[Video] Shot By Shot Breakdown Of A Modern Wedding Video

We just received another great installment of video comentary with the incredible wedding videographers at Visual Masterpiece. Even if you hate weddings you will be able to appreciate the talent that goes into each of their videos. Below you can see the video with commentary first, then the finished product. Below both videos you will find links to all of the gear used to film this wedding.


Here is the finished product.

Gear used:

Cinevate Atlas FLT Slider
Cinevate Cyclops
SmallHD DP6 Monitor
Glidecam 4000
Cinevate Atlas 30 Slider
An assortment of pro Canon Lenses

Lee Morris's picture

Lee Morris is a professional photographer based in Charleston SC, and is the co-owner of Fstoppers.com

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19 Comments

Thanks Lee

where would I be ....... without fstoppers.com........

Nice Job!!! 
I like all shoots, drawings spinning, movements with the slider, and especially the management of natural light. Congratulations!

This looks great and there's a lot of talent behind this creative. Thanks for posting.

What's the market like for this type of work though? Do clients really want this?
I ask this because, where I work, Ireland, I'm not so sure.

Firstly, weddings in Ireland (at least the one's I've shot) tend to be a lot less serene than depicted here. Typically the bride gets ready in the room/house she grew up in so it's generally very cramped. The house is usually jammed full of family, neighbours, well wishers not to mention children darting about under your feet, not to mentioned Brides are stressed. I'm not saying you couldn't make a video production like this for Irish weddings, no doubt people are already but I think it would be a tough gig.

Secondly, I'm not convinced that this style is what the client (ie bride) typically wants as memories of their day. I may be wrong and should research it more but for me, for my wedding day (6 years ago now) I wanted a video that captured the buzz, laughter and general fun of the day. This video, albeit a superb production and something you'd almost see in a commercial, is almost sterile in terms of real emotion (other than the vows, that was very well captured). Am I being overly critical? Again, I love the creative talent behind this, but just questioning it's relevance with real brides.

Interested to hear people's thoughts.

Wayne, we fly all over the world because there are people who love our work.  As for what they ultimately get, it has a lot more (documentary) involved then just this depending on the editing package choices.  This is just the highlight for WOW factor and bride+groom emotion, and certainly its not for everyone.

As for making it cinematic.. regardless of the situation, do your best.  One bride had a backyard filled with tools and mechanic junk.. so we took the wedding dress out there and hung it up amongst all the stuff, it was a great contrast.  Just make every attempt to see whats possible, not what is.

Rebecka //VM

I'm not a big fan of this. It seems like all they do is to go steady -vs- slide, and a complete lack of reflecting light on the out-door shots. I love the fade from church to party, though.

Kasper a wedding is not a "photo shoot" in terms of time or control, the outdoor shots were completed in about 10-15mins of shared with the photographer, no assistants to hold reflectors/lights etc.  

Weddings are often times "get away with as much as you can" run & gun situations.  We basically have just a half-seconds time to think about (where, what, how) we are going to shoot before we actually take the shot.  That is the exciting challenge of shooting weddings cinematically like this.  If you can do this on a wedding day, you can do just about anything else.

Rebecka //VM

I 100% agree with this.  It's really tough to get a lot of content and fast, and to be unique - you need an amazing team - no one person can do all of this by themselves.  You can say that all you do is steadicam and slider shots, but really those are the best options available as apposed to going rogue with a shaky handheld rig, which should be, in my opinion, rarely used for a cinematic piece.

Good wedding videography is an art and very hard to come by.  Well done video.

I see both sides here as a wedding cinematographer myself. However, this film has an imbalance issue with something like 85% or more of its shots having too much movement in them. I love my slider and glide, but it truly loses its special touch when the moves are so dramatic all the time. Every time I saw a tripod shot, I was able to breathe. This is obviously masterfully filmed buy ya'll worked too hard...more tripod would have been good.

I don't like wedding work. I was impressed.

Well for someone who doesn't like wedding work, I'm glad your impressed :D

Lovely work! Not for everyone as said before but amazing nonetheless. I think the best compliment is that I have saved the link to (one day) show my wedding photographer. Thank you for sharing your beautiful work

A great piece of work. Anyone who has said anything negative about this production is someone who has never shot and edited a video using a DSLR. This is a beautifully crafted video.

Even as a new wedding photographer and still learning, I agree with Rebecka. Its mighty hard to do what YOU want on YOUR time, it doesn't work that way. At least for me. Its always GO GO GO!! I love the video and love your work, if I could do something like this for my clients, no doubt in my mind, i'd get flown all over the world for it. I love how crisp everything is and how smooth it is during transitions. Thanks for sharing your work with us. 

Thanks for the comments we appreciate everyone's feedback!

Great Job on the video. 

I was wondering how do you keep your Glidecam balanced while constantly switching lenses?

Have to admit this has to be some of the best video work for weddings that I've seen. I'm just getting into shooting video and this definitely has me inspired.

It's seems this days that cinematic weddings are everywhere and for a good reason, they showcase the best day for a couple on the way they only can dream, with more great talents like Rebecka sharing their workflow, we all can learn a lot faster and raise the bar on our productions, i wish i can get at least the only glass they didn't use on this wed, 24-70mm 2.8L. cheers and great job. you got a new fan here 

I loved this work you did!
I noticed you used the Atlas 30 more often than the FLT. Did you find the FLT too short for some of the shots or what was your thinking there?
I am trying to decide on which slider to purchase. I will be using it largely for wedding videography and need one that is capable of the run and gun style but with enough freedom to capture the beautiful sweeping movements that you captured. I would love to hear your thoughts.
Great work again