Confessions of a Videographer, Entry 1:
Like many other wedding filmmakers, I love hanging up the dress somewhere cool—usually a big, empty room—to get that “Oh, that’s a cool dress” shot. You know, the one on a gimbal, 60p at 24mm. Boom. Nice. Standard operating procedure for wedding videographers. We’ve all done it.
But this time was different. I took the dress with the photographer, and all was well. I’d arrived in abnormally good time today; the weather, despite being forecast as a shambles, was actually pretty good—a crisp autumn morning. I looked at the dress as it hung in the doorway, almost between rooms. It was an Edwardian masterpiece, tall ceilings, and an array of post-colonial art pieces. Not everyone’s cup of very British tea, but still, I liked it—and so did the couple.
So there I was, getting the shot, enjoying the moment. The photographer climbed back onto a chair to retrieve the dress. “Hold on a minute… What’s that horrid black filth at the…”
My eyes widened as I saw the most hideous sight imaginable to a wedding videographer. A crisp, white, unworn dress, inches away from sticky black tar. The kind of stuff you imagine festering in the depths of Mordor, ready to pull an Uruk-hai out of it. And the door? A partition—some old-fashioned room divider. To slide properly, the door was slicked with a horrid, oily substance.
Without my consent, my body let out a squeal of panic, like a seal spotting a polar bear a little too late.
I grabbed the dress and whispered in the most violent whisper I’ve ever composed, “What the actual __ is that?!?!”
The photographer took a closer look. He was panicking now, too. We took the dress off the hanger. “Okay, we’re safe. We’ll just have to tell the bride there’s no hanger. Wait, what is that?”
A piece of oil-like gunk, the size of a 5p coin, lay on the dress, right under the chest, staring at me as though its sole purpose for existing was to ruin my life.
I swore. Sorry, Mum. I looked up at the photographer. He was sweating. I was sweating. I whispered through gritted teeth, “Get some loo roll. Now!”
He scurried off and grabbed some, but it was too late. You can’t rub that stuff out of a dress. You just can’t. You can’t even scrub it off your skin with hot water and a mountain of soap.
What the hell am I going to do? I can’t just give this back to the bride and say, “Sorry about that,” then expect her to wear an oil-smeared dress, looking like some disheveled, beached seagull after BP spilled a metric ton of crude oil. No. That simply won’t do. So I did what any good videographer would do. I prayed. Literally.
“Oh Lord, hear my prayer.”
The photographer came back, toilet roll in hand, supposedly meant to save us from this hideous embarrassment. Fat chance.
“Okay, when you do it, wipe it away from the dress, not into the dress. This could get a lot worse if we do it wrong.” He nodded.
I think the same two thoughts were going through both of our heads: “I’ll never shoot another wedding again,” and “I wonder how hard this will be to mask out in post.”
Then, a second before the tissue touched the black wickedness, the photographer changed his mind. He dropped the tissue, pulled his forefinger back with his thumb, and flicked. It happened so quickly I didn’t have time to react. I looked at the dress. “I don’t believe it.” The mark had almost completely disappeared. What was left was an incredibly small blotch of black, but because the dress had sequins, it disguised it nicely. But if this had been the dress I shot the week prior—a perfect white gown—I’d be a dead man.
We beamed at each other. “Did we just get away with it?” he asked.
“We’re not out of the woods yet.” We checked every inch of the dress, looking for any other sign of oil. Nothing. Thank God. The photographer had that same look on his face one might pull after robbing a bank—pure joy and disbelief.
We counted our blessings and returned the dress, unharmed. We decided not to tell the bride. Look, don’t judge me. We didn’t want to stress her out, to make her think that at any moment more oil might appear. If she found something and asked, we’d confess. But otherwise, we were in the clear.
Later that morning, we were wrapping up the shoot, finishing with some bridal portraits. I started arranging the dress. “Oh my gosh.” I thought to myself. That day, I was blessed with 10p’s worth of oil stains, as yet another stain—this one also the size of a 5p coin—joined us on the shoot. I looked down to see the little monster, staring up at me.
“Everything alright?” the bride asked.
“Quite alright, let’s crack on.” I folded the dress over—it was by her feet. Truly, she’d never notice.
“If we can just get to the reception,” I told myself, “that oil could’ve come from anywhere.”
Maybe I should’ve told her. But I don’t think so. She was none the wiser. She went on to have a lovely day, and the oil was never spotted. At the end of the day, I breathed a sigh of relief, vowing never to touch a wedding dress again.
What would’ve happened if I had told her? Well, maybe it would’ve brought the eventual divorce a little sooner.
Maybe the oil was just a sign—somehow, a little poetic, but mostly a flipping disaster, narrowly avoided.
Lesson learned: Sometimes the universe sends you a sign… and sometimes, you just flick the oil and keep filming.
PS: This won’t save you from oil but it’s dead handy to have on the day. Emergency Kit
Be that guy or gal everyone loves. Thanks for Letting me share this anonymously.
