Wedding video editing is an artistic and technical process. It involves the careful selection of shots to combine into sequences. These sequences are eventually compiled into the finished wedding video.
For Wedding Video Solutions, wedding video editing is the art of being able to tell a story that is made up of elements that are invisible to the viewer but essential to the finished piece. These elements are layers of images, story, performance and audio (narrative, dialogue and music). The combination should engage the viewer so completely that the editing work is seamless and transparent.
The stage is the wedding itself and the players are the bride, groom and wedding guests. Wedding video editing is not a simple skill and so much relies on the artistic creativity of the video editor and technical skill. The editor must decide which elements from the footage to retain, which to discard or combine from various sources in order for them come together in a logical, cohesive and visually pleasing manner.
There are many wedding video editing software suites and these are helpful and can deliver special effects and give a slick look to the production. Wedding video editing involves taking all of the footage taken from the wedding from all cameras present on the day. It is time-consuming work and it is quite likely that 3 to 4 hours of footage shot over the course of the day will take approximately 25 hours to produce.
The wedding video editing normally consists of a first pass where footage from all cameras is synced together while removing all the bad and unusable footage. This process is the most time consuming since each hour of footage takes at least two hours of editing. Footage from a single camera will clearly take less time.
Four hours of footage takes approximately eight to nine hours to edit, set-up and clean. In the end, the original amount of four hours of footage is likely to be cut down to a couple of hours of usable footage.
At this stage, the creative side of the wedding video editing steps in. The bride and groom will have already discussed any preferences for music to be added as a soundtrack where appropriate but some leave it to the wedding video editor. Discussions will take place about the original audio from the footage to see if any needs editing and if they want excerpts of speeches or the whole thing.
Once these details are agreed, the wedding video editing can progress to the second pass wedding video editing stage. The video is edited to match the soundtrack music in terms of lyrics and musicality. This needs to be faultless or else the video will just not look right.
The final stage of wedding video editing involves the final polish. This third stage is where graphics, special effects and titles are added to pull the whole production together. At this stage the video is previewed many times in order to make sure there are no continuity issues, gaps or faulty audio or video.
Either a preview is shown to the bride and groom or the production will be put straight to DVD for preview. The DVD needs another preview from the wedding video editor to make sure no flaws are introduced in the video transfer to DVD. If the clients are happy with the preview, then more copies are made to order or additional wedding video editing is performed to the client request.
At the end of this process, this video will become an important part of your wedding memories and good wedding video editing will make sure it is a keepsake to be treasured.