Videographers are not just storytellers, they're also the keepers of our memories - which is an amazing responsibility. While a director producing a fictional piece can reshoot a scene again and again until it's captured perfectly, real life doesn't afford us the ability to go back and do it again. The garter toss that's missed once, is missed forever.

For this reason, many videographers capture important events with multiple cameras - this not only ensures that if one camera misses some critical action, it will be caught by another, but it also makes for much more enjoyable viewing. After all, you wouldn't watch a sitcom that had only one camera angle set to a wide shot of the entire set, so why should you watch a video of a school play that way?

Multi-camera shooting can be done in several ways, some complex and expensive, some easy and (relatively) cheap. We'll look at a few different methods here.

Easy / Cheap:Multicam, unsynchronized

The easiest way to cover an event with multiple cameras is to have a second shooter grabbing "b-roll" - "b-roll" is "other stuff" that isn't typically the main attraction. During a wedding, "b-roll" might consist of shots of the audience, close-ups of the flower girl, pans across the building, or even a parking lot filled with cars. B-roll allows you to cut from the main event, which you may do to cover a camera move, or to keep a scene from dragging on. Most often, b-roll is not synched, you don't know if the flower girl actually yawned before, during, or after the long-winded sermon, the close-up of the bride's father wiping a tear away could have actually happened at any time. You can even do this with one person, putting one camera on a tripod to get a master shot and then running around getting closeups with a second camera. Un-synched b-roll is easy to do and adds extra depth to your shooting.

Easy / Cheap:Multicam with visual synchronization

Synchronizing multiple cameras is a little trickier, but it will allow you to cut back and forth between two cameras at exactly the same moment - extremely useful when you have video and audio tracks that need to stay together, such as musical performances or dances. Lots of modern cameras have built in time code which can be controlled from an external source, but without such equipment, you can use the same method Hollywood's been using for nearly a hundred years to synchronize audio and motion pictures that are recorded separately - an easily definable event of a short duration recorded by both. When film and video are recorded separately you need a visual cue and an audio cue that happen at the same time - traditionally this is made by a "clapper" or "sticks" - some guy in a baseball hat steps in front of the camera with a clapper and says "scene three, take four" and bangs the two parts of the clapper together. This makes a noise ("clap!") and an easily definable visual, the clapper snapping shut. These can be aligned in the editing room and the audio and visuals will stick together. Since your camcorders are synching audio, you only need a visual clue, such as a still camera flash which will work for multiple cameras across a room - having someone stand in front of the cameras and clap their hands together works too. After you've synched your cameras this way DON'T STOP RECORDING or you'll lose your synch. Also, if your cameras are using tape, they may eventually drift apart and need to be re-synched due to the inexact transport speeds. Practice at home to see how long your cameras stay synched.