Everybody has a vision of what a wedding video is in their heads and usually imagine sitting around a television on a wet dreary Sunday afternoon watching a five-hour shaky video shot by Uncle Alfie that gets progressively shakier as the video goes on!
Even some professional wedding videos can be contrived and dull, so what is required to make a great wedding video?
A great wedding video is one that entertains people and is continually being passed around family and friends and watched over and again. It all comes down to a vital ingredient that all wedding videos should have and that is fun. A great wedding video is about fun.
When you hire your wedding videographer to film your special day he needs to have the eye to pick up on the little moments, smiles, tears, laughter, the pranks of the groomsmen, in fact all of the things you want to remember ten or fifteen years down the line. A great videographer will be able to frame a scene and use his techniques to best advantage with a mix of close-ups, mid-shots, and long shots. It is about subtlety and the ability to pick up and recognise what will be a great scene.
The wedding video is in effect a fly on the wall documentary and the videographer should be unobtrusive so you will not know they are there. This allows people to act naturally rather than stiffly pose or “play” to the camera. Wedding videos offer so many scenarios to be capture don film. The bride and her party getting ready to travel to the church or wedding venue can produce some lovely footage. This part of the wedding day is full of promise and very emotional, a lot of fun is also had as the bride’s closest female friends and relatives will be there making jokes, getting misty eyed and drinking a glass of champagne or two. The videographer will need to be swift to capture the groom, best man, and groomsmen on film as they prepare to leave for the wedding venue.
Some weddings have surprises and if there is going to be anything out of the ordinary, then the videographer must be the first to know. If there is going to be a spectacular release of doves outside the church or the bride and groom are going to gallop off to the reception on horseback, it needs to be captured in the moment. There is no point the videographer being in the vestry uploading clips for the relatives in Australia and missing the shot resulting in the highlight excluded from the film.
The magic of wedding videos is the editing. Your videographer is a wizard who will take the raw footage, wave his or her editing wand, and craft it into a professional, interesting, entertaining film that everyone will enjoy. The wedding video will be transformed from many jigsaw pieces into a seamless document of the wedding day. Every wedding video will be different and your videographer will bear your personal tastes in mind when styling the edit. The scenes will flow with rhythm, clever cutting, appropriate music, and sound bites.
Your wedding video is precious and you only get one shot at it, so do make sure you use a professional who is on your wavelength and will produce a treasured keepsake you will cherish.