I blame Patrick Swayze ….

It’s becoming increasingly popular for couples to have their first dance choreographed professionally and then taught to them over the weeks before the wedding. Perhaps it’s a left-over from Dirty Dancing in which the late and wonderful Patrick Swayze persuaded men they
weren’t pansies if they swung their hips and expressed their emotions through dance. More likely it’s because if Mark Ramprakash and Darren Gough can do it without any gags about their sexuality, so can our man.

I can imagine that brides too, revelling in their full dresses, enjoy the sensation of twirling and “sashaying” around the floor in time to a favourite song.

As a video producer I certainly find it more satisfying to record a choreographed performance rather than the traditional “Hollywood Shuffle” which was a simple contrivance to have each of the dancers facing the camera to deliver their lines.

But it isn’t as easy as the choreographers, on Strictly as well as at your local dance school, make it look. It takes practice and commitment, probably a little talent and certainly bags of enthusiasm. And it can still go wrong – for a number of reasons.

Firstly the songs couples choose are invariably their favourites and mean something to them. Sadly that doesn’t necessarily make them good songs to dance to. Unless you’re well into dancing, it’s sensible to choose a song with a well-defined, constant beat and a tempo you can dance to without being a Fred Astaire. My advice would be to take a list of your favourites to your choreographer and let them choose one that works.

Secondly, discuss with your choreographer what sort of dance you want to be taught. Often couples seem to be led towards what are essentially “show” dances. That’s fine if head flips and leg kicks come naturally to you. Unless you’re comfortable with that sort of dance my
advice would be to ask your choreographer to teach you a fairly standard cha-cha-cha, samba or beguine and embelish it with some twirls and spins for the bride to show off her dress.

The advantages are that you’ll have something in your skill stock that can be brought out whenever you’re dancing and you’ll not feel uncomfortable performing the moves on your wedding day.

Finally, gentlemen, whilst you’re rehearsing please remember that on the wedding day your partner may well be wearing a much fuller dress than she’s ever worn with you before. It might well be dirty dancing but not as Patrick showed us and you’ll certainly get nul points for standing all over your bride’s dress!

As an old-time photographer told me ….

I had lunch the other day with a photographer – actually the photographer who first recommended I come into wedding video production (he knew our ethos and commitment to quality from way back when we worked together ). As we drank our coffee, our waitress,
noticing us looking at a new piece of kit my friend has just bought, remarked that she’d graduated from photo college last July but couldn’t get work.

We got chatting and when she learned that my pal was a long-established wedding photographer she revealed that her passion was portraiture.

“Ah,” he said, gesturing towards me, “the one area of our work in which my friend and I don’t overlap.”

He explained that for a young photographer to break into weddings was made more difficult these days because clients so often choose a reportage or an informal style of photography.

“The thing is that if photographers are honest, they’ll admit that the video makes a much better job of capturing friends and family behaving naturally ie informally, because they record sound and movement as well as images. But, the one thing the video people can’t do is the portraiture, the formal groups and the bride and groom, the pictures everyone actually wants on the day whether they tell you so or not when they’re briefing you.”

The waitress looked a little confused. “So what you’re saying is that I should take on a job paying maybe £300 when I could be getting the whole job and earning four or five times that?” she asked.

“Yes but you’re not getting the whole job are you? You’re waiting on tables,” said my pal, always a little forthright. “If I was you I’d talk to this man,” he said pointing at me, “who makes very good wedding videos, and persuade him to offer a new style of wedding photography/video service, combining video and portraiture. You’ll only be working for a couple of hours on each job, so you’ll have plenty of time to develop your regular portraiture business.”

We did talk and indeed since then I’ve talked with a number of portrait specialists. But what do you think? Is the tradition of the wedding photographer still strong or do your friends take such wonderful snaps with their modern digital cameras that you really only need the
photographer to take the formals?

Since our lunch, this photographer and I have added a new service to our portfolios – a combination of our two skills – for a very competitive price.

A persuasive experience

All the research wedding magazines carry out continues to show that couples rank the
importance of having a wedding video much, much higher after their wedding than before.
It’s as if they’ve realised at the wedding that the day is passing before them in a joyous blur
and that at least some of their family and friends won’t be around at their next family event.

Conveying this to couples I meet at Wedding Fairs and other events needs tact and discretion
and both of those need time which we don’t always have at the larger fairs. Even putting it in
print on our website needs careful phrasing so it was with great pleasure I discovered the
following passage in Donald Spoto’s biography of Ingrid Bergman which I read recently.
I’ve paraphrased it a little due to space constraints but it carries most of the dialogue from the
original.

In 1979 Ingrid Bergman, already diagnosed with cancer, was honoured at a dinner held at
Warner Bros Burbank studio – where Casablanca’s interiors had been shot 37 years earlier.
In response to the many tributes, she showed and narrated a black and white film.

“When my father discovered something new had happened – motion pictures,” she explained,
“he was so enthusiastic that on my birthdays and special days, he rented a hand-cranked
movie camera.” The film flickered on to the screen. “That’s me on my mother’s lap, my
grandparents are behind me. That was my first screen appearance, one year old in 1916.

Now here, I am two years old, and there is my mother who pushed me around in my little
wheelbarrow – my first stage prop.

Now there is my mother – and how happy that makes me – since there I can see her move and
smile. I didn’t know what to do in the scenes, nobody gave me direction, but here I am three
years old and I am coming to my mother’s grave, I am putting flowers on her grave.

You can understand why I am so happy to have those earlier shots, where I can see her move
and smile and hold me up – how lovely that was.”

I don’t think I could have put it better.

Respecting the ceremony

One November, a few years ago I was making a video programme for a museum in the French Alps. It included a ceremony to honour Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory who, in 1945, died in a crash above the village in which the museum stands. A friend of mine, an accomplished cornetist, was playing the Last Post – the RAF having decided it couldn’t afford a bugler to honour one of its most notable senior officers. We were covering the event with just two cameras, all that the modest budget allowed. The British press was represented by the Daily Telegraph’s then chief correspondent in France, Colin Randall, and an agency photographer. It was cold and snowing yet we all maintained our positions, leaving the focus of the ceremony on the memory of Leigh-Mallory and respect for the bravery of the French villagers who, 60 years earlier, had recovered the bodies from the mountains. Like the press coverage, our programme was widely praised.

I recalled the event as I watched the coverage of the memorial ceremony in Basra to mark the withdrawal of British servicemen. The thing that struck me, apart from some occasional sloppy direction of the television images, was the number of uniformed people treating the ceremony as if it was still the parade ground it is in everyday life. These Army photographers and video cameramen, of whom there seemed an excessive number to do the job, completely ignored the solemnity and dignity of the occasion. Even at the most solemn moments, the playing of the Last Post, and the recitation of the memorial prayer to the dead (“in the morning we shall remember them”), they wandered around, snapping everything that moved like amateurs at a photo fair. Happily neither of my children is in the Forces; had I been one of those whose son or daughter has died in Iraq, I think I would have been very angry at the lack of simple respect these people were showing.

I feel the same way at weddings. As I’ve written before, we video and photo people may be working but that doesn’t absolve us of the responsibility to respect the dignity of the occasion we are recording. At PHP Weddings we always say that we do not create the wedding but simply record it. Our creativity is worked afterwards in the editing. At our weddings the only stars are the bridal couple – which is the way we believe all weddings should be.

HD is dead – NOT

Just over a year ago, the home entertainment industry announced that Blu-ray disc had won the competition to be the delivery medium for High Definition video recordings. People who remembered the protracted competition between VHS and Betamax videotape breathed a sigh of relief.

Now, less than 12 months later, doomsayers in the business are predicting the demise of Blu-ray.

Why? Well it has nothing to do with the inherent quality of Blu-ray – the visual impact when you see your wedding video on Blu-ray is stunning – a real “blows your socks off” sensation. The reason DVD is maintaining its popularity appears to be a combination of technology and economics.

The economics are simple; whilst the least expensive Blu-ray disc players in the UK still cost around £120.00, DVD players are available for less than £10.00.  More importantly, Blu-ray discs are still significantly more expensive than DVDs for no reason other than the big players in the industry seem intent on squeezing every last penny out of their investment in Blu-ray discs. If films released on Blu-ray disc retailed at the same price as on DVD it would give the sale of Blu-ray players a huge boost.

If that wasn’t enough, the technologists have been improving the quality they can obtain from a DVD by “up-scaling”. DVD players with “up-scaling” circuitry convert the output from the DVD player so that it gives the best results when shown on an HD-Ready or Full HD television screen. And those results really are excellent, particularly if the wedding video has been recorded and edited using true High Definition equipment, as we at PHP Weddings always do.

But let’s be quite clear, “up-scaled” DVDs are not High Definition.

In High Definition on Blu-ray disc, the image quality of our programmes shown on a Full HD screen is truly amazing, the question is whether it’s worth investing in a Blu-ray player and Full HD television today.

Happily, it’s a decision PHP Weddings’ clients don’t have to make because as of 2012 we include one Blu-ray and four first generation DVDs in our single-price service. At the same time we archive all our programmes as High Definition so if, in a few years time, today’s pundits have been proved wrong and Blu-ray is still around, our clients can buy additional Blu-ray and DVD copies of their wedding programmes. With PHP Wedding Video Productions you get the best of both worlds!

Image quality too good!

We learned the other day that a wedding video company in South Manchester recently left one of its customers very unhappy – because the quality of their images was too good.

In fact their images are no better than anyone else’s, but they’d chosen to show the client her wedding video on their premises, played in from their editing computer on their TV monitor. The trouble arose when the programme was converted to a DVD and the client played it on her own equipment at home. Because it didn’t look the same she felt she’d been tricked.

It’s a story that underlines the importance we at PHP Weddings place on having all our programme viewings at our clients homes, on our clients’ equipment. We promise that our customers will not be disappointed and that means taking the trouble to burn a disk for the viewing and showing it on the equipment on which the client will eventually play the finished DVD.

That doesn’t mean our clients always have the latest gear, far from it. What it does mean is that if any question of image quality arises (and it never has, honestly!) we can explain the reason and, if asked, are able to offer some unbiased solutions.

Strictly First Dance

Strictly Come Dancing proved that gyrating in time to music is perfectly compatible with being a “real man” – how could anyone accuse Darren Gough of being anything else? If so, you might have expected more couples would have decided to do a bit of preparation for their First Dance but sadly the majority are happy to shift from foot to foot hoping that their families will join them on the dance floor as soon as possible.

There’s plenty of help out there. Not just expensive choreographers and dance teachers. There are library books on the Arthur Murray or Victor Sylvester “systems” (basically black and white feet in cartoon animations) and DVDs featuring unemployed dancers trying to persuade you that because they can do it, so can you.

There are other solutions too. Instead of trying to emulate Darren Gough or the delectable Kristina Rihanoff (or even John Sergeant) couples can have a word with the DJ and ensure that their First Dance takes place in total darkness – which means the video cameramen have to be a little ingenious not to spoil the ambiance.

But the best solution we’ve seen was a DJ called Darryl Edwards. Your wedding will not be Darryl’s first job, in fact Darryl looks as though he might have been spinning disks as long as the venerable Jimmy Savile. Darryl is by far the best DJ we saw last year. Because he’s not in the first flush of youth he can entertain as well.

Early on, whilst the evening guests were attacking the buffet, Darryl sat on a chair in the middle of the dance floor and entertained the youngsters who’d soon be going to bed – you can’t do that if all you know is the top 100.

Later, for the bridal couple’s First Dance he organised all the guests so that the couple made an entrance and weren’t standing isolated on the dance floor, bantered with them for a few moments and then ensured that they were quickly joined in their First Dance by the rest of their guests.

Finally, a few hours later when the party was due to end, Darryl organised his “signature” conclusion. It would be unfair to give too much away, suffice to say that before they made their way from the room to cheers and applause and yet another playing of their favourite love song, the couple received the personal good wishes of every guest. Some DJ’s, like good champagne, are best from old bottles.

Were the old days good?

Alan Murgatroyd, a friend now living in New Zealand happened upon this blog recently and revealed that although we know him as a retired airline pilot, he was originally destined to be a photographer.  Although much of his reminiscence deals with the technical aspects of photography at the time, he also helped his father who was an early wedding photographer.

As you pore over the hundreds of photographs your wedding photographer and PHP Weddings will send you – this is how it used to be ….. 

My father operated as a still photographer – black and white ½-plate camera mostly – until around the mid-fifties, when he switched to 12 on 120 with the Zeiss Super Ikonta range. He carried three identical cameras which gave 36 shots without stopping to reload, and the 2 ¼ in sq. format meant that the camera didn’t have to be turned on the tripod – the decision as to whether it should be vertical or horizontal could be made in the printing room. He never “stooped” to 35 mm until he had to include colour transparencies as an option when he added a Voigtlander Bessamatic to his bag.

Initially, he had the wedding party travel via the studio on the way to the reception, and used a Thornton-Pickard whole plate camera, with powerful tungsten lights, and controlled daylight i.e. glass roof with moveable gauze curtains and different backgrounds on roller blinds behind the subjects. He later modified the plate holders so that he could take two shots on each whole plate, and eventually switched to cut film and a spring loaded back to replace the double glass plate holders.

He finally had to give in and go out to the churches when a competitor started up with a gang of ‘cowboys’ to each of whom he gave a 35 mm camera and told them to muscle in on any church ceremony without permission, then sell the photographs on commission after the event.

He never embraced cine.

Some vicars banned cameras in church, but most would allow a discreet tripod at the back of the church, looking down the aisle, or in the gallery. Nothing too close to the altar, or the ceremony. We knew the opening lines …….. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to day ……… very well !

As a studio operator copyright was often an issue, customers would often demand their portrait negatives, which was refused, the argument being that as money had changed hands the copyright belonged to the customer, but the negative belonged to the photographer, to whom re-prints usually represented the only profit opportunity. He would place enlargements in the shop window, usually without permission, but nobody ever complained.

I started to follow in his footsteps, completing a 5 year apprenticeship with an Elsam, Mann & Cooper in Liverpool, situated in The Temple on Dale St. at the bottom of Moorfields, down which I dashed most mornings off the electric train from Southport. (‘The Cavern’ of later Beatle fame was in the basement off the courtyard, but was just an irritating noisy night-club of dubious repute then!) and they opened a branch in Manchester, to which I was once ‘seconded’. Messrs E.M.& C. were all ex-apprentices of Stewart Bale Ltd. a very well known Liverpool photographer of the time.

When I was deemed responsible enough to represent the firm on my own, I was allowed a 12×10 plate camera with 6 double dark glass plate holders and a selection of lenses – weighed a ton – and given the Cammell Laird jobs, which meant climbing twice to the top of one of the hammerhead cranes first with the camera, then with the tripod and reversing the procedure when I had finished. We never used a shutter, but stopped the lens down to f32 or f64 and took the lens cap off for the required length of time – which you judged. Lifting the cap off upwards and back down ensured that the sky got less exposure and so wasn’t overexposed. I was with Mr. Elsam one day when he was asked how he knew how long to leave the cap off. He replied that photographers were born with a bell in their head, and when the bell rang the cap was replaced. Rarely did we get unuseable negatives, but hand printing contact prints in a 12×10 frame allowed for a lot of correction !

One day, having completed the photography, the crane driver took pity on me and, to save me a second climb to collect the tripod, offered to lower it down to the ground on his ‘lunch line’. Since I could only manage all the little ladders carrying one item, either camera bag or tripod this would be a great help. I’m reminded of this every time I hear the Gerard Hoffnung piece about the barrel of bricks – because when I was halfway down I was overtaken by the tripod, now separated from the ‘lunch line’! I took it back to work remarking that only 2 legs were smashed, and was curtly told that it only had 3 to start with!

We made colour prints using Kodak Dye Transfer. Three negatives taken through red, green and blue filters were then printed on positive film, the density of the image being represented by thickness of gelatine rather than blackness of image. Thicker gelatine absorbed more of the dye when they were placed in trays of Cyan, Magenta, or Yellow dye. After about 10 mins. soaking the Cyan positive was ‘fixed’ in a bath of acetic acid, the surplus rinsed off and then “squeegeed” on to the paper and left long enough for all the Dye to Transfer. After it was removed a clear film was placed over it and the Magenta positive placed on top. When one was satisfied that it was precisely registered it was securely clipped at one edge, peeled back and the clear film removed before it was the squeeged on to the print. The same procedure was then followed with the Yellow positive.

The non-achromatic lenses that we used at the time created different sized images from the blue, red and green filtered negatives, even though the camera wasn’t moved between the three exposures, and so when printing the positive gelatine images through the enlarger a micrometer adjustment was provided, otherwise one would get slight colour edges to various parts of the image. Of course, registering them correctly on the final prints was essential, a purely manual process requiring keen eyesight. Clearly, only still life studio subjects could be photographed. It took about a week to produce one print from start to finish, because each process needed a long processing and drying period before the next could be continued.

Reflect on that when you now view your colour images within a micro-second of pressing the shutter release !

We also produced Sepia images by bleaching the black and white print in potassium cyanide, then placing it in potassium bromide, which restored the image in Sepia. One of my jobs was to make the potassium cyanide bath from crystals – without rubber gloves – although I was cautioned not to suck my fingers for awhile. Bet you can’t even buy the stuff these days, and Health and Safety would go mad.

No wonder I have trouble with digital !

I still have a Sanderson brass and mahogany ½ plate camera with a Thornton-Pickard shutter tucked away somewhere, and a 5×4 Speed Graphic, and a 9×12 Linhof Technica with a 120 roll film back, also one of the Super – Ikontas, but I fear that the proximity to salt water and high humidity may well have wreaked some havoc. Be difficult to buy the film, too !

Copyright in weddings

“If any person here knows any cause or just impediment why these two persons may not be married, they must declare it now or forever hold their peace.” If we had a pound for every bride or groom who’s turned to smile at their friends at that moment we’d be a lot better off!  Of course, everyone giggles but it reminds us that weddings are a legal process.

In fact there are many other legalities involved too. One is copyright. If you marry in the Church of England, the church owns the copyright in the words of the service and part of the fee you pay allows you to use their copyright. Similarly, there’s copyright in any hymns that are played or sung, and any music you might have played by a guitarist or a string quartet at the reception.

In your wedding video you’ll probably want to have your favourite songs and there’ll also be music played by the DJ and maybe in the background by the hotel. So a lot of complicated legal issues, but none should cause you a moment’s concern.

Professional wedding video producers can and should clear all aspects of copyright in your wedding video, by being licenced themselves and by buying a copyright release licence for every copy of the DVD they sell you. This release takes the form of a holographic label that’s stuck on the case of the DVD it covers. It’s not expensive (about £5) so if your wedding DVDs don’t have the label, ask the producer why not. Knowing that the fee hasn’t been paid is the only possible reason that you, the client, could be held responsible.

Just one other point. The licence you should be given with each DVD copy of your wedding video does have restrictions. There’s no problem if you show your DVD to friends and family but broadcast on television or the Internet isn’t included.

Finally, the small print! This article is not intended to be a comprehensive legal exposition but general guidance; if you have any doubts, seek clarification from a lawyer. Also, copyright law varies considerably from country to country and these notes apply only to the UK.

Silence in Church

Video producers get on very well with wedding photographers – not least because we work very differently and can usually keep out of each other’s way. In fact, at PHP Weddings, when we’re commissioned to videorecord a wedding for which a stills photographer has also been booked, we get in touch with them and make sure that we sort out any possible points of overlap well before the day.

There is just one aspect of digital stills photography which some people are finding irritating and that’s the clack-clack-clack of the camera. Although there’s no technical reason why they make such a noise – unless it’s to tell the photographer the picture’s been taken – the noise only becomes an annoyance when the photographer fires off pictures like a machine gun, often without looking at what he’s photographing at all.

At PHP Weddings we avoid recording most of the noise on the video by using miniature radio microphones hidden on the clothing of the main participants. Unfortunately some vicars and even some registrars are beginning to object to the intrusion of the noise on the ceremony and are limiting where and how the stills photographer can work in their church or venue.

If you think it might bother you, check carefully with the photographer before you book him.