Wedding Videography F/X Video Mixer Tricks

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Since many wedding videographers incorporate their digital video mixer into wedding videos, we’re going to provide several examples on how to add that little bit of spice and a lot of romance to your wedding productions. (By the way, many of these effects that we’re going to cover can be used for productions other than wedding.)

To begin with, this first tip is ideal for wedding receptions: One of which is the creation of a Picture-In-Picture that contains persons being interviewed (giving their best wishes to the bride and groom). The Picture-In-Picture resides on screen backed by dance footage resulting in something other than just a “talking head.”

Another trick that brides love is interview the bride and groom separately at the wedding reception and ask each what their favorite part of the wedding ceremony was. As he or she begins to answer, perform a slow dissolve to the footage of the ceremony that they’re referring to. You might even want to add a slight touch of strobe and maybe make the “flashback memory” scene black and white so that it comes across as sort of a dream sequence. As the interview concludes, slowly dissolve back to the interviewee.

This flashback segment also works great when interviewing the parents of the bride. Ask the father of the bride, “What were you thinking as you were walking your daughter down the isle?” As he answers, dissolve to the isle scene of that great emotional close-up shot that you captured. (When the parents watch this tape, the better have a full box of Kleenex tissues handy.)

Another tip is, if you have a digital video mixer that has a dual Picture-In-Picture mode, try running parallel scenes of both the bride and groom getting ready for the wedding during your pre-ceremony sequence. This to the beat of audio-dubbed music can make for a great opening scene.

And speaking of Picture-In-Pictures, plan your shots ahead of time when you’re shooting the wedding ceremony so that you can combine multiple camera footage on screen at the same time. For example, the full screen might be a close-up of the bride’s face as she receives her wedding ring. The Picture-In-Picture can be a close-up of her left hand as the ring is being placed on it.

By the way, if you do use multiple cameras to capture a wedding ceremony, make sure that both cameras are recording continuously through the ceremony (no pausing the camera at all, even if one camera operator is changing camera locations). That way, when it comes time to edit the ceremony, all you have to do is get the two tapes up, running as synchronized and perform “soft takes” (dissolves) between camera tapes.