Matt: Beard looking good? Mark: Nice, Nice!
TITLE: Wedding Videographer Matt Johnson talks Wedding Video Tips
Hey so we're here at the NAB Show and this year we said we'd do things a bit
differently instead of having a stand and people interviewing us, we're going out
and we're interviewing some of the people that influence us to
make better videos and I'm honored to have one of our favorite guys here this
is Matt Johnson. Dude so happy good Matt has over at 170,000
subscribers on YouTube. Matt for those of our viewers
that may have never seen you before or may not have seen your channel before
can you tell us a bit more about your channel and what they can find on it.
Definitely, so I make wedding films and I make tutorials about how to film wedding
films and camera views and premiere pro tutorials and basically whatever
interests me, mostly its camera related though and may sound like a silly
question but why is it important to film well at a wedding it's a one-time event
so there's a lot of pressure it's definitely not for everybody because you
literally are like here's your one chance to get this right
hope you don't screw up so it's exciting but it's definitely like it takes a
special person to be like okay I can actually do this it's gonna be okay but
whenever you get it right and you could make something beautiful its people's
happiest day of their lives so it's really cool and you're trying so many
great tutorials it's absolutely hundreds tons of great tutorials what made you
want to start the channel in the first place because the wedding industry you
know there's not a lot of wedding kind of youtubers out there you're at the top
of the game doing that what meat do you want to yeah so I've actually been
making youtube videos since 2006, Wow long stinking time ago man and what's
interesting is I was just making random videos like nothing tutorial related
just like here's a funny video I made bla bla and I was wondering like why
wasn't I getting subscribers I work I did for like nine years like that and I
literally a gained like seven thousand subscribers in that time I was like
nothing and what's interesting is that I then realized that I really need to be
specialized and niche down to something so I said okay I don't want to just make
generic YouTube tutorials for filmmakers because there's 10,000 people on YouTube
all trying to make like filmmaking tutorial videos at this point here you
guys make filmmaking tutorial videos you don't say
so I said okay how can i specialize down so I began to really focus on just
wedding filmmakers and I'd happen like a big market of wedding filmmakers that
was really really cool and then I'm meeting other people like I love you
you're great I don't even fit wedding so I'm like okay cool that's awesome so
I've been able to help other people too but like by having that focus I was
enabled to grow yeah so when we said we were interviewing you there's we got a
lot of great feedback people saying I love Matt I'm starting to get into the
wedding game what are some of the basic tips what what are the basic things
people can do to improve their wedding videos if they're just starting out wear
comfortable shoes no but for real its wedding I didn't I didn't wear couple
shoes there's a horrible experience my goodness here I would say the biggest
absolute most important thing it's pre-production and and you know
typically that's like in film a okay everybody actually now I have your
script ready no like meet with your couple ahead of time talk to them about
their day get a full schedule of the day get to know them and why they fell in
love and so the benefit of you doing that is it then on the day whenever
you're this close to them people that are not used to being on camera that are
not trained actors they're not weirded out by it
they're instead just like oh cool yeah what's up how's it going and so you get
much more natural interactions and it's not a awkward experience it's like oh
this awesome yeah so just making them feel much more comfortable exactly you
know I recently married and it's a scary day this is scary day and then having
the camera there as well and then you don't even remember it cuz yes go so
fast you like I'm glad I have a video actually because I remember nothing of
my wedding day that's me you have that and so when you pinch my start out did
you hear any big stumbling blocks were there any big mistakes that you made
that there's I my paranoia prevented me from ever having any disasters like lost
footage or something like that thankfully but they're still going back
to pre-production I've had very awkward interactions with people where I didn't
know them well enough and then you make a joke and there's like and you're like
oh never mind sorry you know like so it's so much of it is building that
relationship so that way they know you and then it's not awkward and that helps
out a lot and a lot of people I know a bit scared about budgets you know to get
their first set its first bit of kit people think they either need to spend
hundreds of thousands or nothing at all what's your opinion on budget he should
have to get Stein if you want to start making money films I've had so many
people reach out to me and they say oh my gosh you're gonna spend $10,000 on
gear I'm about to film my first wedding and I'm like don't do that please don't
do that because wedding filmmaking is not for everyone and what you will soon
find is that if you buy all this gear and you go into a wedding you may hate
it and then you've just wasted all this money so my advice is always to rent
before buying anything really especially cameras or lenses I have what
I've there was a set of Zeiss Nikon mount mil vez lens and I'm like these
are the most beautiful in Sarah I love them and I bought them and I hated them
and I was no I rented them sorry I rented them so the benefit is that
because I rented I didn't you know I spent a hundred bucks on like renting
two of them for a few days versus spending oh I just spent like
five grand on lenses that I hate that's guys you do you don't wanna be doing
that one's dying out and if you could only take say three or four bits of kit
what are the things you could leave out what what things would you say
definitely have to take what's interesting is that a lot of my
filmmaking especially with the advent of in body image stabilization is hand held
so I'm just running around like with just a basic camera and Lynn's
on for a decent majority day I have that and like a glidecam and that's really
all I'm doing for stabilization if you have like longer lenses yeah seventy two
hundred on you might want a monopod or something but really if I have like a
fifty millimeter and my sony a7s to learn a 7-3 and audio gear that's like
the big thing if I had a couple tascam dr-40 quality audio on the wedding day I
can do it and it'll be great I think with gimbals as well people who
have never used one before I think they think you just chuck the camera on top
and it's good to go and yes except sometimes getting a balance yeah it's
it's far easier than it was like whenever I I bought a glidecam in 2011 I
had to learn how to use that that was like a five six month learning process
it's like okay oh but I got this right once you get it though it's like oh this
is easy he's awesome but there's definitely a growth there
you know so yeah and just stop rushing onto the YouTube
side of things obviously you're a very successful youtuber you're doing very
very well what tips would you give to people who may not necessarily big into
the be getting into the wedding game but maybe one star in YouTube as you said
you start out and you you didn't see the growth straightaway what secrets do you
have to get that growth what yeah can you also swimming back to initially the
riches are in the niches so finding your niche like wedding filmmaking for me
stick to that like wedding filmmaking tutorials that's what I did
the other thing I would say is make videos that you're passionate about so
often times it's so easy to be like oh I think people want to watch this so I'm
gonna make this video and then you like a hundred views and that's it cuz like
are ten views you know cuz nobody really wants to watch it and so what I found is
that I've I have a question and I cannot find an answer to it I need to make a
video about it and so for example I had Facebook came out with cover videos for
their profile pages really niche obscure thing but there was no video tutorials
on how to create a cover video so I was like okay hey export your video using
these settings uploaded here it's gonna be great and what's crazy is that I had
a ton of people watching but it's kind of like 100,000 something views now
because people were like oh I'm looking for this and nobody else it made a
tutorial about it so if you have a question like make stuff that you're
passionate about that you want to see other people watch it there's great tips
there so I'm Matt thanks so much and if people want to find out more about you
where can they find your channels in your social search who is Matt WH o Asma
TT basically anywhere except for Twitter because some guy the guy took Twitter so
don't follow that guy but otherwise everything else Instagram YouTube who is
matcom everything that's all there oh cool well thank you very much Matt
make sure you give Matt a subscribe make sure you follow him and Matt thank you
so much for joining us today it's an absolute pleasure
thanks so much to map that interview but you're gonna want to continue to watch
the next one it's with Ryan Connolly from film riot and he gives some real
good filmmaking hacks and tips for YouTube channels as well so you can
watch that video coming up next but if you want to watch the entire playlist
you can do that by clicking the little video link down here or the link in the
description below the video and remember if you're a filmmaker and you want to
speed up your editing check out he's calm for the latest shortcut
keyboards and keyboard covers but we'll see you in the next video