Every month I host a wedding film review live stream on my YouTube channel, where I watch and review wedding films submitted by filmmakers like you. Many of them are from beginners who are just getting started and want me to review the first wedding they’ve ever filmed.
And without fail, nearly every time I watch one of those first wedding films, I say the same thing: “this film is so much better than my first wedding film.”
And it’s true. There is so much creativity and talent in the wedding filmmaking space now. But it made me think, maybe we should go back in time and watch my first wedding film, the one I made nearly ten years ago in 2010.
I have not watched through this in years. These are all my real reactions. Here we go.
The Opening
Starting off with a white screen. It’s always a good sign when your video starts off with a white screen.
Then a little text swirl thing, which I want you to know I spent an hour animating in After Effects.
I was filming on my Canon 7D and I had recently purchased an 8mm fisheye lens, so obviously we’ve got to get this whole chapel in a shot. Use the fisheye. Look at the bowing on the edges, my goodness. And then, on top of that, I added a vignette. And then it goes right into the next wide shot too. I didn’t even ask those nice ladies to leave, I was just like, ah, stay there, I’ll film you.
You should also know that the music in the version you’re watching is not the original music. I had to change it, because I didn’t understand copyright when I filmed my first wedding. The first song I used was a Lifehouse song. It was horrible. Just imagine that in the back of your mind as you watch.
How many of you, when you first buy a camera, find a piano and go, gotta get those piano key bokeh? I had already owned my camera for over a year at this point. I don’t know why I was still doing this shot. And then, a little later, an organ shot. Completely different from the piano key shot I got earlier. Revolutionary.
There’s some good emotion in these, and no ambient audio at all. It would have been great to have some ambient audio to add to the feel of it. I don’t think I used ambient audio in my films for at least a year, maybe two.
Two Lenses
Father of the bride getting emotional here, and I wish I wasn’t so close in. I think I only owned two lenses, a Canon FD 28mm and a Canon FD 50mm, so the widest I could get was 28mm. This was probably on the 50 though, which makes it an 85mm equivalent with the 7D crop.
I was close. And I was pushing that ISO to the limit.
The Fades
Can we talk about how much I love fading between shots?
When I started out, I didn’t think that cutting looked nearly as good as fading. So instead of using a fade sparingly, to show a transition, I faded every single shot into the next one. Just dragging a cross dissolve down over and over. Fade it here, fade it here.
The Ceremony
As far as the ceremony goes, I was offering a documentary edit, so it’s literally verbatim, everything as it happened, start to finish. It’s long. It’s real long.
And there’s me. Oh gosh. What was I wearing? Why would I think a striped shirt would be a good idea for a wedding? I have no idea. I was just like, I need to dress nice, and this is what I think nice is. Khakis, also a bad decision. I believe I was also wearing Converse, which are the worst possible shoes to wear if you’re filming for nine or ten hours.
Notice the shoulder rig though. That’s legit. I still have it in my closet somewhere and it is so heavy. No carbon fiber, it’s all steel. Also my camera strap was still attached to the camera. I never bothered to take it off, so it’s just hanging there with the shoulder rig. I needed a lot of help.
The photographer was great, by the way. So patient with me, so nice.
That safety angle from the balcony was filmed with my Sony handycam, which recorded to mini DVDs with a maximum recording length of 30 minutes. So I had to make sure the whole ceremony fit inside 30 minutes or I wasn’t going to have a safety angle at all. Which is kind of the opposite of what a safety angle is supposed to be, right? It’s for safety. It’s supposed to last forever. Well, this one lasted 30 minutes.
You can also see the confusion on my face through most of this. What am I doing? They just went over there. Wait, what are they doing? Do I need to film that? Do I film the people walking in? I look over, the photographer’s getting it, should I get it too? I think I’ll get it.
Later on I knew what I was doing for the other families, look: get that candle lighting. Never mind the photographer over on the left hiding out of the way. I’ve only got a 50mm, I’m going in. It would take a very special wedding now for me to walk up in front of everybody like that.
If you want to know how dated this wedding is, look no further than the cameras the guests are using. There are no smartphones. This is 2010. Nice point and shoot.
For audio I had one lav mic, a Sennheiser G3, and I think it was on the groom. I don’t think I had a mic for anybody else, so the officiant is pretty hard to hear the entire time. The groom’s audio isn’t horrible, but it’s definitely a little peaky.
Reception
The cake close up. Why am I so close? Notice how well lit those cakes look though. That’s because the photographer loaned me his on-camera light, which I would never use now, but at the time it was really dark and I needed it.
Then we’re getting creative, going from table shots to shots of people coming in. Revolutionary stuff. Still fading between every shot, never a hard cut. And I would have loved some audio of the people cheering as they walked in. Didn’t get it.
Then I’m pretty sure this is their entire first dance, filmed with the shoulder rig the whole way through, no second shooter, just me. I did not want to miss a second of it.
Then, of course, I gave the couple all of the toasts, in full, documentary. I do not recall plugging into the sound board for those toasts, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t have the right cables, so I made do with just on-camera audio. There are a lot of things I’ve improved on since making this video, but I think audio may be the most of all. If you want the version of me who solved this, that’s in how to record amazing audio in your wedding films and in wedding audio backups.
Speaking of which, Reacting to the first wedding film by The Brothers Martens! is worth a look too.
2010 Matt, I definitely need you to start bringing your reception light to these weddings.
Keep in mind I had no idea what you would normally film at a wedding, so it’s, and here’s a shot of the wedding certificate, and now let’s do some dancing. There’s more handheld dancing throughout. Not bad, pretty stable, but so long. It’s just the full dances. Like four minutes straight. Then bouquet and garter toss.
My mental state for my first wedding: document everything, don’t miss anything, put it all in the video.
And exit. It’s not a bad exit, it’s not mind blowing. They stayed at a hotel across the street so we filmed them getting on the elevator, I remember that. Not a bad way to end a video. Their expressions.
Is it done? No, it’s not done.
Well Wishes
There are still six minutes of well wishes that I recorded from guests.
And I did all these lovely animations in After Effects. I believe I bought a preset pack that had these little swirls and flourishes and put those in. Got some photos of the couple, I believe off of Facebook, and faded them in throughout as the person is talking.
Why didn’t I just let the person talk? I thought it looked better like this? I don’t know. I was thinking like a credits scene. I put so much work into this and I really question if it was worth it. I definitely wouldn’t do it this way now.
One thing you’re going to notice is that the audio of the well wishers is better than the audio of any of the toasts, or even the ceremony. I’m not sure where I got that microphone. If memory serves, it may have been from a karaoke set that my brother or sister owned, and I took the mic out of it because I knew it would work with my audio recorder, and I brought it along to the wedding for this reason. Did what I had to do. Very minimal gear for this wedding.
And then partway through, I think the battery on the recorder died, so I had to start using on-camera audio instead, which was significantly worse. And I still put it in.
Then I insert myself into the wedding film.
Keep in mind I hadn’t created a company yet, so I was still going by just Matt Johnson. I did a chromatic aberration text effect on the title to make the letters pop a bit. And did you hear the sound effect at the end? The wind whoosh. Why was I doing a wind whoosh? I have no idea.
What I Charged
And that is the first wedding I ever filmed.
I believe I charged $500 for that wedding film. Do you believe this couple got their money’s worth for about a 50 minute long edit? Leave me a comment and let me know. And if you want the longer story of how I got from a 50 minute documentary edit to what I offer now, that’s what is the perfect wedding film length.
I hope this has been an encouragement to you. Like I said at the start, a lot of the wedding films I see from beginner filmmakers do look better than my first film.
If you want to see more wedding film reviews like this, I host a monthly wedding film review live stream. If you want to guarantee you see it, sign up for my email newsletter. About a week before each stream I send out an email with the exact time and date, plus a submission form where you can submit a wedding film for review.
And if the editing side is what you’re stuck on rather than the shooting, that’s what Wedding Film Framework is for.