There are so many important details to your wedding day. Most couples want to have products and services that are fun and unique. We are excited to announce the release of a new product that you are going to love. The Slo-Mo Video Booth.
The last five years photo booths have gained in popularity. It has been all the rage and almost every wedding has one and we certainly still offer photo booths. Here is our latest sample from Rebecca & Jed's wedding. But we would be surprised to hear if you have ever been to a wedding that had a slo-mo video booth. It has some of the similar fun that a photo booth has to offer only times two.
Wedding days are primarily remembered in the celebration of the happy newlywed. Every bride and groom want to look back on photos and videos of their vows, but they also want to remember the dozens or even hundreds of special people that sacrificed to be there that day. One of the reasons we love photo and video booths is the memory it creates for the bride and groom to carry with them through their life, look back, and laugh together. Seriously--how funny would it be to watch what your mom and dad looked like in slow-motion 30 years ago? I'd pay big money for that. Sure, if you want us to walk around while people are eating and ask them all to awkwardly turn around and smile for the "table shot" we can do that. But I think we have a better idea...
How is it set up?
We did a lot of research on the best LED video lights out there. LED lights really are quite expensive (and bright!) but completely necessary for a successful video booth. The serve a two-fold function. One is to create that Hollywood-esk lighting that you would see for news or sports anchors and the other is creating a shutter speed fast enough to capture your video at a fast enough frame rate. (There are a lot of technical components to that last part I won't be spending any time on really describing.) After a lot of research on lumens, watts, brands, and materials, we decided to buy four of the Ikan IFD 1024's. You can save money buying other brands or less lumens, but you're going to want 4,000+ LED lights for this work well. In addition to the lights, we obviously need a camera. There really aren't many video cameras out there that shoot over 60 frames/second in the "reasonable" price range. You can easily pick up a stellar video camera that capture 100-200+ frames per second, but you'll end up spending 4k+. We decided to go with the GoPro Hero 3+ Black. This camera can be picked up for $500 and at 720p is able to capture video at 120fps. Besides that, throw your backdrop up, grab your props and you're good to go.
What Props Do We Use?
Good slow-motions shots don't just happen. If you do all this work and someone just stands in front of the camera, slowing that down won't really look to entertaining. But you also have to know the limits of the video camera--it can only shoot at 120fps.
Here are some samples of what we use
- Paper Confetti
- Costumes for effect: random hats, glasses, scarves, helmets.
- Silly String
- Nerf guns
- Facial movements
- People with long hair
- Balloons
- Bubble makers
- Shop Vac (to blow air etc.)
- Alcohol (to be consumed before entering booth)
How do we Edit the footage?
The product is far from over once you've packed up and gone home. Until you reinterpret the footage to a slower frame rate, cut out excessive materials, and add some good tunes, you don't really have much. It is best to have an editing program like Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro to slow down and edit your footage. You simply import the footage and reinterpret it as 24fps, slowing it down to 20%. Pick a fun song and start pulling clips in. I'm not the grand master of video editing but I have found the use of "reverse speed" is a great effect for sl0w-motion videos: hats fly up from out of the frame and then land on the head, confetti moving upwards make people appear to be falling, and hundreds of other realities you don't even know would be funny until you have the footage at your finger tips.
We had the privilege of working with Kaylee Kolnik and Travis Frederick on their wedding day. It was a beautiful wedding in their hometown area near Lake Geneva, WI. Their reception at the Abbey Resort in Fontana allowed us to debut this new product. The guests weren't even skeptical of what it was, they just jumped right in. And, without any practice, we all agree: they were phenomenal!