- Hey guys, my name is Matt Johnson
and every month I host a wedding film review live stream
on my YouTube channel,
where I watch and review wedding films,
submitted by film makers like you.
Many of these films are from beginner film makers
that are just getting started in wedding film making
and they want me to review their first wedding
they've ever filmed.
Without fail though, nearly every time I watch
one of these first wedding films,
I always say, "this film is so much better
"than my first wedding film"
And it's true ,there's so much creativity and talent
in the wedding film making space now.
But that made me think, maybe we should go back in time
and watch my first wedding film
that I made nearly 10 years ago in 2010.
This should be entertaining and hopefully we will both
get some laughs from my shooting and editing choices.
I have not watched through this in years.
These are all my real reactions.
Here we go.
Starting off with a white screen, it's always a good sign
when your video starts off with a white screen.
(gentle music)
Oh no.
I wanna say, I spent an hour animating that little
text swirl thing in after effects for this video.
(gentle music)
There it is.
Okay, look at this, I was filming on my Canon 7D
and I had recently purchased
an eight millimeter fisheye lens.
So we got get this whole chaplain a shot, use the fisheye.
Look at the edges, look at--
I added a vignette.
It wasn't that bad, I added a vignette to this shot.
Oh I did.
And then it goes right into the next wide shot too.
(gentle music)
Look at the bowing on the edges, my goodness.
I didn't even ask these nice ladies to leave,
I was like, ah just stay there, I'll film you.
Oh man.
Also you should know that the music that I use in this video
is not the original music, I had to change it because
I didn't understand copyright
whenever I filmed my first wedding.
I believe the first song that I used
was that life house song.
♪ You and me and all of the people ♪
Oh gosh, it was horrible.
Just imagine that in the back of your mind
as you're watching this vide.
(gentle music)
At least it was a pretty venue.
How many of you, whenever your first buying a camera
you find like a piano and you're like
gotta get those piano key bokeh.
I'd already owned my camera for over a year now.
I don't know why I was still doing this shot.
That some good emotion, okay.
No ambient audio,
would of been great if I had some ambient audio
kind of add to the emotion and feel of the video.
I don't think I used ambient audio in my films
for at least a year, maybe two.
Oh little over exposed there on the skin tones Matt.
Let's do a jump fade.
Nice jump fade, with no change of focal length at all
just gotta keep this thing going.
That's some good emotion, okay.
Father of the bride getting emotional.
I wish I wasn't so close in.
I think I only owned two lenses.
A Canon FD 28 millimeter and a Canon FD 50 millimeter
so as the widest that I could get was 20 millimeter
this was probably on the 50 though,
which makes it an 85 millimeter with the Canon 7D crop.
I was close.
Pushing that ISO to the limit.
Can we talk about how much I love fading in between shots?
When I started out, I didn't think that cutting
looked nearly as good as fading.
So instead of just using fading sparingly in a film
to kind of show a transition,
I just faded every single shot in between each other
just dragging them a little across dissolve effect down,
like yeah, fade it here, fade it here.
(gentle music)
At least it's an organ shot, okay?
Completely different from the piano key shot I got earlier.
Revolutionary.
These last two shots would look so much better
if I had a wider lens than a 28 millimeter
on a crop sensor camera.
Now as far as the ceremony goes,
I was offering a documentary edit.
It's literally verbatim as things happen
throughout the entire ceremony.
It's long.
It's real long.
Oh look at this pan up that I had to slow down.
There's me.
Oh gosh, what was I wearing?
Why would I think a stripped shirt
would be a good idea for a wedding?
I have no idea, I was just like, I need to dress nice
this is what I think is nice.
Khakis, also a bad decision.
Notice the shoulder rig though, this is legit.
I still have that shoulder rig in my closet somewhere.
It is so heavy.
No carbon fiber, it's just all like steel.
Also my camera strap was still attached to the camera.
I never bothered to take out the camera strap
so I just left it on it, with the shoulder ring.
I needed a lot of help.
I believe I was also wearing Converse
which are the worst possible shoes to wear
if you're filming for nine, 10 hours on a wedding day.
Photographer was great though.
He was so patient with me, so nice.
Just a side note, this safety angle from the balcony
was filmed with my Sony handy cam camera,
which recorded two mini DVD's
with a maximum recording length time of 30 minutes.
So, had to make sure that I got the whole ceremony
and it only lasted than 30 minutes,
otherwise I was not going to be recording
with the safety angle.
That's kind of the opposite of what a safety angle's
suppose to be right?
It's for safety, it's suppose to last forever.
Well this one lasted 30 minutes.
(gentle music)
There we go, got that slight shakiness there,
a little handheld feel.
Professional.
This is also pre-veered by the way.
Don't know if you noticed that there
but I look like a child.
You can see the confusion on my face.
What am I doing?
They just went over there.
Wait, what are they doing?
Do I need to film that?
Do I film the people walking in?
What do I do?
I look over there, photographer's getting that.
Wait, should I get that too?
I think I'll get that.
(laughing)
I knew what I was doing for the other families, see?
Get that candle lighting.
Never mind the photographer over here on the left side.
He's hiding out of the way.
I only got a 50 millimeter, I'm going in.
It would take a very special wedding now,
for me to walk up in front of everybody like that.
At least I had a good angle for her walking down the aisle.
I don't know if me standing in this position
was actually blocking her view of the groom or not.
Hopefully not.
If you want to know how dated this wedding is,
look no further than the cameras that are being used.
There's no smart phones.
This is 2010.
Nice point and shoot.
Guy on the right here, has got his point and shoot going.
I think I put a mic on the groom.
I had one lav mic a Sennheiser G3
and I think that it was on the groom.
I don't think that I had a mic for anybody else.
So the officiant, pretty hard to hear the entire time.
- [Priest] Together in wedlock.
- I may have been up in the front
there in the way a little bit but this emotion
from this angle, it's real good.
What am I doing now?
Oh no.
Don't hit anything Matt.
A little ninja move there, you see that?
Sneak around the other side, while everyone's watching.
I definitely had mic on the groom.
His audio wasn't horrible,
it's definitely a little peaky though.
- [Groom] I endow in the name of the father
- [Priest] the Son, - [Groom] The Son
- [Priest] And the holy spirit.
- [Groom] And the holy spirit.
- Enough of the ceremony, let's see the kiss.
- And Mrs Wyatt Tracey Hubbard.
(cheering)
- I got the kiss, just as important.
(clapping)
I'm just following out,
getting all of the photographer's shots here at the end.
Ideally I would of been back there next to him
filming them walking down out, instead of behind them.
First wedding.
Onto the reception.
(gentle music)
The cake close up.
Why am I so close?
Notice how well lit these cakes look though.
That's because the photographer loaned me his
on camera light.
Which I would never use now, but at the time
it was really dark so I needed that.
We're getting creative here,
I'm going from table shots to shots of people coming in.
This is revolutionary stuff.
Still fading though.
Fading between every shot, never actually do a hard cut.
(upbeat music)
Would of loved to have had some audio of the people
cheering as they walked in.
Didn't get it.
I'm pretty sure this is just their entire first dance.
Me filming it with the shoulder rig the entire time.
Didn't have a second shooter, just me.
And I did not want to miss a second of it.
Done with the first dance.
- Right we'll see if I can get through this.
- Of course I gave the couple all of the toasts
Fully, documentary.
I do not recall plugging in the sound board
for these toasts.
I'm pretty sure I didn't have the right cables
so I made do with just on camera audio.
There's a lot of things that I've improved on
since making this video.
I think audio maybe the most of all though.
More toasts.
- It hasn't been that way.
18 years my best friend.
- Still peaky.
Very peaky.
Remember I had to dub over all of this music
for copyright reasons.
I think I used some country song for this otherwise.
I'm watching this, I'm like, I have come a long ways.
I really have.
2010 Matt, definitely need you to start bringing
your reception light to these weddings.
Oh man.
Keep in mind I have no idea what you would normally film
in a wedding, so I'm like, and here's a shot of
the wedding certificate
and now let's do some dancing.
There's gonna be more handheld dancing throughout.
Not bad, pretty stable though,
but so long.
Oh it's just the full dances.
Like four minutes straight.
Bouquet and garter toss.
Man I feel like bouquets and garters
are going out of style now, especially garter.
I don't see it nearly as often at weddings as I used to.
I believe they did a sorority song and dance.
My mental state for my first wedding,
document everything.
Don't miss anything, put it all in the video.
And exit.
Even though I've covered this up with different music.
I did not have any ambient audio
in the version that I used either.
Yeah, it's not a bad exit, it's not mind blowing.
And they stayed at a hotel across the street
so we like filmed them getting on the elevator,
I remember that.
Not a bad way to end a video.
Their expressions.
Is it done?
No, it's not done.
- We read about
- Okay.
I used a Michael Buble song for this,
so I'm gonna be playing very small snippets of it,
because I don't want to get in trouble.
But know that there is still six minutes
of well wishes that I recorded from guests.
So I believe this might be the grandpa.
- And you can tell by my gray hair,
I've got a lot of experience for this.
- And I did all these lovely animations
and after effects.
I believe I bought a pre-set pack
that had these little swirls and flourishes.
Put those in.
Got some photos of the couple,
I believe off of Facebook,
and just faded them in throughout the video
as the person's talking.
How do I didn't I just stop the person talk?
I thought it looked better like this?
I don't know, I was thinking like credit scene.
I put so much work into this
and I really questioned if it was worth it.
I definitely wouldn't do it this way now.
One thing you're gonna notice is that the audio
of the well wishers is better than the audio
of any of the toasts or even the ceremony I think.
I'm not sure where I got this microphone.
If memory serves me right,
it may have been from a karaoke set,
that my brother or sister owned
and then I took the mic from it,
'cause I know it would work with my audio recorder
and I brought it along to the wedding for this reason.
Did what I had to do.
Very minimal gear for this wedding.
One thing I want you to notice is that while the audio
sounds good in this moment and a little bit
I think my battery on the recorder died
or something so I had to start using on camera audio instead
which was significantly worse.
This guy's mustache though.
On point.
- Congratulations Caitlyn and Whyatt, love you both.
- What happened to my audio?
On camera all the way
but I still put it in.
- Did you put A in him?
- [Matt] Yeah I got an A in him.
- Thanks to him.
- Oh my gosh.
- Are we filming me?
- [Matt] Yeah we're rolling.
And then I insert myself into the wedding film.
Faded out.
Little flourish.
Keep in mind I had not created a company yet.
So I was still going just by Matt Johnson so.
I did like a chromatic aberration text effect here
to make the letters pop a bit.
Did you hear the sound effect?
At the end like the wind whoosh.
(whooshing)
Why was I doing a wind whoosh?
I have no idea.
And that is the first wedding that I ever filmed.
Thank you for taking this trip down memory lane with me.
I believe that I charged 500 dollars for this wedding film.
Do you believe this couple got their monies worth
for about a 50 minute long edit?
Leave me a comment and let me know.
I hope this video has been encouragement to you.
Like I said at the start,
a lot of the wedding films that I see
from beginner film makers,
do look better than my first film.
If you want to see more wedding film reviews like this,
I host a monthly wedding film review live stream.
It would be a huge help to me if you would consider
liking this video and subscribing if you want to see
that live stream.
But if you want to guarantee that you see the live stream
there is a link down below in the description
to sign up for my email newsletter.
About a week before the live stream
I will send out an email, notifying you
the exact time and date of the live stream
as well as a submission for it,
where you can submit a wedding film for a review.
With that, thank you so much for watching
and have a great day.