basic for shooting a wedding mini clip
We’ve started up the Wild Bunch wedding video school again. After few courses for photographer friends we went official and ran our first couple of courses in Sydney and Brisbane this year. We’ve had great feedback and it seems to be a skill a lot of wedding photographers want to incorporate into their wedding services.
Why would we run a wedding video school you may ask? The reality is that video and photography are very different and if couples want a full wedding film then videographers are needed. But many of the basic principles cross over and there is no reason that a mini film cannot be created to music by a photographer. It’s not that hard with a few simple techniques.
We offer half day courses which will equip you with the essential filming techniques and our, pocket guide and info pack as a reference. There are a few other courses which go more in depth covering more filming, audio recording and editing also. So if you are interested in our DSLR mini film course or an introduction to wedding video shooting and editing, then register your interest with us on our website.
In the meantime we will be posting some useful tips and tools to for anyone interested in getting into filming. Our first one is here about some essential free bits of software for photographers and film makers alike:
I find these days that most of us do more than one thing. That is, as creatives we have to be multi-hyphenates: we write, we direct, we shoot, we edit, we blog, we launch web sites… and with few exceptions, most of these creative pursuits are aided by software. While I’m usually working in Adobe or Apple’s pro applications, there are always some free applications in the toolkit as well. So I thought I’d share some free cross-platform applications that I’ve found handy, in case any of them are new to you. Here are several free programs useful for creatives:
Handbrake
If you’re ripping a DVD these days, I doubt you’re outputting to a blank DVD — instead, you’re probably exporting to a file on your laptop, Apple TV, media server, or mobile device. Handbrake is your best bet for converting an old-fashioned disc into a high-quality (legal or illegal… ) copy. Also cross-platform (Mac, Windows, etc).
VLC Player
VLC is free video player. You know how sometimes if you try to open a video in Windows Media Player or Quicktime it won’t play? VLC handles many more formats than either of those default video players. As they say on the VLC site, “it plays everything!” Works pretty well on underpowered computers, as well. Free on all OSes.
Audacity
GarageBand ships with every new Mac and is great for recording music. But if you’d like a simpler way to record audio for, say, a podcast or interview, Audacity is a free (and lighter) alternative. It records live audio from any source, imports and exports a variety of formats, and allows you to apply a variety of filters and edit multitrack audio. It’s cross-platform software that is available for Mac, PC and Linux.
MPEG Streamclip
Now that Quicktime Pro has gone the way of the dodo, Apple’s own native video application has gotten a bit over-simplified in its video-conversion abilities. MPEG Streamclip steps in as a great free transcoding app. It’s a great option for batch-conversion of files as well (as I mention in the DSLR Guide). Mac and Windows.
Cyberduck
If you have your own website you’re probably transferring files to and from the site using an FTP program. Cyberduck is an often-updated, free Mac FTP app.
That’ll do it for now – hope you found some of those useful. If there are other good free programs that you use to create, let me know and I’ll add them to the list. These were just some free apps to get started, but going forward we’re going to broaden our horizons considerably…
1 Comment | In: Home | tags: dslr mini film, dslr wedding course, wedding video course, wedding video school, wild bunch weddings. | #
