Questions About Choosing Your Wedding Film

What Do I Want My 'Main Video' to Look Like?

Once the wedding and reception have been filmed, the next decision you will make is what you want your "main film" to look like. The term "wedding film" or "wedding video" has a huge range of definitions for length, content, and style. Videographers vary greatly in what they deliver. It is very important to choose a videographer that delivers the style, content, and length you are envisioning for your video.

For many years, the concept of a "wedding video" was a 2-3 hour video of "everything".  Basically, it consisted of minimally-edited footage usually from a stationary camera set up at the ceremony/reception that includes dead time, etc.  Where a few videographers may still offer this style, most professional videographers now offer a much shorter, edited highlights video as the main video plus optional additional longer, secondary videos of various events of the day as chosen by the bride.

Even though most videographers now offer a highlights video as the main video, there are still wide ranging definitions of a "highlights" video based on style, length, and cost.

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Highlight Film

Creating an emotional, artistic video that tells a story in a compelling way requires talent, skill, experience, and a significant amount of editing time.  The main highlights film typically utilizes the top skills and talent in a filmmaker's company.  Styles and capabilities vary.  It is imperative that you view sample films from a filmmaker to ensure their style is what you are looking for.  Length of the highlights film varies.  In most cases, the style doesn't change with longer length.  There is simply more time to include more content.  Be aware, though, that past a certain length for the highlights film, the available 'good' content is exhausted and other content must be used to fill the length. We have found that with most weddings we have enough good content to fill up to a 15-minute highlights film.

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Full Feature Film (Documentary Style)

Accompanying the highlight film, many brides also choose a "Full Feature" documentary style film.  This is more of an "as it happened" film.  These films are nicely edited.  But they are typically more documentary, chronological style.   Our Feature Film is called "Remember the Day".  It runs 20-25 minutes.  It can be longer at the request of the bride.  However, we have found in our experience that this length is optimal for audience attention while still providing coverage of everything that occurred during the day.  We describe this as "Enough of Everything... But Not All of Anything"

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Enhancements / Options

Our most commonly chosen additional options are "Complete Ceremony", "Complete Toasts", and "Rehearsal Dinner Coverage".  Ask your videographer about these and other options.

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Contents

Part 1 - Introduction

Part 2 - How Many Hours Should I Have the Videographer Onsite?

Part 3 - What Do I Want My 'Main Video' to Look Like?

Part 4 - Production Video Options from 2nd Generation Wedding Films

Part 5 - Video Delivery

Part 6 - Choosing a Videographer for Your Wedding