It's 9:00 On A Saturday... The Usual Crowd Shuffels In...

Last night I had the fun of working for my friend Paul Chamberlin over at the Music Machine. Paul had called me to shoot some footage of him performing to be added to a demo video down the road. So I grabbed my old EZ1 which for the last decade has been nothing more than a shelf paperweight, left my light at home because we didn't want to interfer in any way with the ambience of the festivites since I was only there to get demo footage of Pual in action and crossed my fingers. The one big problem with the EZ1 and the reason I bailed on using it is that it's manual functions are almost impossible to use, so you have to leave it in auto. The main reason the footage looses focus a few times.

Not bad, but the camera sucks in low light as evidenced while Paul is doing the introduction to Piano Man. And it reminded me why I like shooting two cameras, I didn't have any cut aways to hide the camera moves as I swung the camera to get the audience, or the tape glitch that happens half way through the song. Usually the second camera would concentrate on the cutaways while I stuck with the main subject, in this case the B&G. And due to the fact I didn't want to be too obvious, the footage of the B&G singing isn't exactly at the best angle. Following the sing along is the bouquet toss.





Paul is one of he great DJs, besides myself of course. ;-) After shooting the demo footage of Paul, I grabbed the still camera he brings with him and fired off a few still shots, which are below. I love having fun with photography. Especially shutter drags, which are those that are out of focus with blured motion.

The official photographer for the couple, who made a cameo in the video is Scott Leonard from Valentino's Photographics. You can see some different photos that I shot, along with a few Paul shot, over at the Music Machine's blog.


The YMCA


Are you dragging the shutter, or do you not know how to use a caemra? ;-)






What a great gobo!




Pual in action, he probably wants to shoot me for this shot. ;-)







The offical vendors at this reception were
The Music Machine
Palais Royale
Valentino's Photographics

Mary & Sean - Sept 15, 2007

Karly & Patrick's Photo Montage.

At Karly & Patrick's reception Saturday, we also showed one of our photo montages. I love doing these montages, they can be so much fun! We are also now producing them in a widescreen aspect ratio so that when taken home they will fill those new plasma and lcd tvs. Enjoy!



Here are a few more pics of the reception, a few of them taken during the montage showing.

Brian

Saturday's Event, Karly & Patrick

It's been a busy summer of video production and while Mark and Mike have been busy DJing (yes I know not a word) I haven't done many myself. Saturday was a change of pace for me as I was the Disc Jockey and not the videographer. It's always nice to get my toes wet in my first love and this was one fantastic party to do so at!

Karly and Patrick had their wedding reception at the top notch Windsor Park in Edison Lakes. Rita and staff as usual were on their toes and everything flowed smoothly with dinner and the roast beef was fantastic. The party itself was off the scale, this group really knew how to get down.

Every 3 to 5 years or so a group of songs that are for all intents and purposes have a resurgence in wedding reception market. The YMCA came back when Wayne and Garth danced to it in the movie. Vanilla Ice with ICE ICE Baby made a resurgence about 5 years ago after crushing his video on MTV. In the last year 5 songs have come roaring back to life at receptions: Pour Some Sugar On My by Def Leppard, Don't Stop Believing by Journey, Living On A Prayer by Bon Jovi (well if you went to a Catholic school that song has never been 'out' but it's really made it's way into the mainstream market too) and the really big suprise Take Me Home Tonight by Eddie Money are the latest resurgent songs to hit. As I said the big surprise is Eddie Money's song. I like his music but no one ever danced to it, even when it was on the charts, until now. A good time was had by all.

When your a DJ and the party is rocking there is nothing like it for a natural high or adrenaline rush. A fun time was had by all.

Saturday also gave me a chance to indulge myself with a little photography. Nothing can replace video as the medium that celebrates everything about life, but photography can be fun. Last week I picked up a Fuji Finepix camera and hauled it with me to the reception to snap a few pics. What a disappointment that camera is, I hauled it back today to the store. As a videographer I have been using a film based camera for a while and I love film but for quick snapshots of equipment setups and such a digital is just fine and I'd hoped to have found an inexpensive one in the Fuji. In low light, even with the ISO dialed up and the flash on, the camera just sucked. In manual I couldn't get the shutter to sync with the flash, I have no idea what that was about at all and reading the manual today indicated nothing done wrong. In auto the camera dropped my ISO to 100 and created a grainy picture, argh! On top of that it's redeye feature which causes a delay in the shutter firing just reaked havoc on carefully composed shots. I should have known, never go cheap, looks like it's time to break into the piggy bank and get a Nikon D200.

Well all was not lost on the photography side, below are a few of the salvageable pictures.

The Greg Alan Music Video Shoot

Got some stills from the Greg Alan video shoot. Just some images that caught my eye while capturing footage. Marisa and Jessica are both from South Bend.


Jessica goofing off


My favorite, Stalker Fred being stared down by Jessica. Fred was a good guy, just couldn't get this stalker look off his face until Jessica beat it out of him.


Greg Alan and The Dirty Hillbillys




The actresses on stage with the Dirty Hillbillys



Marisa (center) and Jessica (right) Warning Stalker Fred to stay away. You may have seen Marisa in the Elkhart Haunted House ad from last year (2006) as the news reporter.

Brian