music selection for a film certainly isn’t an easy task. while VO and nat sounds are incredibly important to story, soundtrack (or in some cases, lack thereof) is also so important to drive just how you want your viewers to feel. to do that effectively, you really need to know the story and how you want your viewers to feel to select the perfect track or series of tracks.

for weddings, it’s all too easy to go to the top 40 or to pick a song your couple has decided on, but is that really fitting to the story or will it have the same impact in 1 year, 2 years, 10 years, etc? while we most certainly like our couples to share their music tastes with us, it’s less about guiding our soundtrack selection and more about really telling us about who they are, both as individuals and as a couple (do they like the same music? why, or why not? etc). what our couple listen to can be a huge tell tale of who they are.

back to song selection – for us, it usually starts with lesser known artists. the reason is quite simple – we want the songs selected to be our couples – we want the first time they see their film to be 100% about their story and nothing more. selecting song they haven’t heard guarantees there are no preconceived notions or memories associated or attached to the soundtrack. as a side note, it also helps…

Q1. I’m dying to know the logistics of bringing in gear to a wedding. I have my first shoot next month. Do you take everything in with the Nova 200 and then transfer applicable lenses to the shoot sac? How do you keep gear from getting in the shot? What do you carry monopods and sliders in?

most of our shoots require air travel and for that we often pack our cameras and lenses into a hard pelican case (like the one shown in this iphone photo) so it is protected during transit; monopods and sliders travel in either a tripod bad or in our suitcase on flights. on the wedding day we have lenses in our shootsac, our camera with one lens on the monopod and any other camera support nearby as needed. depending on the nature of the shoot we may bring a slider into the room and leave it tucked away in a corner so it’s easily accessible but not an eye sore. tripods and steadicams are always left in the car (unpacked and ready to go) until needed so we are not slowed down by lugging around extra gear. that also means we are keeping as small a footprint as possible so that people don’t feel like it’s a production.

Q2. I currently have the 5D II, 7D, Mark IV and FS100. I was looking at purchasing the C300, and selling the FS100/7D, but it is still very expensive for what it is. We are doing more corporate work this year, but its all web based, and while I am hoping to branch more into commercial, I’m not sure if its worth going for something like C300 now or stick with the DSLRS. I read your review on the 5D Mark III, and I was curious on your thoughts on switching to that. For me, less moire would be so helpful. If you have time, I would love to hear your thoughts!

if you are looking to get more into commercial work i would ALWAYS have a non-DSLR option. there can be a ton of value for having high quality audio on board, more robust codecs, more monitoring options to get every shot perfect and so on. many like the look of DSLRs but…