How to shoot a video without any gear at all.
Maybe we should turn back.
I was getting nervous. There was just something in my gut that told me I should call to check in. So, I found a moment to steal myself away from what I was doing. I flipped open the ‘ole Motorola cell phone and dialed.
“Yeah.”
The voice on the other end sounded a bit gruff; irritated.
“It’s me. Just calling to see how it’s going over there.”
“Terrible.”
My heart sank.
I was standing inside the church sanctuary, video camera in one hand and my phone in the other, listening to one of my shooters on the other end, catching me up to speed on a little “hiccup” he and my third shooter had just encountered.
The three of us were facing a common, yet chaotic wedding-day situation:
The reception was held at a venue other than the church building; in this case, about a 25-min drive.
Immediately following the ceremony, guests were free to make their way over to the reception.
The bride, groom, wedding party, and families all stayed behind in order to take photos before they drove to the reception.
To capture all the footage needed for the couple’s wedding video, I stayed behind at the church to shoot the post-ceremony photography session. I sent my second and third shooters ahead of me over to the reception where they were to gather b-roll of the decorations, the cake, the venue, and the guests.*
That was the plan.
However, it turned out that while the crew made it to the reception, the gear did not. That’s because my crew, in their haste to get over to the reception in enough time to capture beauty shots of the empty venue, had loaded up all the gear in my car before hopping in their car and taking off… Yep… without taking any cameras for their needs.
They were half-way to the reception venue before they realized their misstep. As they told me later, their conversation went something like this:
2nd Shooter #1 - I hope we brought enough batteries.
2nd Shooter #2 - Where did you put them?
2nd Shooter #1 - In the camera bags.
[2nd Shooter #2 turns around to search the camera bags. Realization hits.]
2nd Shooter #2 - We didn’t bring a *!@%^&# thing!
It was the moment when they had just turned around to head back to the church that I placed my phone call and found out what was going on.
Over twenty years have passed since that panic-inducing afternoon and we can all laugh about it now. No one ever knew about our mistake and we didn’t miss any coverage from the reception. But I learned important lessons from the experience.
Spend the money to hire an experienced crew.
I cannot emphasize this enough. If you’re first starting a video production business, you want to reduce overhead and make as much money as you can on each project. Listen, I get it. But you absolutely should not go cheap on the crew. It will give you peace-of-mind that the job will be done well and you won’t have the added pressure of trying to do everything yourself. I didn’t do that. Thinking that shooting weddings was very straightforward, I just recruited friends with no experience to help me out who were willing to work for next-to-nothing.
And that leads me into my second lesson:
Never Compete on Price.
There will always be someone who’s willing to do it cheaper than you. Don’t try to get new business on price. Rather, emphasize the quality of your work and the value you bring to the client. Competing on price is just a race to the bottom.
But sometimes you have to hit the bottom before you realize that you have to make a change.
Like trying to shoot a video without any gear at all.
*For me, it was important to stay ahead of the guests in order to get beauty shots of the empty reception space. But when the venue is about 25 minutes away and you have to pack up and load gear before you can even leave the church, time is of the essence.