Why Wedding Videos are Important

What’s that your brain is asking you? Why do we even need a wedding video? Well put simply, to us photography and video are equally as important, and they each have their own strengths. In a photograph you can’t hear a father’s nervous voice as he delivers a heartfelt speech, a best man’s embarrassing but hilarious joke or a grandparent’s belly-aching laugh. Great cinematographers also use the power of music to make the footage more emotive. We all have bad memories of the awkward and boring wedding videos from the 80s, where events were filmed continuously from a single viewpoint on a tripod. But cinematographers are challenging that tradition, and instead they roam around to get cinematic and engaging footage from different angles.

Welcome to the 7th blog post in our series on planning a wedding. We like to start out every post by acknowledging that there is no right or wrong way to celebrate your decision to spend the rest of your life together. We want to make it clear that our opinions about our wedding are a reflection of what we value and what’s important to us. You can read the other blog posts in our planning a wedding series here. Here is some advice that we’d recommend considering when you’re looking for a wedding videographer:

How to Choose Your Wedding Videographer

• Who does your photographer recommend? Chances are they’ve worked with other wedding videographers before, and it’s very important that they work well together so that you get the best result from both.
• Are you watching a video on their website that is set to songs by Taylor Swift? Copyright infringement is a complicated topic, and if you’re keen on educating yourself about it you can find out more on the Music Rights Australia website http://www.musicrights.com.au/fact-sheets/videographers/. We think it’s more personal to have unique music that the videographer has paid for a license to use in your wedding video.
• Watch all of their videos. Ok so maybe not all – but a lot of them. Don’t just watch the best ones featured on their Facebook page, watch the ones that were filmed at venues like yours or with the kind of music that you’re into.
• Do you want the raw video footage? The way that we (and lots of other videographers) work, is that we film hundreds of short 5-20 second clips during a wedding day to use in editing a highlights video. These hundreds of individual files are the raw footage, and are unusable except for the purpose of editing into a short video. A better question to ask yourself, is whether you want the audio/visual footage of the ceremony vows and reception speeches. These are usually longer cuts of footage, depending on how the videographer works. This footage is not something that is always guaranteed to be included, so if it’s important to you it’s worth asking.
• Where do they set themselves up during formal parts of the day like the ceremony and reception speeches? Do you want them to be unobtrusive? Being in the industry we’ve seen it all – big tripods in front of the bride or groom’s parents at a ceremony, and big lighting setups at the reception.
• Meet them. Do you want them at your wedding? If yes, hooray!
• Do you need 1 or 2 videographers? This might be a controversial statement, but filming a wedding is a lot more challenging than photographing one. The main reason being that there are a lot more variables to work with. There’s audio to control, multiple cameras to monitor that aren’t in your hands, and the whole concept of capturing movement over time compared to a single frame. It’s for these reasons that we would much prefer to have two videographers. That’s how we work and it’s a personal decision. Maybe you’re having a very small and intimate wedding, or you don’t want audio recorded, or you have another valid reason why you only want 1 videographer.

Our wedding videographers

Here’s the story of how we chose our videographers. Before weddings, most of Lyndon’s professional career has been as an editor in the commercial TV and video industry. We wanted control over the editing process, so the option that best suited our needs was having 2 videographers film on the day and hand over the footage to us. The majority of the work in producing a video is in the post production – the editing, colour grading, sound and creative decisions. In saying that, a good edit requires quality, professional and creative footage to begin with. Not many businesses in the industry offer raw video footage as an end product for weddings, as they (like us) like to have creative and quality control over the finished product. *On a related note, it is also industry standard for photographers to never hand over raw files for similar reasons.

Luckily we found James from Zephyr based in Melbourne, and Gus from Ask Design. James has been filming weddings for a while now, he’s genuinely passionate about filming but doesn’t want to spend all his time in front of a computer. He has an in house editor when couples want a finished product, or he offers raw footage as an alternative option. When we met over Skype we loved his down to earth, easy going nature, and we felt we could 100% trust him to film our day. Gus has worked with us at almost every wedding we’ve ever filmed. He’s an absolute legend and we wouldn’t want to make our own wedding video without him! Together, James, Gus and Lyndon will make the ultimate team! Ours is a bit of a rare circumstance, and in 99% of cases we would always recommend leaving the creative and quality control of editing your wedding video with your cinematographer and/or their team. Your dad might be the most passionate apprentice editor, but he won’t do your wedding day or the work of your cinematographer justice in his edit.

We hope that we’ve helped justify why a wedding video is so valuable, and given useful information to help you choose the right cinematographer for your wedding. Below you can see some of our favourite videos that Gus from Ask Design has worked on with us over the years: