A Wedding Videographer Is Born

Brent Cross Shopping Center, London. Wave upon wave of Christmas shoppers washed past me and the bulky box sitting between my unsteady feet. The adrenaline rush was gone, reality had kicked me up the arse, and now I was scanning the receipt for the terms and conditions of the Returned Goods policy... after all, I only popped into the shops for some socks and jocks and a couple of Xmas cards.

I was saving for a house; the saving hadn't been going as well as expected. And yet, here I was, rooted to the spot outside the Sony shop with a 4,800 euro camera at my feet. "You're very lucky!" the Sales Assistant had told me. "The Sony VX2000 is a great video camera. It's on sale and it's the last one in stock."

"Wedding videos," I said aloud on the bus journey home. Several people looked to see who the nutcase was and I buried my head behind the Sony VX2000's bulky box. I knew I could make a few pounds back off the camera if I made a few wedding videos but then I thought... 'Saturdays, church, boring priests, speeches, drunk Uncles' trying to dance to the Bee Gees... Nah!" Besides, I didn't just finish my Masterclasses at the renowned Raindance Film School to make wedding videos? Did I study story theory just to record a bride and her father walking up an aisle?

Every single moment of that Christmas was captured for prosperity on my new camera and I left no single button or menu feature unexplored over the next couple of months. I discovered that the on-camera mic needed to be upgraded to acquire better sound capture, a wide-angle lens would always come in handy, and no cameraman should be without a decent tripod!

The garden of my future house just got a lot smaller by the time I was finished adding a brand new iMac and Final Cut Pro - a state of the art editing suite - to my shopping list. All items were expensive acquisitions and put serious dents into my savings plan but my research had identified them as the best so I was prepared to sacrifice that garden for the greater good. And sure enough, video work started to trickle in my direction. I got work on a couple of student short films and gained my first film credits. People were interested in my ideas and proposed film projects. I was meeting TV writers, actors, producers, and award winning directors. I was gradually sneaking into "the loop".

And yet, wedding videos were never far from my mind. I knew instinctively that I could make a great one, something unique, something special but it seemed like a step backward. After all, I didn't even enjoy attending weddings as a guest.

And then, out of seemingly nowhere, a mate was telling me about his brother's up and coming wedding and I blurted out "I'll do his wedding video for free if he wants one." I immediately regretted it. The Wallace family accepted my kind offer and I tried to think of every excuse under the sun to get out of the mess.

As it turns out, my offer to The Wallaces' turned out to be the catalyst for far reaching changes in my life. I filmed their wedding day and I was hooked. The English garden disappeared forever, the house remained a dream. I quit my job, formed Velvetine Productions, created WeddingStory, and returned to my home in Ireland.

Buying that camera was the best decision I ever made!