7 Tips to Finding The Right Wedding Videographer for You

7 DIFFERENT WAYS YOUR WEDDING DAY CAN BE FILMED

1: the music video

This is simply recording video and overlaying a music track to tie the edit together. There’s no audio captured from your day and the film is often edited in chronological order. From getting ready in the morning to the party at night. 

Given there’s no audio from vows or speeches, the music chosen often has a pretty big influence as to the overall feel and vibe of the wedding video.

From a skill level perspective, this is the easiest form of wedding video to film and edit. You’ll often find beginner videographers, and more so now, photographers who are trying their hand a videography adopting this approach.

2: music video with audio overlay

It’s very similar to the style above, but audio from the vows and speeches is recorded and used throughout the wedding video.

The overall vibe or energy is still set by the music track chosen by the videographer with sound bites from the vows and speeches giving the film a more personal feel. The use of audio also helps draw the viewer in and keep them engaged throughout the film. 

3: the stylised videographer

I’ll let you in a little secret here. Us videographers all have an ideal type of wedding we love filming. Given this, we do our best to market our companies in a way that attracts this certain type of couple.

Some videographers have colourful vibrant websites and every featured film is curated to advertise fun, energetic wedding couples. That’s their ideal vibe. Other videographers enjoy creating cinematic and romantic wedding videos. The list of adjectives goes on: Chill, relaxed, crazy, party, quirky, slow and steady.

In may ways, this is really helpful for a couple looking for a videographer. If a videographer’s website has a certain feel to it, it’s clear as mud as to what kind of energy or vibe the couple will get in their wedding video. 

But there’s a flip side of this too. It means that regardless of how your day actually pans out, your videographer will try their best to mould you into their preselected style. After all, that’s what you’ve booked them for right?  So if you’re having a great laugh with your bridesmaids in the morning, but you’ve booked a ‘cinematic/romantic’ styled videographer, they may well subtly direct you into more cinematic moments instead.

During the booking phase, it might be important to ask your videographer how much direction and influence they have on moments throughout the day to help create the content you booked them for, verses just letting you be you, and having the videographer capture your day as it actually happened. 

5: directed vs candid

This can be eye opening. Click play on a wedding video and seperate the first 10 “people shots” you see into two categories. Directed or Candid.

There’s no right or wrong approach here. Some couples want to be directed into moments and really enjoy working with a videographer to create a stylised series of moments they feature in. Other couples would rather a real and raw capture of what the wedding day was actually like, outside of the ‘photoshoot’ moments the videographer wanted to direct the couple in to. 

Watching someone else’s wedding video through the objective lens of directed vs candid moments can really differentiate a videographers style and highlight what’s really important to you.

6: objective vs subjective

I’ll give you the TLDR version because there’s a lot to say here and a few different ways to communicate this:

Wedding Videos with impressive Effect:
Some wedding videos are visually stunning. The videographer will use of drones, motorised gimbals, filming in slow motion, fancy transitions between shots, or an edit that’s cut tightly to the pulsing beat of a popular music track. This style of wedding video use lots of filmmaking techniques to impress you and make the wedding video look as cool as possible.

Wedding Videos that Affect you. 
Maya Angelou once said: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” 

The quote above gets to the heart of Affect. Videographers that focus on Affect want to make you feel something. They want to capture the emotion of the day and the personality of who you are as people. To an ‘Affect’ driven videographer, the ideal wedding video is one that connects with the heart. It leaves a lasting impression on you. As Maya Angelou said, It makes you feel something.   

Spectator Vs Participant
Another way to communicate a similar intent would be to ask yourself the question: When watching a wedding video, did you feel like a spectator, observing someone else’s day from a distance, or did the film insert you into the moment. Like you were there yourself. Did the film really connect with you.

Objective Vs Subjective
It’s also interesting to watch someone’s wedding video with an Objective Vs Subjective view point in mind.

A videographer who focuses on recording  objective events will make sure to include lots of details, decorations, the wedding car, cake, venue location or the bride walking down the aisle.

Whereas a videographer who focuses on the subjective will focus on personalty and experience. The film will have a more human focus and story. One of anticipation, excitement and intimacy. It prioritises the heart of a wedding, over the details of a wedding.

There is of course a lot of overlap in all these approaches, but normally you can pick a videographers style based on the first 20 seconds of a film. Does the film begin with the objective, or the subjective. Do they ‘set the scene’ with location and details, or do they pull you in with personality?