Interviewmania!, Chris Hennessy (1997, Custom Video Connection, 2059 Camden Avenue, Ste. 261, San Jose, CA 95124, 98-min. video with 26-pp. handbook, $50)
Personal interviews can add a special touch to a wedding video, but conducting effective interviews is a skill that most videographers have not developed. Thats why wedding videographer Chris Hennessy has published this combination videotape and handbook. Interviewmania! is loaded with sample interviews and tips to help you ask the right questions in the right manner, to help your videos stand out from the rest. The Interviewing for Impact handbook includes questions to ask the bride and groom, the wedding party, parents, grandparents, even celebrities who may be in attendance. Hennessy shares more than 150 tips and questions he has learned and refined in his years as a producer. This is not a tape on how to shoot wedding videos; this is a guide for conducting interviews. Dont buy this tape to learn camera techniques; there arent any. But if youd like to learn the skills youll need to be a better interviewer, Interviewmania! can help.
New Wedding Traditions, A Collection of Wedding Music for the Professional (1995, Visual Concepts, 557 Trinity Court, Bensalem, PA 19020, about 43 min., $23)
Finding good original music for your wedding videos can be a challenge. For some reason, much copyright-free wedding music sounds like it came from a low-budget keyboard. However, the quality of the music on this CD is well above average. In this case, the question for the videographer is not one of quality but one of usefulness.
The disk contains seven fully produced songs, each with instrumental and vocal versions. While the lyrics are appropriate for the wedding day, as a videographer you may have trouble finding a place in your production for the vocal versions. As a whole, the songs seem more appropriate for performance at the reception or in the wedding ceremony than for a video production. On the other hand, even if you never use the vocal cuts, the reasonably low price and good quality of the instrumentals make this disc a good value.
Training, Sandy Brooke (1995, Brooke Video Productions, Beverly Hills/Van Nuys, CA 818-786-4671, 55 min., $49)
One of the keys to operating a successful video-production business is having good employees. But where do you find them? How do you know which applicants to hire? How can you have confidence as you send them off to interact with important clients or trust them with your expensive video equipment? Sandy Brook, owner of Brook Video Productions, has put together this video to help you see the importance of training reliable employees for video production.
This video is not a step by step guide to training employees; it is designed to teach you how to select, hire and manage workers that will help your business succeed. The video also includes descriptions of forms, agreements and employee procedures that will protect you as the employer. Think of this as a handbook of advice from someone who has been there and lived to tell. While the video doesnt present the step-by-step recipe to make a beginner into a video professional, it does contain valuable information for the potential employer.
