channel is an XLR out from one of his wireless receivers, so if he touches the volume on one I still have the other.
- A mic sleeve with a small recorder inside it, wrapped around whichever handheld mic they’re actually going to use for toasts. The recorder slides down inside, you slide it back up to turn it on. I use this because I have had audio fail on me before.
I also asked for a mic stand rather than a handheld, and the reason is lighting, not audio. If somebody is on a stand they stay put, which means they stay lit, instead of roaming out of the pool of light I just built.
Rehearsal Dinner Toasts
Then it’s Olive Garden, fancy Italian, and the toasts themselves. Family telling the stories that paint a picture of who these two are and how they got that way, and a couple of childhood ones involving Luke shimmying up something nobody can explain.
Very happy with the lighting, very happy with the audio, and the best part is that the wedding is here tomorrow. I already know what the reception looks like, I already know where my lights are going, I already know how to plug into that soundboard, and Rachel sat through the ceremony rehearsal. I prefer to be as planned as possible, and attending the rehearsal is the best way I know to do it.
The Rest Of The Series
- Part 1, the Colorado couples shoot
- Part 3, the wedding day, where my a7S III died
- Holly and Luke’s finished wedding film
Everything here was graded with my LUTs, and the full kit is here.
If you film weddings and you want to book more of them, I put together a free guide with practical steps you can take right now. And if editing is the part you’re stuck on, that’s what my wedding film editing course is for.