There is a wedding day milestone that nobody thinks of until it happens to them. That is the moment when the couple is alone for the first time. Usually this happens at the end of the reception when the couple leaves the reception site and gets into their car or in some way finds themselves behind closed doors. It is particularly striking when it happens because when the door closes suddenly the audio characteristics change. Up until that point various people have been around you all the day for the entire day. Now suddenly alone in your car you realize that nobody is waiting for you or expecting you to do something. It is striking when that moment arrives.
Archive for May, 2009
Alone for the First Time!
Saturday, May 9th, 2009Preserving Toasts from the Wedding Reception
Friday, May 8th, 2009
Some aspects of your wedding day can ONLY be captured by video.
Consider the toasts at your reception. Best men and maids of honor typically craft their toasts and sometimes come up with words that are awesome to preserve for all time. These messages are rarely preserved in any form whatsoever and are usually lost with fading memories and fading magnetic tape of home movies. Imagine hearing those endearing messages many years after the wedding reception. But not only hearing them, hearing them with a quality unavailable with home movies. The clang of dishes as wait staff moves around can only be heard as distant sounds against the vibrant maid of honor’s voice.
Consider Your Wedding Vows
Thursday, May 7th, 2009Some aspects of your wedding day can ONLY be captured by video. Consider your vows. It is common for couples to craft their own vows and carefully wordsmith them to death over a period of months. Without video those vows will only survive through the powers of your memory and any memementos you may have retained from that day on which your vows were printed.
A pro videographer will wire up the groom and perhaps the officiant with wireless UHF diversity microphones that typically even pick up whispers at the altar. Imagine being able to listen to yourselves ten or more years down the road speaking your vows. Hearing your own voices speaking your vows renews the commitment of that day reviving emotions that may have dulled with time.
Closed-Captions Added to Your Video
Wednesday, May 6th, 2009At W. Cardone Productions we can add subtitling in a very cost-effective manner to the video we produce for you as well as adding it to any existing DVDs or video that you may already have.
Please contact us for a quote but usually for a half-hour video with continuous speech to be captioned, we can add attractive and highly readable subtitles for $800. For the budget minded we can usually cut that cost in half if you will supply us with the text.
When supplying text there is no need to assemble into paragraphs or any other formatting. Keep it simple since the raw text is all that we can use. Any special formatting will be discarded. However, you can include with the text a sample of text formatted as it is to be shown in the finished product. One or two sentences is all that we need.
Cleaning Optical Media
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009CDs or DVDs do not require routine cleaning. It is best to clean the disc only when it is absolutely necessary, specifically:
- before storing, when surface contamination is visible
- before recording, when surface contamination is visible
- before playing, to prevent surface contamination from being “flung off” while the disc is spinning in the disc drive
- when readability (playability) is impaired and surface contamina-tion is visible
In general, avoid using organic solvents. Harsher solvents (ac-etone, benzene) will dissolve the polycarbonate and damage the disc beyond repair. Mild solvents (isopropyl alcohol, methanol), however, may be used. These mild solvents evaporate quickly and will not disthe polycarbonate.
Other solutions that are not harmful are water-based lens clean-ers or water-based detergents (with mild soap) formulated for clean-ing CDs or DVDs.
The polycarbonate substrate is a relatively soft and transparent type of plastic. Each time a disc is wiped, rubbed, treated with some solution, or otherwise manipulated for cleaning, that substrate, and thus the disc itself, is at risk of scratching or contamination.
If the disc needs cleaning, remember these tips:
- Use an air puffer to blow off dust.
- Use a soft cotton cloth or chamois to wipe the disc.
- Try cleaning with a dry cloth first, before using any cleaning solutions.
- Do not wipe in a direction going around the disc.
- Wipe from the center of the disc straight toward the outer edge.
- Avoid using paper products, including lens paper, to wipe the disc.
- Avoid using anything abrasive on the surface of the disc.
- If the disc has a heavy accumulation of dirt, try rinsing it with wa-ter first.
- Use commercially available water-based detergent formulated for cleaning the surface of optical discs.
- Use isopropyl alcohol or methanol, as an alternate to water-based detergents, to clean the disc surface.
Preserving Memories of the Day Itself
Sunday, May 3rd, 2009
One very powerful set of memories lost with time from your wedding are those pertaining to the day itself.
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Things that went wrong that day.
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What surprising things happened that day.
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What looked like it was going wrong but worked out in the end.
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What was the groom thinking as he saw his bride in her wedding dress for the first time.
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What was the bride thinking as she walked down the isle with her father.
At W. Cardone Productions we have developed an incredibly powerful technique to preserve these and other memories from a wedding day.
One or two weeks after the wedding we have the couple come to our studio to answer a series of prepared questions pertaining to their wedding day. We record their responses complete with all the laughter as they explain what happened that day. We then place the audio of these responses in appropriate places of their wedding DVD as a “director’s cut” option that the viewer can interactively select from the DVD’s menu. By default those responses will not be heard. When enabled, however, the responses will be heard as the original video lowers slightly.
Please ask to see a sample of how this works. Only then can you fully appreciate how powerful a memory preservation technique this is.