Well, “we” is really me. I, Michael Ivan Schwartz, have shot a few weddings for friends. The first was for a college friend. She was actually my girlfriend’s roommate. She had a HUGE wedding party. I think there was somewhere around 12 bridesmaids and groomsmen plus flower girls, ring bearers, etc. When they stood at the front of the enormous church, the wedding party was stationed 24-wide across the stage and practically out the side exit doors. I was commissioned to shoot the wedding and edit the good parts together. I just graduated college, had a small 8mm Sony camcorder and zero practical training in video production. But ya know, when a friend asks you to record their wedding—and you’ve got a nice camcorder, and you don’t have money to buy them a gift, you smile and say, “Yes.”
I had no means to edit the material. This was before the computerized non-linear editing systems. My friend had no 8mm video player. I really wanted to put some time into editing it for them though. So, I vowed to get it transferred to VHS for her…eventually. Well, days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months…and I moved from the East Coast to Colorado. About 3 years passed and I hadn’t spoken to my married friend in quite sometime. Then, from out of the blue, I get a phone call from her. She left a voice mail (this was after voice mail, but still before inexpensive non-linear video editing systems) saying that someone called her from Colorado claiming they had her wedding video. Huh?! What!?
I called Kirsten to find out what she was talking about—and ultimately to apologize for my completely inexcusable delay in editing and transferring her wedding video to VHS. Apparently when I had moved from one apartment to another in Denver, a small box had fallen out of the back of my friend’s pickup truck. A kind neighbor picked up the box and found a package with the original 8mm video from Kirsten’s wedding—on the package was her name and address. This Good Samaritan called information in Virginia and tracked my friend down to tell her of the discovery. And so with shame on my face, I met up with this good neighbor and immediately sent the package off to Kirsten unedited and untransferred. Fortunately, Kirsten and her husband Steve have forgiven me…and they now have their wedding video.
Wedding number two. I was working for a non-profit in Littleton, Colorado and a co-worker was getting married. Both her husband and she worked for non-profits and so they had a very small wedding budget. They asked me to use my same 8mm Sony camcorder to capture their wedding ceremony and reception. They didn’t need it edited—they’d take my tape and take care of getting it transferred themselves. Sure—why not…what could go wrong? I’ve got no long-term responsibilities…just show up, tape it and hand it off. Phew.
Now, I’m not a big fan of weddings. To be honest, I think most single guys in their twenties aren’t exactly into weddings. I had been to quite a few in my just-out-of-college phase…and had very few memorable wedding experiences. This wedding though was, and to this day still is, the best wedding ceremony I’ve witnessed. I knew a bit of the story behind these two getting together. They overcame several obstacles in coming together. They dealt with some serious long-distance (international) tensions during their relationship. They were both a bit older then the norm, yet had waded through the long singlehood process with great fortitude. And I had the bird’s eye view standing on the stage behind the groom and minister recording the whole thing.
The bride looked stunning as she came down the long aisle to the alter. The groom wrote and performed a song that left the whole congregation in tears. Their hand-written vows were humorous and touching. The whole wedding was picture perfect. Well, they couldn’t afford a photographer, so it wasn’t exactly pictured. And unfortunately, it wasn’t video taped either since my camera froze as Diana, dressed in white, glided down the aisle. I shut the camera off and on several times, but it kept blinking an error message each time before shutting down. Once the minister began praying for the couple, I casually slipped off the stage, leaving my broken camera on its tripod, and sat in the front row. No one noticed or wondered why I disappeared from behind the couple. During the reception I spoke with the bride’s best friend and maid of honor. I explained what happened to Amy and asked whether I should tell Diana before she left for the honeymoon or after. She said after. And after, I told her and sadly learned that the person who was recording the wedding’s audio in the church’s sound booth also had technical difficulties and was unable to record the ceremony. So, the best wedding I’ve ever seen remains only a memory for us all.
I pretty much swore off of weddings after this. I’ve since gone through a couple of career changes and have been fully trained in video production. I have lots of high-end camera gear including a state-of-the-art computerized non-linear editing system. I get asked to do a friend’s or stranger’s wedding about five times a year. And to my friend’s I say, if you really are my friend, invite me to be their as a guest—not to work at your wedding. And to the stranger’s I say—I don’t do weddings…if it comes to that I’d rather get a normal job. Shooting weddings are a lot of pressure for a once-in-a-lifetime event, usually working for a highly emotional woman and also her mother, where no one bends to make your job easier or has any idea what’s involved in shooting a video, typically there is poor lighting, often no means to mic the bride who is the center of the day and the result is a video that will typically be watched once by people who are mostly concerned about how their hair and dress looked and zero concern for the value of the production. For those that do produce wedding videos…my highest regards to you. I applaud your work and your passion and I thank you for doing what I’ve sworn to avoid.
Now the exception to the rule for me is this. If you fly me to some exotic place to shoot a, what I call, “Love Actually” style wedding video…book my flight, I’m in. In the movie Love Actually there is a scene where a bride views a video the best man shot of the wedding. She didn’t realize that he was in love with her…so the video is just a few minutes of beautiful close-up images of her throughout the day with some sweet music in the background. My friend invited me to Sri Lanka to shoot his wedding…but apparently a relative of his bride had hired a local crew (and I do mean crew—there were like five guys with lights and boom mic and multiple cameras) to shoot their wedding. So, I put together a Love Actually styled video with images of both the bride and groom throughout their day’s celebration timed to their song. It was short, artsy and a very unique keepsake. So there you have it—Why I don’t do wedding videos.
