Wedding Videography Workshop with Aqif Ronzi & Mie Zailani

One thing that I love about my job is meeting new people and making connections - that brings to a very successful Friday of knowledge and amazing experience that will forever be useful not only for me, but for the other 15 people who came all the way to Port Dickson to join the videography workshop by two of my super talented friends, Aqif Ronzi and Hazmy Zailaini. So we met at a wedding job in Kedah back in August and we stayed in the loop ever since. I remember Hazmy told me about his idea of hosting a videography workshop and I thought that would be so cool. And when he showed me the place, I was so excited because it has such a minimalistic design with sufficient amount of greenery (if you haven’t know me already) and a huge pool surrounded by the rooms. The place is Villa Lot1638 located in the heart of Port Dickson and just a few minutes drive from the beach.

In the morning, we had the What’s In Our Bags session where Aqif and Mie introduced all of the equipments that they have from the cameras they use, differences between each lens to camera bodies, drone, tripod, different types of stabilizers, microphone to monitors. I was quite lost halfway through the session because videography uses a lot more gears than photgraphy and there are quite strange to me but I had a lot to take away from it. One thing I must say, Aqif really knows his gears and Mie could not stop trying to convince all of us to switch to Sony camera!

After lunch break, we went straight down for a demonstration of different stabilizers and shooting styles - with stabilizer and fully handheld. Even though Mie and Aqif often work together, they both have quite distinctive shooting methods - Mie prefer using stabilizer and zoom lens while Aqif prefer to handheld and uses portrait lens but that doesn’t mean they only stick to those. They both are very explorative and creative in their own ways and that makes up a good team.

We then moved to the other side of the villa where the model was getting her make up and hair done. During that session, we were taught about getting beauty and detail shots. That is when their creativity gone wild and I could see that the participants were very inspired and really enjoyed the session. Throughout the whole session, I was so blown away by the amount of knowledge they have and their creative thought process where they would find the beauty in every subjects. That specific point is very essential in any form of creative productions, be it photography or videography.

A very special appreciation to our model, Maymay, for your time and talent and our make up artist, Eiman Masdzar, for making her look pretty for the demonstration. I hope all participants had fun, learn a lot, make connections and hopefully they would go out there and shoot beautiful love stories. Regardless of my niche, I feel like both photography and videography are very similar in terms of capturing moments and telling stories behind the lens. But I have so much respects for videographers out there because their work is so much more complicated than us photographers and you guys deserve more recognition for your hard work and creativity.

When I said videographers take details seriously, I really mean it. Just look at those stretchy poses, they would go extra miles, well that might be a little bit exaggerated but you got my point. They might look funny with their stances but that’s just their way of getting that perfect angle for the shot, to seek for the sun flare, or go beneath the small detailing on the shoes. Mie also showed a little trick of getting reflection on if the background is very plain - by placing your phone’s screen in front of the lens and move it to get your desired reflection. This is another alternative to prism, which I personally use for my shots as well. It was fun seeing those people discovering the creative side by using things around them. 

I had no regret taking a day off from office work to attend this workshop because I definitely walked out feeling challenged in a good way, inspired and eager for the future, for myself and for all of us there. I know I have so much more to learn and explore and who knows one day I might jump into videography? Well, definitely not anytime soon! Before you go, here’s a teaser video that Mie put together from the footage he and Aqif took throughout the day and it was all done in less than an hour! Seriously you guys just never stop blowing my mind.