Gorillapod to the rescue

Wifey told me “You know how it is when you go to the theatre and miss out the start”

I said “Yes”

“Well that is what you did with my dance. You missed recording the start”

“But dear you know how I was multitasking on that day. Dashing down a flight of steps and then operating the camera is not an easy task”

Well let me start at the beginning.

Clicking pictures at weddings is fun and you tend to get some interesting shots if it’s a fun wedding. But when it comes to capturing the same on video it’s a different challenge.

Had the opportunity to capture a wedding held in Goa. On the day of the Sangeet there was a lot of dancing and I had to take care of the music part (co-ordinate with the DJ) as well as capture the action on video. I thought I will somehow manage both by telling the DJ exactly when to start the music and side by side roll the camera. But at the venue I found that the DJ was actually sitting two floors above the dance floor. Now this was a tricky situation and I was wondering how to do both. To compound the problem I was supposed to shake a leg with wifey for a particular song. I don’t think anyone faced a situation where you had to be behind the camera as well as face the camera.  After racking my brain I came with a solution - the Gorillapod in my camera bag. It’s a smaller version of a tripod but the legs are flexible. It comes in handy when you want your hands free.

You can practically wrap it around anything, a railing or a tree trunk or around your rear view mirror.

At the venue, the closest place that I could find to fasten it was the railing around the stage.

For the first two songs I managed to get the action that way, but soon realised that climbing up and down the ladder (to reach the DJ) was eating into the actual shooting time. So finally I carried the camera up with me and did the shooting from top. Now this was something like a top view of the complete action which did not do justice to the performers.  I was hoping someone would take some decent shots from the front which I could mix with mine to get a reasonably respectable compilation.

Luckily for me, Ms Siddhi came to my rescue. She said she would send me whatever she has captured.

After a lot of splicing, joining, overlaying music etc, I came up with this short video.

I have added only 3 songs here in this video. This shows how one can splice and mix the inputs from two cameras effectively. I have retained the original soundtrack, so that the crowd’s reactions and cheering is not lost.

        A special mention about Martin’s entry. One moment he was standing there sipping beer and before I could zoom out he leapt on the stage. Very agile and quick I must say. Being Spanish, doing the Senorita song must have been easy for him.  

There are only three more songs in which I have some footage from Ms Siddhi. The rest of the song and dance will be with the “view from the top”

So if anyone else (who attended the wedding) has canned some shots, do send them across via We Transfer so that I can add them in the next volumes.  Happy viewing.