Productions
York Street Video
Meet the New Doc
By Elizabeth Welsh - Posted Mar 9, 2008
Around 1900, Scottish zoologist James Ewart created a "zorse" by crossbreeding a zebra stallion and a horse mare. The result was an animal more tractable than a zebra but more fractious than a horse. It inherited the zebra’s panache and the horse’s steadfastness. It was striped, strong, heavily boned, and a pleasure to ride. The zorse obviously didn’t replace either species, but then it wasn’t designed to.
Similarly, when back at the turn of this century, wedding videographers began experimenting with a style that was part classic wedding documentary and part cinematic wedding video, they conceived a whole new animal: the (for lack of a more inventive term) "new documentary style" wedding video.
Lifting conventions from each of its forebears (but perhaps equally significant, from mainstream media), the new documentary style isn’t necessarily a direct descendant of any videography style: Chris Watson of Watson Videography describes the genre as "more revolution than evolution" and says that it "is to the classic documentary style what photojournalism is to straight photography." humanstory's Bill Gaff sees it as "the intimacy of the old documentary style plus the poetry of the cinematic style."
Left to right: Glen Elliott, Bill Gaff, Chris P. Jones, Jason Magbanua (photo by Chip Wardyga)
Chris P. Jones of Mason Jar Films presented a seminar at the 4EVER Group’s Video 08 convention in which he likened the new documentary to contemporary independent film, and differentiated the two styles as follows: Epic Cinematic and Indie Cinematic.
As noted practicioners of this new genre (whatever name happens to stick), these videographers, along with Glen Elliott of the eponymous Gm Elliot Videography, Jason Magbanua of Jason Magbanua Wedding Videography in the Philipines, and Maurice O’Carroll of Ireland’s Velvetine Productions, shared their takes on the new documentary-style wedding video with EventDV.
This article will first look at two recognized breeds of wedding video—the classic documentary and the cinematic—and examine ways they may have helped to shape the new documentary-style wedding video.
Classics Rock
We’ll classify the classic wedding documentary as a long-form, cleaned-up archive edit—a wedding video on Ritalin. It is thorough and, to some, as dull as watching water boil. "Effects" other than dissolves, titles, and background music are minimal, if included at all. "Often the running time is as long as the actual events themselves. Hardly anything is left out—full readings, full homilies, uncut speeches, etc.," Magbanua says. As a result, this literal style "has had an unfortunate reputation of being dull and boring."
It’s true, says O’Carroll (left): "They are boring because we as television experts expect to see a story when we sit in front of our TV screens."
Boring or not, brides won’t stop buying them. Watson believes that "there will always be a market for no-frills, as-it-happened wedding videos. As boring as it may be for a stranger to watch, to the couple, every second of wedding footage is precious. I know whenever I become a parent, I’ll be all about my son or daughter’s classic documentary-style video." True that.
In fact, Gaff goes so far as to recommend that people "document their wedding day on video even if it is not edited." O’Carroll is even thinking about getting in on the market because the old-style longform approach makes sense from a high-volume standpoint.
The classic wedding documentary, he says, "most definitely has its place if it’s produced to a high standard; I’ve had the pleasure of watching many stunning traditional wedding videos and I intend to enter this market with a new company of my own. It makes practical business sense to produce traditional wedding video because it is less demanding on both a technical and creative basis. It won’t set the world on fire, but it is easy to shoot, promises quick turnaround times, satisfies clients, and its potential for healthy profits means that the ‘old’ will always be with us. This is a good thing, and as long as these productions are crafted on solid filmmaking practice, traditional wedding video can and will be the firm foundation our industry is built upon."
Red-Curtain Romantic
In another camp you have the shortform cinematic style wedding video—more of a right-brained interpretation of a wedding, known for its goal of evoking emotion. To do so, it may tell the story in a disjointed way and employ poetic shooting techniques such as rack focuses, high and low angles, simulated crane shots, floating camera techniques, push-ins and pull-outs, and shooting through objects, as well as slow motion, creative filtering, film or film effects, and black and white for contrast. This red-curtain style cinematic video employs mise-en-scčne and dramatic musical scores and prides itself on being heavily stylized.
Glen Elliott’s early work embodied this style, but he’s made a conscious effort to move in a different direction. "While this style often can impress fellow videographers with the shot selection, camera techniques, and editing," he says, "it started to feel cold, almost like a commercial rather than a personalized event production. There’s no differentiation between one bride and groom to the next other than aesthetic things like dresses and locale." He feels his videos gained depth from his move to the documentary approach.
But the cinematic edit isn’t in danger of extinction either. Watson (left), like others, views the emerging style as simply a new aesthetic—an alternative to, but not a replacement for, these other genres. "There will always be a market for the highly romanticized cinematic-style video." Among the new documentarians interviewed for this article, that sentiment is unanimous.
When it Began
Common themes of the new documentary wedding style video include judicious use of time-shifting, fast cuts, ambient audio, L-cuts, and sometimes interviews. Intentionally absent are what Watson calls "self-conscious" techniques that would make the video "outwardly dramatic," such as "jarring, perhaps cheesy black and white images." The result is a naturalistic, yet stylized video, perhaps akin to what a nature documentary directed by Baz Luhrmann would look like.
No one—at least no one we spoke with—is really sure who "invented" the style or when. But all signs point to Loi Banh of Bluecore Media (who couldn’t be reached for this article) as the Larry Page of the new documentary wedding style. Watson estimates he became aware of this style between 2000 and 2002, "when Bluecore Media came on the scene."
"Banh may have not been the first, but he was the first one I saw," agrees Gaff. "He used natural sound, real-time footage, and on-camera dialogue. That part was similar to what other people such as Robert Allen were doing as well"––which is one reason some longtime videographers say the new documentary style is not so much "new" as a return to the style of the first shortform wedding videos that Allen and others pioneered in the 1990s, before the romantic, cinematic approach took hold [see sidebar, "...Same as the Old Doc?"].
But Gaff and others maintain that Banh’s work took documentary video beyond what the documentarians of the ’90s were doing, and thus initiated a new documentary style. "Loi took it a step further by enhancing the storytelling aspect of the films," Gaff says. "He would use film music, exposition shots, dramatic structure, and many other film techniques. The big thing for me was the way in which he structured the films for dramatic impact even if it meant shifting things around chronologically"—a technique that has been used in feature films for decades, Gaff points out.
And presumably, even if it meant not getting industry recognition. Jones warns that "you are not likely to win any international awards among your peers quite yet while employing this method. It’s a paradigm shift of what wedding videography is" for brides as well, Jones adds. Because the style is in its infancy, not many brides are aware it exists.
