Monday 19 February 2018

Tip #1 : Support

Over the next few months we will be giving you a few tips on how to ensure a great wedding video and a worry-free wedding day. With over six years' experience in the wedding video business, we've picked up a few pointers that we'd like to share with you.



The Wedding of Ruth & Alastair, Edinburgh 1st Dec 2013

Tip #1 : Support

When choosing a wedding videographer it's usually a good idea to find out about how they will support you, not only on your big day, but before, during and after.

Before:

Will they meet with you to get to know each other, build a rapport and iron out any details? In my experience this always helps. Even if things change later it's always a good idea (travel time allowing) to physically meet and have a chat and a coffee. It could be at a location like a cafe halfway between you both. The preliminary meeting helps both parties to ask and answer questions, and to fully understand what is expected from the other. It's much easier to discuss the plan for your big day at a meeting on a different day than on the morning of the wedding itself when everyone is rushed and sometimes stressed. It's also a good idea just to touch base the week of the wedding to make sure everything is still all good and there haven't been any last minute changes. It might also be an idea to ask the videographer to send you a text when they arrive at the venue to let you know everything's on track.

There is also the small possibility that your videographer might be sick or their transport breaks down on your wedding day. (Sorry to mention this! It's never happened to me, touch wood, but it could and I'm usually prepared just in case, with AA membership and a network of other videographers to contact in such an eventuality.) Has your videographer got failsafes in place? Do they leave in plenty of time to account for roadblocks etc?

During:

Your videographer's priorities should be twofold. First, to capture the best video possible in the circumstances, and second to ensure the best day of your life runs as smoothly as it can. In practice this means :

  • Being helpful, careful, safe and considerate to everyone
  • Not competing, but co-operating with the photographer to ensure the best shots for both
  • Lending a hand whenever necessary
  • Remembering that it is a live event and that even though they shouldn't be visible in their own shots, they are still very much visible to all the guests and bridal party on the day
  • Being as discrete as possible

After:

So it's all done and dusted. The day is over and everything went well. What's next? The videographer has to first of all duplicate all the footage in the event that a hard drive fails. Ideally they should do this the very next day, and have two copies stored at different locations in the event of a fire or burglary. It takes many hours of work to first whittle all of the 360GB or so  down to all the best stuff in a 90 minute video. Then there's the stabilisation, sound adjustment and colour correction. But an email every month or so to let you know how things are going might be nice. Your videographer should keep the master version of your wedding day backed up in duplicate (24GB) for as long as possible, just in case you lose your DVD, USB or there's some other technical problem, or even if you want copies. Probably in twenty years DVDs (720 x 576) will become obselete in much the same way as VHS has. What will the next format be? Rather than transfer from DVD to the next big thing, hopefully you can just contact your videographer and get it done from the master, which will be much better quality (1920 x 1080 HD). We actually back up your wedding film master in triplicate: twice in full 1080 HD and once as a hard copy on DVD.

So that's it. I hope this has given you an insight into what things to look for from your wedding videographer regarding support, before, during and after your big day.



The Highlights of the Wedding of Ruth & Alastair

Photographers/ videographers - have I forgotten anything?

Brides & Grooms - do you have any interesting stories to tell us?

Feel free to leave a comment below.

Thanks for reading! If you'd like to reach us, you can find us on Facebook here.

Read Tip #2 : Price
Read Tip #3 : Why Choose a Videographer?

© Chris Young 2018

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