9 Simple Steps to Finding a Great Wedding Videographer

Your wedding is a major day in your life, and you want your wedding videographer to capture it perfectly. For this to happen you must know how to find a great professional to work with on this special day. Here are some tips to help you with this “journey.”

#1. Hire a Professional Videographer

One thing that many brides will tell you that they regret is not having a video of their wedding. This is because you’ll want to make sure you capture the happiness of your friends and family for years to come. Considering all the money, energy and time you put into this special day hiring a professional videographer that’ll capture all these things is a small investment.

#2. Hire Someone Local

You’ll have a better film when you hire someone who’s familiar with the location and the local vendors in your area. They’ll know things like where the sun will set, what angles are best, and when there’ll be the best conditions & lighting – all important factors for creating the best possible wedding video.

#3. Look at Their Customers’ Reviews

You don’t want to only review their portfolio, but see what other customers are saying about them too. Make sure you choose a professional who consistently delivers high quality, even when working with adverse timing, weather, lighting, or other variables.

#4. Know What Style You’re Looking For

It’s important to know what video style you want and communicate this to the videographer. While there are many ways to shoot a wedding video, the three main ones include:

• Music videos are visually driven, focusing on cinematic shots. There’s lots of shifting throughout the day, but there’ll consistently be music and lyrics. This style doesn’t have a lot of audio (e.g. vows, speeches, voice over dialogue).
• Candid or minimalist videos are the opposite of music videos. They’re more like a professionally shot home movie, focusing on candid moments (e.g. guests laughing, natural audio, speeches, interaction) instead of visual flair. As such, these videos have a more organic feeling.
• Cinematic or story telling videos offer the best of both worlds. Not only do you receive the same visual production quality you’d receive with a movie, but you’ll also receive the feel and emotion of the candid style. You’ll get everything from stunning cinematic shots to dialogue capturing the day’s emotional feel.

#5. Make Sure the Videographer Includes Personal Elements

Having personal dialogue in your video will help personalize your wedding story as it’s being told. This can be in the form of vows or even cards that are read aloud.

#6. Know Your Videographer’s Turn-Around Time

Industry standard for wedding videography turn-around time is 6 months, but sometimes it may take as long as a year. This is something you’ll want to read in the contract’s fine print. Make sure you also note how responsive your videographer is prior to hiring them. The last thing you want is to have a nightmare after your wedding in which you must hunt the videographer down to get your film.

#7. Know What Music can be Used

Legally, if you want music included in your wedding video, it must be licensed. Unfortunately, not every song is made available to the public for licensing. However, there are lots of great songs that are licensed and made available for you to choose from to help personalize your video.

#8. Know Your Final Editing Options

Although the work is left up to your wedding videographer, it does help to know some of the lingo so you can communicate with them well. Here are some of the many different types of delivery options that you may be offered:

• Trailers and Teasers: These are typically between 60 seconds and two minutes long. They’re great for use on social media sites like Instagram and Facebook.
• Highlight Films: These videos range from three to six minutes. They’re a great way to capture highlights throughout your special day. They’re also best when you don’t have a large reception or many speeches.
• Short Films: These last 8 – 10 minutes, which is great for balancing visual engagement with speeches and other content to tell the story of your wedding.
• Feature Films: These videos are at least 12 minutes long. This is enough time to completely share your day and your wedding story. When you pair this with a trailer you have a great way to show everyone your wedding despite any time constraints they may have.
• Documentary (a.k.a. long form edits): Here two cameras are used so you can capture the entire ceremony and reception, but without any cinematic quality. Typically, these videos last about 45 minutes. But they vary depending upon the type of ceremony and length of speeches given.
• Raw Footage: This is completely unedited video footage, which is great for archival purposes. You can think of it as a less expensive documentary form, but it also isn’t as pleasing to watch.
• 4K Resolution: This is four times the resolution of HD and is soon to become the latest video standard. As such, this is a great way to time proof your video, but you can only watch it on 4K TVs and computers.

Once you decide on a format you’ll receive it either on a USB flash drive or online. Make sure you back your video up – since hard drives do eventually fail and videographers only hold onto the projects they create for so long.

#9. Leave the Video Editing to the Professionals

While many of your guests may be aspiring videographers, you’ll still want to leave this task to the professionals. They’re the ones with the tripods, lighting, drones and other great gear that are needed to perfectly capture your once in a lifetime occasion. They’ve done this numerous times, so they’re familiar with what will happen during each moment throughout your wedding.

Sometimes there may even be multiple things happening at the same time (e.g. the bride getting into her dress while groom is getting into his tuxedo). Professional wedding videographers will still be able to successfully capture all these crucial moments. So kindly ask your guests to leave the task to the professionals and enjoy the end product that AJ Kelly Productions puts together for you.