It’s one thing to have a photographer at your wedding, but it’s another to have a videographer. There are always sitcoms and comedies about poor wedding video footage that gets erased or destroyed to the dismay of the characters, but wedding videography these days is the exact opposite. As opposed to days gone by where everything was done on cassette and tape, video quality is so much better these days.
If you’re a wedding videographer on your first job, or an industry pro, these wedding videography tips should help you improve your final product so that instead of just still frames to flip through, the bride and groom will have a DVD to play and relive the whole day once again.
Chapters/Sections
One of the most important things to remember about wedding DVDs is that they need chapters. While the actual wedding day is fabulous by itself, reliving the whole experience from the couch isn’t the same. Having the ability to skip through the “dull” moments is essential. Try putting chapters every 5 minutes or so, so that as the wedding is progressing, it’s easy to skip just a little bit ahead and not miss much.
In addition to chapters, it’s also important to have different sections for the wedding DVD. You can put things like different guest’s speeches together in one section, and the vows in another. That way, if the watcher wants to jump from one moment to another, it’s easily accomplished. Instead of having to watch the entire wedding just to watch grandpa’s moving speech, you can easily jump straight to it.
Tripod
If you don’t already have a tripod, stop reading here and go and buy one. Tripods are a cameraman’s best friend and provide all of the stability that you need in order to ensure that your arm doesn’t get tired and that the footage isn’t wobbly. Tripods can be used to pan back and forth between different moments, as well as for setting up multiple cameras around the wedding to capture different events. That means if you’re flying solo for a videography gig, you can set up a camera near where everyone will be giving speeches, and one to capture the whole room so that in the editing room, you can cut back and forth between the two shots to make things more interesting for the viewer later on.
Extra Shots
What most starting videographers forget is the B-Roll footage. While they may have gotten great at capturing the wedding itself, it’s the extras that make the whole thing worthwhile. Make sure to get footage of guests talking outside the church or at the reception, as well as maybe some interviews with different family members for their thoughts of the day. All of this can be just as important to the bride and groom as the actual wedding footage. You can edit this footage into a montage of sorts to bookend the wedding itself if you want, or even create a separate DVD for the footage so that the married couple can see what their friends were doing during the wedding.
Input
Last but not least is input. If you plan on heading to the wedding without ever having spoken to the bride and groom about what they want and what they’re comfortable with, the day will end terribly. Make sure to talk to your clients beforehand to understand what it is they want you to do. If they tell you to just go with it, make sure you’re quick and watchful at the wedding so that you can capture all of the nuances that make every wedding unique.
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