16 July 2003

On Monday, I became a wedding videographer

Well, a friend wanted to do a hip and stylish photo shoot that involves lots of costume changes and posing at Robinson Rd, the beach, and a field where airplanes fly really low overhead. And, he wanted me to videotape the photographer shooting them. That's like, totally weird, right?

Nonetheless, I had fun playing with his Canon 450 DV camera. An old model, but still very useable.

Lessons Learnt:
1. Wedding photographers have a certain style. Looking at all the albums in the studio, we agreed that most of the poses, the shots, the locations used... were about the same. I'm just going to call it the photographer's style and speciality =D. Although, the couple who did their shoot in Little India gets my applause.

2. Beautiful locations are actually very mundane. The more beautiful they are, the more ugly in real life. Ah, the power of fashion photography. And cropping. LOTS of cropping needed.

Otherwise you'll capture all the rubbish at the beach. Or the oggling crowds at Robinson Rd who kept looking at us. Or the dozen wedding pairs who turned up at the TINY patch of grass near Tanah Merah for the "Wide expanse of grass and plane flying overhead" shot. Which, of course, since the couple wanted me to shoot the process, it's all there in the videocam, heh.

3. Never accept an assignment, however trivial, from people who worship Wong Kar-wai and go on annual pilgrimages to the Singapore Film Festival. Even if they're your friends, and say "just have fun with the cam!", it's going to be stressful *grin*.

4. Have fun. Lots of it.

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