Lagumbay.com Reflections on Love, Rage, and Fear

The Wedding Video Project

A few days after Emmanuel’s graduation video was posted, I was volunteered to do my cousin’s wedding slide-show video. Having practically grown up with him, this was something I knew I’d enjoy doing. More than that, however, I knew I’d enjoy razzing his bride-to-be about the possibly hilarious (to me, anyway) musical selection that would eventually accompany the slide show. “So, which songs from Dr. Dre’s ‘The Chronic’ will I be using?” “What do you mean I can’t use ‘Never Gonna Give You Up?’ Lyrically, it’s very appropriate.” “We all grew up in the hair-band era so Motley Crue should work, right?”

Gathering The Data

After a couple of months worth of that, we finally got around to getting together to start on the video project. Herb was kind enough to scan the pictures himself and hand them to me digitally as opposed to giving me a bunch of prints. That helped out quite a bit. Over the phone, I requested that he scan them at a resolution of at lest 300dpi and save them as TIF as opposed to jpeg. This would ensure that the images are of a decent quality in case I needed to manipulate them further.

From the image files he had, he labeled the most important ones that had to be used in the video. These were pictures of heightened sentimental value and needed to be included no matter what. The remaining images were basically “dealer’s choice” – pictures to sprinkle on wherever I feel they needed to go.

The Narrative

After looking through the pictures, I asked what I felt was the most important question at that point: “what’s the narrative?” He looked at me and said “good question.” I explained that I could move pixels around to background music with no problem but having a message to convey would give the video purpose.

From the pictures I was supplied, we decided to go with a general message of two families coming together. I told him that I planned to do the bride’s side first, his (our) side next, and then pictures of them together to conclude.

I then asked what the projected video length should be and we decided to shoot for 5 to 7 minutes. I explained that any more and we may bore the audience.

Speaking of which, I wanted to verify what the audience demographic is. As most weddings go, the age range is quite diverse and contained young children which pretty much ruled out a soundtrack containing anything from Snoop or Nine Inch Nails.

Initial intel gathered, the project went to its next phase…The Soundtrack (to be continued)